Don'cha Think?

I have a small bone to pick with the clever literary device turned pop culture iconoclast formerly know as irony.

Irony is overrated. Irony has become the character trait de jour, just like selfishness in the 80's and sexy sauciness around the time Sex and the City first premiered.

Now don't get me wrong. I love me some irony: a burly biker in leather chaps and a pink tutu, Romeo killing himself when he perceives Juliet is dead right before she wakes up from a drug-induced stupor, a crackhead singing about going to rehab, a Presidential candidate who complains about celebrity then goes and chooses a running mate based on her celeb appeal, the scrawny guy with acne and skinny black jeans wearing a tight "sex symbol" T-shirt, the game show champion who misses breaking a record because he incorrectly answers a simple pop culture question in final jeopardy.

Irony is discerning and discreet: she only works in the right context and is most effective when you least expect her to work her magic. Irony is right up there with love and slapstick: the timing needs to be just right for it work out.

But somewhere along the line, incongruence - between physical appearance and character, between words and actions, between personal expectations and the fate of the cosmos - has come to be equivalent with the overly educated urban hipster. Its as if by being dissonant and quirky, one screams, "Look at me! I am complex! You can't judge me by my cover! I am so multi-faceted and unique! I embrace my contractions and I am so secure in them that I advertise the fact that I am a macrobiotic vegan who is also a chain smoker. I am highly evolved, and you are just one notch above a chimpanzee. I am human, and I am ironic."


Irony has also become the litmus test for cool. God forbid you wear pastel baby barrettes or strap up your converse with hot pink laces and mean it. You'd better have your lip pierced and a skull tattoo hidden somewhere if you're going to wear that Little Miss Sunshine T-shirt. Pay no attention to the fact that ones wardrobe or even their ability to use sarcasm in a sentence says very little about the depth of their character. Irony is easy to accessorize. You might find cynicism, sharp wit, and a sense of humor drier than an old white wine come part in parcel with irony.


Now, a sensitivity to the surrealism of real life and the subjective nature of reality is just as important to me as it was to Ayn Rand. I value a sense of levity and appreciate the absurd as much as Nabokov and all the other stalwart Russian novelists. But this is what I mean, and this is what I hate. Is this irony, or is it self-aggrandizing ones intellectual prowess masquerading as irony? Is it irony, or a justification not to cultivate your own style and sense of self? Is it irony functiong as cultural currency that buys a new sort of elitism and intellectual snobbery? Irony as an excuse to reference literary figures as a means of determining how smart others are and therefore making a snap judgement as to whether they "get" you?

The kicker is that such attempts at inventive irony have become so predictable and formulaic that they are really rather pedestrian. Truth be told, ironic is banal. If being ironic was supposed to place you outside the box, then it might as well be sandwiched between cardboard walls, duck taped and shipped off to another decade, along with all those ironic T-shirts of yours.


So just remember: irony is a literary and dramatic device that is supposed to show us a thing or two about human nature and life. If you decide to wear a mullet and grow your sideburns down to your jawline just to be ironic, it doesn't make you cool. It only makes you hideous. If you think you're ironic because you'd rather watch reruns of Twin Peaks and discuss German philosophers than go to a bar and watch the game, you're uniquely incongruous, just socially awkward. Finally, in honor of Alanis to whom I owe my inspiration, irony is not a black fly in your chardonnay. A black fly in your chardonnay is just shitty.