Giving Up Irony in the 21st Century

August 29, 2007

A Clockwork Orange vs Singin’ In the Rain

Irony insists on non-experiential reads - I have to “get” irony. It is an intellectual trick of meanings, a conceptual slight of hand. If I don’t have the same background (the same frame of reference), I’m excluded from your “get”. Great way to separate the “squares from the hips”, no?

Irony prevents “things as they are.” Nothing can just “be” within an ironic read, everything has to “be something else.” Irony props up overly elaborate and weak concepts. Irony celebrates cynical and pessimistic worldviews while offering no alternatives.

Fetishizing irony is crippling for young artists. I never experienced, or participated in the original meaning/read, how can a possibly critique or examine it in an ironic context? It’s an endless hall of self-reflecting mirrors, each reflection distorted and proud than the last.

We are so excited, so proud of ourselves, so busy patting ourselves on the back, because “we get it”, that we miss what we are actually getting - that there’s nothing to get.