In 1995, Canadian singer Alanis Morissette released her album, Jagged Little Pill, which had such memorable songs as Hand in My Pocket, You Ought to Know, and Head Over Feet. What caught the attention of listeners-from the academic or scholastic field, to the free thinking philosophers of that time, to the non-intellectual laymen-was the song Ironic.



(For a literary, contextual analysis of the song Ironic, go here)

The first-time listener of the song will be caught by the short tales and situations that are tragic by varying degrees (poignant, one could say, was “An old man, turned 98/He won the lottery/And died the next day”). Over the course of hearing the song, however, the pointed question, “Isn’t it ironic” will eventually be challenged, as the first assumption one would have is that, yes, it was ironic.

The core of the controversy, of course, is the challenged ironies of the situations within the song’s verse. At one side, her critics would say that none of the situations are ironic at all; the other side would rush to her defense and plead cosmic irony. There is also the defense that Alanis must have meant to ask the question, as a way of making people assume it’s ironic, and their discovery that the song has no ounce of irony would in itself be ironic. If such was the case, then Alanis failed in execution.

The issue first arose in 1995. Owing to the catchy tune and its thought-provoking content, however, one would be surprised that there are still articles in as late as 2008 (or even this year) that take point-by-point defense or attack of Alanis. In the part of this blogger, the song would be analyzed point-by-point, as taken in this post: http://fgk.hanau.net/articles/ironic.html.

We are assuming several things here: the old man has suffered all his life, or has worked among the “lesser men” toiling, until that one day of luck. While the irony here is not so strong (if taken to the circumstantial context), it nevertheless exists.

Case in point: The man is 98 when he wins the lottery. We may assume that he has been betting in the lottery for the larger part of his life (that is, when he first thinks that it may bring him good fortune). It is only at age 98, at the waning years of his life, that he wins it. The irony is here weak, but it exists; it is assumed–(the qualified word is expected)–that winning the lottery would be followed by its use. Winning the lottery at a young age means you could possibly refrain from the general rigors of everyday life (wage-earning), or the luxury of using the apparent cornucopia brought on by wealth (fulfilling dreams). The age 98, however, is a waning (if not already waned) period of life, where one is expected to die soon. By age 98, the labor and circumstantial consequences of earning one’s keep that one would have wanted to avoid had been done already; the luxuries cannot be enjoyed, as frailty of health and limitations are assumed to limit what can be enjoyed.

The internal irony, may be that the man may have clung to hope for that long in the lottery (though this is stretching it too far), and only when he has given it up-or it becomes moot-that he wins. This qualifies as cosmic irony, in that Providence or God is rubbing salt on an open wound (i.e. Failure in his dreams).

Case in point: Dying on the day after winning the lottery is indeed ironic, and if one took out the 98-year old man from the equation, it is a cruel twist of fate.

Irony? No, This is a casualty of one irony negating the other. There are two ironies here: giving the lottery reward to the guy who cannot use it, and immediately and permanently taking away the benefits of winning. The two are incompatible; in merging them, one condition merely negated the irony of the other. Consider: the 98 year-old man has no means to use his lottery ticket. That in itself is ironic. He dies. His dying negates the irony of having to live with a golden something one cannot use. The irony dies because of the second statement, or the first part of the first statement.

One could, in a wild stretch of imagination, think that winning the lottery means “a new life” for the 98 year-old, the living the last years of his life living out his dreams. In the general sense, however, this is highly unlikely.

This has strong ironic sense. Let us leave first the guilt of the convicted. One can easily be swayed by the prejudice of guilty or not guilty, and the situation and the issue may be related to the bigger controversy of the use of Capital Punishment. However, if we isolate it to its bare essentials, at the core of this is an attempt to save a life, and being too late. 

Irony? Yes, The immediate fallacy of assumption against it is to bring circumstances outside the two statements to bring weight. In the earlier statement of the 98 year-old, we did not go beyond the statement of his age, his winning the lottery and his death. His age made winning the lottery ironic, and his death negated the irony. In the case of the convicted man, there is nothing saying whether he was guilty or not. The only statement is the pardon, which is expected to save the life. The irony is that the second statement negates the expectations of the first;

At first glance it seems a black-and-white case of ironic twist, where a character, finally convinced from a previous belief (i.e. Tragic consequences of air transportation), learns that he was right all along. However, the qualifying statement, “He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye” may assume that he was not fully convinced. One could say that the immediately-following statements that found him on the plane would be an act of passive suicide on his part.

 

Consider: Let’s follow the same context as the “death row pardon situation”. Barring other circumstances, a cigarette break assumes build-up leading to the expression of pent-up desire to smoking. We then isolate the conditions of the two statements: the cigarette break period, the implied place of the cigarette break, and the strategic existence of the no-smoking sign.

Irony? Yes, The no-smoking sign is a cheap ironic shot, though it does not last long (ignore the circumstances of the immediate afterwards). It’s weak, and it does stretch reasoning, but it qualifies as ironic. The problem is the incompatibility of the contradiction of place with time, but we are contradicting the expressed place with implied place.

Irony? Yes. The reasoning of the post I referenced in its lack of irony is that one expects all the good ones to be taken. It’s a strong statement, but it expresses a popular belief outside of the immediate statement. We have: the object of desire, implying the expectation of getting the desired, and the negation of that possibility. The issue surrounding it is of the half-full/half-empty glass, as was the issue of Capital Punishment used in the death-row case.

Consider: While rain does not affect the tangible existence of the wedding itself, and may not even disrupt the ceremony (unless the celebration occurs outside). It may, however, affect the mood of the wedding. Rain, after all, is associated with somber and dampened.

Irony? No. While it may be indirectly ironic ( i.e. Effects on the mood), the object of rain does not contradict the object of wedding. Nor do their effects intersect in all cases. As for mood, rain can also be interpreted as part of the carefree, celebratory nature. (Picture: a countryside of hills, two free spirits united by vows, and the words of the priest and the rain giving sign of the sanctioning of the marriage).

Irony? No, While the contradictions are obvious, there is the impossibility of the set-up. There is an implied third element: the person who is the target of payment, whose existence implies the possibly negation of the set-up. His existence, in fact, is enough to disrupt the possibility of irony.

Consider: A good advice is a suggestion to an action. The fact that you chose not to act on it does not immediately mean its contradiction. The two first statements, would not be ironic at all, as there is the implied question of how good the advice is. The good advice, of course, assumes a statement, your refusing to take it assumes another statement. It is simply saying x and y. They have not intersected. However, the third statement defines the first as having been right, after all.

Irony? Yes, The common misconception (because of the way it is strategically placed in the song) is that the thought is actually comprised only in the first two statements, and the third statement encloses the whole verse (from the rainy wedding day, to the ignored advice). If that is the case, then the situation of the advice is not ironic. However, take the three together, and we have the perfect ironic set-up: it was assumed that the good advice was wrong, when the third statement supported was right.

What is ironic with a black fly in wine? It depends to what degree one may qualify a situation as ironic. If, for example, indirect contradiction qualifies as ironic, then it is ironic. But that is also to say that the rainy wedding day is an ironic twist. There is no contradiction in effect. Irony can then be interpreted in the absolutes (“I must have this; this is the only one left; the fly is poisonous; I cannot have it then”). This is comparable to a Twilight Zone episode where a nuclear explosion leaves one bookworm to have all the time to read his books… except he broke his glasses.

Between indirect contradiction and absolute contradiction is the grey area measuring irony from non-irony. The black fly would somehow discourage the drinking of the Chardonnay (wine is wine, however—one doesn’t waste fine liquor), but the controversy lies in how important and how essential it is that you should drink that one bottle of Chardonnay.

Consider, however, that a Chardonnay is not as commonplace or as average as any white wine. If it is a Mercedes of white wines, or a Ferrari of white wines, then having a black fly on your Chardonnay is equivalent to getting bird shit on the hood of your Mercedes right after purchasing it.

Consider, moreover, that the essence of fine wine is in the careful mixture of its components. To have a black fly (not even the malarial fly or the tse-tse fly) in carefully blended mixture disrupts the mixture. One may even say that the Chardonnay ceases to be Chardonnay, but something else of inferior value.

Irony? By the greatest stretch of the imagination, but to the limits of practicality. Controversially, I have to say yes.

Irony? No, There is just the impossibility of the set-up. Ten thousand spoons, while not impossible, is an improbable situation; Alanis could have meant the “ten thousand spoons” as a figure of speech, meaning “ten thousand fantastic scenarios and solutions”, where the most obvious solution eludes you. (The simplest solution is the right one). Or, a variant of “where all possible course of action have been dismissed, the impossible must hold true”. However, while it may be a figure of speech, it is a poorly expressed one—probably owing to the difficulty of reaching an appropriate statement while making it lyrically appropriate.