Isn’t It Ironic
October 22, 2002
While I’m on the subject, let me speak of Alanis Morrisette. Lots of folk tried to show how smart they were by pointing out that Alanis’s misuse of the word “irony.” “Irony,” they said, “means the use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.”
Sometimes words have more than one meaning, however. In her song “Isn’t it Ironic,” Alanis is clearly using another legitimate use of the word “ironic,” which is “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.”
Scott at MellowFellow has a more intelligent explanation. Unfortunately, his analysis rests on the weak argument that what Alanis expects is illogical to expect. As humans frequently expect things that are illogical, this makes no never-mind.
For example, with regard to the lyric “an old man turned ninety-eight / He won the lottery and died the next day,” Scott says:
Winning the lottery brings the expectation of financial well-being. It does not equate to physical health nor imply physical well-being. Clearly, a 98 year-old man has an increased chance of dying. Therefore, his death is not unexpected.
But emotionally, perhaps, the man expected to live in luxury the rest of his days? Surely he and everyone around him did. But he died immediately, before having a chance to enjoy any of his winnings. That is ironic: Scott errs by focusing on rational mathematical probabilities the emotional, human expectations of the situation.
Another example: “It’s a black fly in your chardonnay.” Scott says:
Although having a fly in your wine is an unfortunate occurrence, it is by no means ironic. The glass of chardonnay does not preclude invasion of winged pests. In fact, one may argue that the wine’s aroma may attract a fly in search of food.
Scott ignores the symbolic content of the line: the chardonnay implies luxury and sophistication, whereas the fly implies filth and decay. If you sit down to a nice glass of chardonnay, you are expecting a sophisticated beverage. If you find a fly in it, it becomes polluted. If this were a painting, certainly some art critic would call it “ironic.”
Finally, of the oft-maligned lyric “It’s like rain on your wedding day,” Scott points out:
A wedding day is supposed to be festive event. Clearly, rain on this day may hamper the joyous occasion. However, there is no reason to expect that sunny weather and a wedding day will necessarily coincide. Therefore, this is not ironic. In some cultures, rain on your wedding day is a welcome sign of fertility.
Again, Scott is overly mathematical. In Western European and American culture rain is frequently seen as a genuine downer. For a very long time, rain has been used to evoke feelings of depression in English and American literature, and is frequently used to externalize the internal tragic feelings of characters. Rain is for funerals and Republican administrations.
To have rain on your wedding day is ironic because one expects everything to be “bright and sunny” on the “happiest of days” even if there’s no scientific reason to think so. That other cultures think rain on one’s wedding day is a good omen is irrelevant; culture and language are so varied that few songs can convey the same thing to all peoples using the same metaphors.
None of this changes the fact that banshees fear mortality when they hear Alanis “sing.” But at least she does know her literary terms better than those pretentious folk who savage her.
Posted in Art and Writing
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October 23rd, 2002 at 9:57 am
Of course, it is altogether possible than the lyrics are intentionally *not* ironic, which, in a song called “Isn’t it Ironic”, would be…well, kind of ironic. Don’tcha think?
October 23rd, 2002 at 10:37 am
I’m so glad someone else got this. . . I”m so tired of people thinking it shows their grasp of vocabulary by pointing out her misuse of that word. Also great point, Fred.
January 14th, 2003 at 7:03 pm
Sorry, but Fred is wrong. He has fallen into the trap that almost everyone falls into when using irony. He has said that if Alanis Morisette intentionally used lyrics that were not ironic, then it is ironic that she has intentionally misused the meaning of the word ‘ironic’ in her title “Isn’t it ironic?” (since it’s not ironic). In other words, Fred has basically said: “Isn’t it ironic that people deliberately misuse the word ‘ironic’ “. Well, no, its actually not ironic when people deliberately misuse the word ‘ironic’, and neither is it ironic simply when people misuse the word ‘ironic’. Sorry, it’s just not.
Interestingly, though, Fred’s entire point is ironic, as is the statement “It’s ironic when people misuse the word ironic”, since the expression “It’s ironic that people misuse the word ironic” (and Fred’s point) are expressions in which the intended meaning of the word ‘ironic’, is the direct opposite of the actual meaning of the word.
Although having said that, if we take into account the modern, incorrect, interpretation of what irony means, then Fred’s point is actually correct, it is ironic that Alanis Morisette has intentionally misused the word ironic in her title, since the intended meaning of the words (that the title is not actually ironic) is the direct opposite of their usual sense (if you say the ‘usual sense’ of the word irony is the modern, incorrect interpretation of what irony means) since the ‘usual sense’ is actually that yes, the song lyrics are ironic.
Oh, the irony!
January 14th, 2003 at 8:53 pm
No, Boris, Fred is /still/ right. Your argument rests on an incorrectly narrow definition of ironic.
If I read you correctly, you are insisting that the intended meaning of the word be the direct opposite of the usual sense of the word.
[ If that's not what you are saying, I invite you to write in your argument again, this time striving for clarity over cute. ]
But this is not the only definition of ironic. There is a second definition — the OED says irony is “a condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected.” This is what I think you are calling a “modern, incorrect” usage, and the OED traces it back to at least 1648.
If you do not want to accept this definition of the word, that is your perogative. But me, I’m-a stick with the OED and a panel of word scholars.
January 14th, 2003 at 10:06 pm
And I never said I personally believed that that’s what was at work in the song, just that it’s *possible* that that was Ms. Morrisette’s intent.
Don’t we have better things to argue about?
April 24th, 2003 at 2:22 pm
Let me back up to the example of the 98 year old lotter winner.
If the old man had been playing the lottery so that in winning he could afford to medically extend his life, and the cause of his death was a heart-attack from the shock of winning said lottery, then the situation is ironic. The so-called “natural expectation” is dependant on a direct action to deliver those particular results.
If one doesn’t see this important difference, then sadly I have wasted my time on the stupid.
July 19th, 2003 at 6:09 am
So what is it when you see a real estate agent’s premises being put up for auction because they went bust? I used to think that was ironic until reading this thread.
Yours curiously,
Ad
August 15th, 2003 at 10:51 pm
So this is a song called “Ironic” where the lyrics portray situations which may or may not actually be ironic.
If these anecdotes fail to qualify as ironic, then it is ironic that the song is called “Ironic” - either due to deliberate literary in-jokery from Ms Morisette or due to cosmic irony in that even the author doesn’t get it.
If they do qualify as ironic, then it is ironic that otherwise wordly-wise, linguistically adept intellectuals - who would naturally be expected to know what they’re talking about -should flaunt their linguistic prowess by carping on about it when they are in fact wrong.
And so I coin a new term: Meta-irony, defined as “the irony inherent in the situation of otherwise normal people becoming obsessed with the status as ‘ironic’ or ‘not ironic’ of a mediocre pop song.”
October 7th, 2003 at 8:56 am
I have a deep comment to add to this one: does it not occur to all that Alanis just wrote this song thinking she was clever and she’s actually not? As far as the rest of the meta-crap that everyone else on this page is discussing, we go back to the most potent quote of them all: arguing on the internet is like running in the special Olympics. Even if you win, you’re still retarded.
October 7th, 2003 at 9:15 am
Ooo, we’re above arguing on the Internet, are we? Then why are you bothering to post?
To your point: I think that’s undoubtedly the case. But it is also the case that people who think Alanis is misusing “ironic” ALSO think they are being clever when they are actually not, which was my point. Alanis is actually inconsequential to the argument; whether or not she’s dumb or talented has nothing to do with whether or not she uses the word correctly and other people are incorrect at correcting her.
October 7th, 2003 at 9:35 am
I’m stating, not arguing. GAME SET AND MATCH YAY ME!!! THE CROWD GO WILD!!! GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH.
July 16th, 2004 at 1:09 am
People who say Alanis is misusing the term ironic are actually right in many cases. Well you can say its true that you don’t expect a glass of Chardanay to end up with a fly in it, a “sophistacated” drink like that being ruined is not enough to qualify as irony.
If we use your overly broad definition of irony, nearly all life’s little dissappointments could be called that.
Is it ironic if I open my refrigerator and it turns out its not cool inside and the food fresh as I expected?
No.
Is it ironic if I spend a lot of money on a pair of speakers, and they end up being ruined because of the old, faulty wiring in my house?
No, even though something modern and high tech has been ruined by something primitive. In fact, when something high tech such as that comes in contact with something primitive, you might really expect a problem to occur.
Similarly, a fly ruining a nice, classy beverage is not ironic either. That they are opposites doesn’t in some ways doesn’t make the situation ironic.Quite the opposite really. You would expect the fly to have that effect on the drink.
Nor is the situation ironic because you’re not expecting to find a fly in the drink. It might not be expected, but its hardly surprising either. Unfortunately, its a fact of life that nasty things like insects end up in our food from time to time.
Sorry to post so late, but I had to get my two cents in! And I’m absolutely right too, which made it even more important.
August 7th, 2005 at 6:41 am
Who really cares the intention of Alanis when she wrote the song. It is just a song after all. Yes you could argue that the lyrics don’t acurately reflect the true meaning of the word, but how many people actually fully grasp the true meaning anyway?
Most of us have incorrectly refered to something as ironic at some stage. Maybe the definition would be easier to alter than the perception of the majority of the public?
I think we should just make up a new word that covers all of these things, and delete the word ironic from modern vocabluary.