Irony has gotten a bad rap recently. I first became aware of the war on irony from the comments of Jedediah Purdy on NPR a few years ago. One of his favorite targets was Bill Clinton, who, in his statement “I did not have sexual relations with . . . that woman” was supposed to be a prime example of problem irony run amok.
I have news for Mr. Purdy (as late as it may be): Bill Clinton was lying, not being ironic. You see, the audience for irony must be in on the joke—that is, they must have some sign of the ironic content of the message in the nessage itself, and there’s no indication that Clinton took any care to indicate that his meaning was the opposite of his actual statement. The fact that his statement was a lie is immaterial: he meant what he said, and he meant to lie. This, in turn, points out that there was no joke to be in on in the first place. Had Clinton been joking, it would have been in extremely bad taste, and, again, there’s no indication he was (Joking, that is. The whole incident was in bad taste). Clinton’s was simple case of someone lying and the lied-to not believing him.
Which sets us up nicely for the next thing irony requires: it requires a point. One of the things irony does best-the case of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” comes to mindis point out hypocrisy. If Clinton was attempting to do that, it was his own hypocrisy he was pointing out. He at any rate succeeded, but, again, I don’t think his intention in making that statement was to wreck his presidency. Johnathan Swift, however, had a very serious point in “A Modest Proposal.” He was very seriously concerned with the welfare of the poor of Ireland. He used the power of irony to point out the role of the rich landowners in causing that poverty by suggesting that the children of the poor be used as food for the rich. The dramatic irony of a play like Oedipus Rex while not comic like Swift, also deals with important ideas like fate and humanity’s ability to choose, and how human nature plays a part in weaving the cloth of a person’s destiny. Without his “fatal flaw,” after allOedipus’ rage-he would never have been so inextricably bound to his fate; without his decisive leadership qualities he would never have solved the riddle of the Sphinx and risen to power, would never have tried to escape his fate, would never have had it revealed to him in the end. The irony demonstrates important ideas about how our best qualities are also our greatest flaws. Clinton reveals this about himself in his statement, but, again, there is little to suggest he intended to.
I’m not sure why Purdy chose Seinfeld as another target of his ire, but he seemed to think that Seinfeld’s sardonic take on New York, New Yorkers, and people in general was a great cause-or maybe indicator, that was never clearof cynicism in America. Again, I have news: America has been cynical for a long time, at least since Watergate, but if the Beats are any indication, since before that, or if The Lost Generation is credible, since long, long before. All cynicism is the creation of disappointment that hasn’t killed you yet. (On the surface this is ironic, but it really isn’t.) It’s that disappiontment that Seinfeld set out to expose. By billing itself as a show “about nothing,” it became, by default, about everything. But mostly it was about the human condition in all its frailty, pettiness, cynicism, and, yes, irony. Irony is an important comic element, but its presence almost always indicates a more-or-less serious subtext, in this case that people are really disappointing. By naming the show after himself, Jerry Seinfeld sets himself and his friends up for ridicule. Irony is used for exposing hypocrisy here-a considerably more sophisitcated and important move than Purdy gives it credit for being.
It isn’t runaway irony that’s the real danger these days anyway; it’s our own utter inability as a nation to see the plain truth. The truth is the Bush administration lied to us about WMDs in Iraq; that the air, earth, and water is being poisoned and destroyed by nearly every act of contemporary life; that America’s problem with obesity is because we eat too much and exercise too little; that our sacred free market is more than willing to sell our jobs to anywhere labor is cheaper—which is everywhere excpet Germany and France. If anything, given the ability of well-used irony to expose the truth, we need considerably more of it, and we need it soon.
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