Irony

To quote from one of the BBC’s finest comedies ever made, Blackadder:

Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yes, it’s like goldy and bronzy only it’s made out of iron.

Strangely enough, Baldrick is actually correct. The word Irony also exists as an adverb meaning “consisting of or containing iron, or having iron-like properties”.

The irony I’m going to discuss here is the difficult other one (or ones, read on). There is only one definition of irony in the Oxford English Dictionary but other kinds of irony also exist, such as cosmic and situational ironies. The OED definition goes something like “a figure of speech that carries the opposite meaning to the words actually used – normally intended as sarcasm or to ridicule”. An example: I say to Madame Joad “I’m not going to pay my tax bill this year, I’m going to take it all and put it on the Lotto. With thousands of tickets, I’m bound to win”. She then says to me “You do that, I’m sure it’ll work out just dandy”. That’s irony. The implied meaning of course being that if I were to put my plan into action, she’d tear off my arm and beat me to death with the wet end.

So that was irony proper. There are other versions of irony, as I have mentioned – about six or seven, in fact – but I will concentrate on just the two most common ones to stop you drifting off to sleep. If you really want to know the different types, have a look here. Situational irony is when the outcome of a given situation is not that which was expected but is somehow apt or appropriate. This can be a very hard concept for some to grasp (more of which later) so here’s a couple of examples:

A German businessman clinches an important deal and says to his new partner “we have a very rosy future ahead of us”. While sitting in the restaurant section of the Hindenburg.

A tireless campaigner for the preservation of zebras is killed by a herd of stampeding zebras.

You get the idea, I’m sure.

By far the most widely-used form is cosmic irony. Indeed, this has become the irony everyone refers to in modern times, eclipsing somewhat the original sense of a verbal device. Some examples:

A man who has attempted suicide recovers in hospital and decides to live is killed by a bus as he leaves the building.

You are assembling some Ikea furniture and go out and buy a new set of screwdrivers. At the top of the instruction leaflet it says “Please bang this together with an old shoe. Any attempt to use screwdrivers will damage the unit”

A thief holds up a post office, only to find his getaway car has been stolen.

I probably have some of these way off as I am often confused by the niceties of irony myself. If I have misled or annoyed you by doing this, please tell me and I will correct it.

No article on irony would be complete without a reference to the Irish comedian Ed Byrne and his spectacular rant against the song ‘Ironic’ sung by Alanis Morissette. As you may know the song is itself ironic in that there is no irony in it. She twitters on about “black flies in Chardonnay” and “rain on your wedding day” and any number of things that are not in the least bit ironic, then ends the verse with “And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think?”. No, Alanis, we don’t. From Ed’s classic set:

“There’s nothing ironic about being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re late for something. Unless you’re a town planner. If you were a town planner and you were on your way to a seminar of town planners at which you were giving a talk on how you solved the problem of traffic congestion in your area, couldn’t get to it because you were stuck in a traffic jam, that’d be well ironic.

Rain on your wedding day is a pain in the ‘hole. Rain on your wedding day is ironic only if you’re marrying a weatherman and he set the date.

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break, that’s inconsiderate office management. A no-smoking sign in a cigarette factory – irony.”

Priceless. If you’d rather watch him go at it, there’s a YouTube link here.

As an aside, there’s a story (probably apocryphal) about him doing this set on stage and right near the end – when he refers to her as a “whiny Canadian bint” a fan shouts from the audience “It’s intended as a metaphor! It’s really a very beautiful expression of a personal truth.” To which he replied “In which case it’s not a metaphor, it’s a simile”.