August 18, 2026 • 49 mins
Irony is one of those things that you know when you see it, but it’s almost impossible to define. Well, that’s not quite right – there are a ton of definitions for irony but none of them quite capture it fully. Want to know what irony is? So do we!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and jere Bears here too, And this is Stuff
you should Know, the irony edition. It's a little on
the nose, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I think?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So? Sorry, let me try again. The isn't it ironic?
Don't you think? Addition?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, well, I mean if you are our age or above,
maybe a few below, or.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A weird younger person.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, you might have made fun of Alanis Morissett for
that whole thing, because I remember at the time, like
people dissing on that song because they were like, basically,
none of what she mentions is ironic.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
No rain on your wedding day. I mean, yes, it's
not expected, but it can be. You know, it's a
pretty it's very possible. It's just bad luck in that situation.
That's one good example.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, what else a free ride when.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You're already there? No, not really no. Basically, nothing that
she said was technically ironic, but the fact that Atlantis
Morris set Canada's greatest hero felt okay with basically saying
this is all irony and ironic, so much so that
(01:30):
I'm gonna name my song ironic. Yeah, that just kind
of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation
of what irony is is.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of notoriously hard to define.
Olivia helped us with this, and she, you know, the
other sort of cultural example she gave initially was Reality Bites,
And in that movie, it's like it's not a plot point,
but I mean it's sort of not a plot point,
but at some point when on a rider, you know,
is asked to define irony and she really can't. And
(02:03):
then Ethan Hawk, who you know at the time was
supposed to be like this super cool guy, but you
know that movie, the way that movie has age, like
you look back and you're like, he was kind of
a big jerk in that movie.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, I saw something about that that Ben Stiller was
actually the nice guy, but he was, you know, part
of the establishment.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Where Ethan Hawk was not totally.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Nice, but he was like the cool dude, but he
was like that that's a guy that she wanted, right.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, that's the irony of the movie. But yeah, Ethan Hawk,
he kind of makes her feel dumb by like defining
irony really plainly it's when the actual meeting is the
complete opposite from the literal meeting, which is, you know,
at the time it seemed like, oh, how clever, but
it's really not just to read some explicit definition of
one type of irony to prove you're smart. Is they
(02:51):
missed the mark in retrospect?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Sure, and even still like he's talking about such a
narrow definition of irony that he might as well just
kept his darn mouth shut.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah. Yeah, but that's kind of like you said, the
whole point of this is a really hard thing to define.
I think Lyvia did a great job with a tough topic,
and like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective,
I think helps.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, I just want to jump in. I was silent
because I didn't agree, but I want to say Lyvia
did a great job with this. I think this was
a bit of a a vision quest maybe for her.
I don't know if that's the right term, but it
was very difficult assignment.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, you've been throwing out a lot of these very
esoteric topics lately.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, I don't know why. I guess I don't know why.
I know you think it's because I just turned fifty
but I don't think that's it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I wasn't going to say.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That, Okay, Well, at any rate, Yeah, this is something
that I've wanted to do for a while, and some
people have written in and asked for it. But yeah,
I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle
is because I don't no exactly yeah what it is,
but also in the like myriad ways that it's played
like a really big role in shaping society. In fact,
(04:11):
there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and
people who resent the ironic. Yeah, as we'll see, that
dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, chuck,
because irony is nothing new like this. The nineties gen
X slackers didn't invent.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
It, No, not at all. The term itself comes from
a character actually not really a thing yet in classical
Greek I guess drama. The character was E I R
N with a little rooftop over.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The little puff of smoke coming out the chimney.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, ieron, I guess or iron.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm going with iron.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but
that's German, not about Greek. But yeah, irony, let's go
with iron, Okay, but that means one who disassembles. And
that was like, like I said, that was a character,
and a lot of Greek drama and comedy and comedy
writers would insert that character to accomplish like a dramatic
(05:12):
or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they
would do this, they would do it in a lot
of ways, but one of the ways was as sort
of a sort of like a detective who would play
dumb in order to sort of sniff sniff someone off
the case and reveal them as.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
A fool, right, or a fraud or somebody who knows
much less than they they like to think that they do. Yeah,
and it's in a way, it's you're setting them up
to make a fool of themselves. You call it like
paying out the rope that somebody's hanging themselves with. Entire
is what they did. And I guess Plato used to
love this stuff. He would take off his robe and
(05:49):
like twirl it over his head. Yeah, he would get
so excited about using Socrates as an iron. And so
Socrates is basically like he would be really like smarmy,
overly flattering, essentially basically saying please you know so much,
please teach me, and then he would eventually assemble them
(06:11):
in their entire identity.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah. In Latin, that iron word became erronia I r
O n I A. And there was a Roman orator
in the first century name Quintilian who said, it's basically
saying something contrary to what you mean, which is what
Ethan Hawk would kind of intimate many years later, and
the Europeans in the Middle Ages they were like, yeah,
(06:35):
that's that Quintilian definition is the one that we're going
to use as like a like an allegory on a contradiction.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Basically, yeah, And it was basically a devisive speech. It
wasn't like like a whole book could be ironic or
a whole TV show could be ironic, in part because
there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's like a one liner.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It was, yeah, exactly, that's what irony was. And it
was no broader than that. It was a very narrow
definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along
and they the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we
really like this stuff. They I guess got back into
Socratic irony, which was using people playing dumb essentially to
(07:22):
show how actually dumb someone else was. But they also
identified the irony of fate, which is far and away
the greatest type of irony. It's also called situational irony today,
and that's the one where instead of somebody making a
one liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the
(07:42):
universe does this to you, or life does this to you.
Just something happens that no one had any control over,
but it's just indisputably ironic. And that's to me, that's
the money irony.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, I think so too, because it's a recognition of
a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or
contrived or written to be clever or something like that.
So I'm with you totally.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
And I think that that's a big distinction, is we'll
see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony.
I think that's a big distinction.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, for sure. The German Romantics really got into it. Again, they,
like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it,
but they were very into Like they were into it
in a sense of like, hey, this is how we
can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and the way that they did it. So I
was looking into this because I didn't it took me.
I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially, the Romantics
were the first postmodern people. They were the first to
basically say, hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped
and thought about life? Like? Are there other ways life
could go? What are other things you can do with
(08:57):
your life? And they were essentially like the first to
challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group, and
they essentially became they prized irony because to them that
was a way of like thinking about things, of like
turning things over in your mind. So that's what the
German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that
(09:20):
who are like, yeah, no, this is you're going down
a really bad path here.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah. One guy in particular, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, he
was a German philosopher but not a Romantic. He was like,
I don't like any of that stuff. And I think
it seems like he kind of saw it as like
a sort of a smart alecky way to go through life,
like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not
(09:47):
committing to anything, kind of like the like hipster irony
now maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right exactly, Yeah, kind of like you know, coming up
on something that, oh, you love your life of milk
and cows. Huh, I guess that's all there is to life.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, So that was Hegel Kurkerguard, who was the Christian ethicist.
He really hated irony as well. He called it infinite
absolute negativity. And so in the way that Hegel like
identified hipster irony as being just annoying and kind of
(10:21):
looking down on people, Kirkerguard kind of took that and
multiplied it by all the people doing this and found
like you could actually as a society lose your way
and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff
too much rather than just living it. And so he
essentially predicted the postmodern age which we're in right now,
(10:43):
that loss of meaning that happened because people started thinking
about the possibilities that are out there not rather than
just actuality.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, for sure. As far as like you know, as
time marched on in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it
became a big thing in like the literary world. There
was a essay in eighteen thirty three from a classical
scholar an English scholar name Connop Thirwall who he was
(11:14):
into the irony of faith, meaning, like you said, that's
what we call situational irony now. But he was doing
that through the lens of like you know, works of
literature basically, and that's where we get dramatic irony basically
was from him, which is the idea that the audience
knows something that the characters don't, and when that plays out,
(11:35):
that's a dramatic irony.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, and he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Lots of irony there.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
There really is. There's a lot, So there's some in that.
So King LEAs and Queen Jacosta get get rid of
their baby because it's been predicted that their baby's going
to grow up and kill his father, so they're like, well,
let's get this baby away from us. By doing so,
their kid grew up without knowing who his father and
(12:04):
mother were, So he actually grows up to slay King
Leis without realizing that this is his father. So it
happened anyway. They maybe if they had brought him up
and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them.
That was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole play.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, I think if Alanis Morsat had a sung lines
like that, it's like Oedipis, that's right, killing his dad.
And then there's more irony heaped up on top of that,
which is later on. Of course, he didn't know that
he had killed Leis, so he seeks vengeance against his
(12:43):
the king's murderer, who is himself.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, And then there's also a bit of dramatic irony.
The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw
his own eyes out. Yeah yeah, And at one point
he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is
just cruel. No matter when you you're speaking.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I'm sure the audience is like, oh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So yeah, I mean like there's a lot of irony,
and here's this is the thing. So what was the
guy's name? Again? I know it's made up, but.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Come up with Thurwall?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
No way, that's real, weird. So mister Thurtwall basically shows like,
here's irony. Here's irony too, here's irony. But if if
you pin him or anybody else down and saying great,
can you make a universal definition for irony, I'm sure
he would have thrown his hands up, and that's just it.
I think Winona Ryder even says in reality bites like
(13:41):
I can tell when I see it, I know it,
but you can't really come up with a good universal
definition for it. But you can go back and be like,
that's ironic. That's ironic. It's almost like humans have a
innate like sense of irony.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and it is funny now that I think about it,
that is so iron that Ben Stiller was the good
guy m because he was genuinely like a really nice
guy and treated her very well in that movie. But yeah,
he was part of he was part of the establishment,
so he wasn't cool and Ethan Hawk, Like, what's he doing?
Not Ethan Hawk? But what would that character be doing?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Now, I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to say,
but I'm sure you know he would have a.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Podcast still, be right.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
He would be very much in love with his own
you know, mind or intellect.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, sure, so he'd have a podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I think he nailed it.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Actually, All right, let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about irony a little more. All right,
(15:06):
So we've defined, or at least talked about a couple
of different types of irony. But here comes some more
everybody verbal irony. This gets a little dicey because verbal
irony and sarcasm are like sarcasm is is sort of
a way of being ironic, but to me, it's different
because there's a smarminess to it. Yeah, they're lumped together
(15:29):
a lot like sarcasm and irony. So if you know,
if you were to say, like if it's really raining
outside and the weather is really bad and you're like nice
weather like that, that is irony. It's got a little
smart but not as smarmy as like, oh, that speech
you gave was so great, you know, to a bad
(15:50):
speech like that is super sarcastic and smarmy.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, I think you said. One of us said that
irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to
tear flesh. Yeah, you know, and that really kind of
goes to show you like they both do something similar,
but one's way more vicious than the other. Yeah, sarcasm
is pretty lame. It's just a I think it's meant
(16:14):
to be a phase in the development of a person's
sense of humor. It's supposed to come early on and
be abandoned eventually, but some people don't abandon it and
they love Deadpool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
I try not to be sark Oh, I take that back.
I'm I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think
I think it just sort of fades away. I'm sure
I am sarcastic sometimes, but I don't know. It's not
the greatest look once you're a certain age.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I can't think of any of you being sarcastic.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Oh you can't.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I can.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think unless you're
just trying to get it, like get a laugh or something.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Sure, yeah, I mean that's definitely My humor is fairly ironic.
But I like to think it's not at the expensive
not anybody. And usually it's if it's at the expense
of somebody, it's at the expense of myself.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Like yeah, sepricat.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, that's another way to put it. Sure, that's how
Ethan Hawke's character would put it. Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Here's a word that I never knew, but I knew
it was a thing. I've never heard of Latote's before
me either. But that's a word that is like a
verbal like understated verbal irony, like if someone asks you
if if you if you like something or not that
you really really hate, and you say, like, not the
biggest fan of that. That is called a.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Litot's I'm so glad you're the one who said that,
because that's not how I was going to pronounce that.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
We can say lightotes. Well, I looked it up because
I get I'm frankly tired of being made fun of
you Mal You're a professional, I'm getting there.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I'm just well, I'm just a lump. So yeah, that's
it has to negate what the like, I don't know
any better way to put it, Like, yeah, I'm not
a big fan, meaning you really don't like something, so
it's an understatement, but at the same time you're negating
the fan part. I don't fully understand it in the
(18:12):
in the sense that like, if you think about something
too hard like economics, right, yeah, yeah, you can suddenly
like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's that's
kind of how that is with me.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, just breeze right on by the light of tease exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Let's talk situational irony, because this is the whole reason
for this episode. Man, Like, there's nothing more delightful than
me than a really good ironic twist.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, And I feel like this can be played in well,
I mean it happens in real life, of course, but
can be played in in you know, literature and movies
and TV and stuff like that as like a as
like a come up. And sometimes like sometimes it can
be very sad when situational irony strikes, but sometimes it's
like somebody gets what they deserved in a yeah, ironic
(19:00):
way for.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Sure, and then sometimes it's just like an impressive other times,
most of the time, if not always, there's a black
comedic sense to it, or if you look at it
deeply enough, there is something funny about it, even if
it is sad, even if it is tragic, if it's
still ironic, there's something there's something more to it. There's
(19:24):
something more valuable to it than just what it is
on its surface. Like a lifeguard drowning, right, Like that's sad,
of course, Like if you put yourself in the if
you know the person's name, you know the situation of
their death, Like they were trying to save someone and
they drowned. They had like this life ahead of them.
They left a child behind, you know, as a survivor.
(19:45):
Once you know that stuff, it's it's not funny at all.
But if you just step back and you say a
lifeguard drowned, there's something just in that irony. There's something
blackly comedic about it. There's something funny about it. I
think everything has something funny about it.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, I mean I laughed instinctively the second you set
a lifeguard dround because I didn't know it was coming. Yeah,
it just made me laugh. There's nothing funny about anyone dying.
But since that didn't really happen and you just said it,
it was funny.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But even still, it's not like you're celebrating that person's
death by laughing, or you don't care that that person died.
This is something different. It's separate. It's larger than that
person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly
to it.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. I can't
remember her name, Oh what was it? But she was
talking about like her worst death would be to be
like the only person that died in a plane crash. Yeah,
and I couldn't figure out where she was going. I
was like, I sort of get it, but I don't
fully get it. And then she was explaining, like when
you see the news reports, you know, there was a
(20:55):
plane crash and everyone's horrified, and then it's like one
person dies and everyone's like, oh, well that wasn't that bad.
You're just the one person.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's not a friend. It was a comedian.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Oh, we'll make friends with them, and they introduce me.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
All right. Maybe someone will write in it, or maybe
she will. You never know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
There's there's some others too, like a fire station burning
down so funny, especially especially if no one got hurt. Well,
that's what I'm saying. There's like, you might not think
it's funny. I don't even think that's particularly funny. It's ironic,
But I get tee there's somebody out there who finds
that funny. That's the thing. It's not always funny to
everyone all the time, that it could just be one person.
(21:40):
My theory is that everything is funny at least to
one person. No.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I totally agree. And I think what's getting me here
with the the this kind of irony being played when
I think there's a sometimes karma attached to it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You know what? I mean, yeah, like that lifeguard hit
a drifter with his car and drove off.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well, which kind of plays into the next one, which
is cosmic irony, which is a little bit like karmic irony,
and that it's situational irony where you know, the gods
or whatever fate caused something.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, that's essentially the same thing if you ask me
lifeguard drowning or something. George Carlin, did you see his example? No? Oh,
I sent it to you. George Carlin, he basically did
a bit where he explains the difference between what's ironic
and what's actually not ironic. May I Yeah, you sent
(22:38):
this to me, Yeah, I did. He basically said this.
He said that if you are a let's say there's
a diabetic and he's on his way to buying insulin
and he gets hit by a delivery truck. If yeah, see,
if the delivery truck was carrying sugar, that would be
(23:00):
like poetic and pretty funny, but just bad luck really,
according to George Carlin, Sure, he said, if the delivery
truck was carrying insulin, now you've got irony. I think
both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin. Yeah,
but that was his distinction.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That's good. Well, we've already talked about dramatic irony. That's
the next one on the list. And that's again when
the audience knows something that the characters don't. And Hitchcock
had a very famous example of like Lessie has seen
with a couple of characters and a restaurant diner just
talking about whatever, and a bomb goes off under the table.
(23:39):
If the audience doesn't know that's happening, it's some great
tragedy or a shock. If you do know, I mean,
it still might be a tragedy, but it's not a shock.
If the audience knows that that bomb is under there,
and all of a sudden, that adds this real dramatic
tension to what's happening.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, or like the audience knowing Oedipus will tear his
eyes out, just kind of laughing at him, laughing at
the blind guy, right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Right, like you got to come in your way, buddy.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
There's another one. I didn't ever hear this term for it.
I've always heard it as breaking the fourth wall, but
that is actually called romantic irony, and it's where the author,
the narrator, I guess probably even the character basically breaks
out of the realm of fiction and seart addressing you,
the reader or the viewer. That's romantic irony. And the
(24:29):
reason I think it's called romantic based on the German
Romantics and their love of irony, that in its purest form,
the author is basically stopping the narrative to talk to you,
the reader and say, look at how this guy's you know,
ideals and hopes and dreams are so far off from reality. Right,
(24:50):
I take it as like them spelling things out for
the reader.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I guess yeah, I like it, you know, for the
sake of comedy. Like it made me think of like
Albert Brooks and broadcast news. I don't remember that, you
don't remember seeing that, or you never saw that, or
you don't remember that part?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Is it the one where I'm mad as heck and
I'm not going to take it anymore?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
No, that's network broadcasting. I've never seen It was a
James L. Brooks romantic comedy. One of the great movies,
by the way, I got to see it, especially if
you like Albert Brooks.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I do. I love him. I think he's an international treasurer.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact,
what that was his name? The two fun facts about
Albert books as he was Albert Einstein and changed his name,
and the other is that he was brothers with the
super Dave Osborne. Wow, and The Outsiders was written by
(25:51):
a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It's the fact of every podcast now. Yeah, wow, thank
you for that, chuck. Yeah, see broadcast news. It's great,
like look at great movies. Have you ever seen Network?
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I liked it too.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I didn't say I liked it, No, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Okay. So getting back to irony. You know one thing also,
I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic?
Were you being ironic? We're not doing that, and that
would have been really annoying, So kudos to us. If
you ask me, maybe we'll edit that out.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I was just thinking in my head how funny it
would be if I was just about to say that,
and like the words were sitting in my mouth. That's
why I was being silent. No, I just was saying
that would be funny. Back to iron specifically though, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The socratic irony is what it's also called or philosophical
irony where you know again you're playing. I think dumb
is usually the way that it's most often described or presented,
but it can be other things, like I think Randall P.
McMurphy Jack Nicholson's character from One Flu Over the Cuckoo's
Nest is considered philosophically ironic by being a sane person
(27:10):
in a mental hospital, and in doing so he shows
like just the unjustness of life in that mental hospital
seems a little I don't know if off is the
right term, but like here's where it's like, Okay, maybe
we need to come up with other terms for stuff
(27:31):
like this and stop using ironic like that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, that's where like when we get into talking about
satire and parody, like they always use irony. So I
guess it's just sort of like a subgenre or maybe
you know, not a subgenre but its own thing where
irony comes into play.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Sure, let's talk satire. I have a pet theory that
satire is actually super harmful for society.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh interesting, I love satire.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
It can take I like parody, but satire I feel
like it can take the actual like anger and discontent
and just release it as it acts as a pressure
valve for society. Oh okay, we'll just laugh all this
off and then the status quo can continue on. And
(28:22):
I think it actually is harmful to society. The better
and more widespread the satire is, the less change will
actually come along. Like society has to go through really
rough periods where it's really upset to affect real change,
and satire kind of prevents that from happening.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I guess that's a kind of satire because there's so
much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Okay, I'll go with like spinal tap.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Okay, I mean The Simpsons is a satire, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You think? I don't know. Are you saying is it ironic?
Do I think?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
No? No? No, I mean we agreed to not do that.
I mean, I mean, really it is. I think it's
a satire, isn't it. I don't know, man, I think
I like American life and family and stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, I mean I can definitely see that, Like, I
definitely see where you're coming from. I don't know. I
always kind of associate satire almost exclusively with like having
a really important message, which is why to me, it
takes that important message and kind of uses it to
deflate any true feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Oh interesting, okay, like social satire. Yeah yeah, all right, yeah,
Like I.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Get where it's coming from too, where it's saying like, hey,
we need to let more people know about this. A
good example is, oh, who was it? I think as
Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer or essayist. I think he came
up with a modest proposal in seventeen twenty nine, and
he'd written a bunch of essays about how the Irish
(30:03):
were starving and how they needed help, and he just
got crickets in return. And then he wrote a modest
proposal and in it he basically talks about how the
Irish just need to eat their babies and that will
solve the hunger issue and a lot of other problems too.
Then he got, you know, all sorts of attention for that. Yeah, yeah,
of course he got attention for it. It's nuts in
(30:24):
some ways, it's funny, in some ways, it's just abhorrent,
and it's very attention getting. But how much change did
it actually affect? I don't know enough about eighteenth century
Irish history to tell you how much change it affected,
but based on my understanding of satire over the years,
especially socio political satire. It probably didn't actually have that
(30:46):
much effect aside from making more people aware of it.
But does that actually make things change? That's my question.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the proponents of
satire would say just getting the conversation around it going
is the point, and the change comes because of those conversations.
But I'm not taking a stance either way. I see
your point fair enough.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And at the same time, one last thing. My position
isn't that we all just need to put up with
the status quo. Oh sure, that's what I'm saying. Like
satire inadvertently can make the status quote continue on when
it shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, you're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats. Yeah,
and really doing something that's.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Right, taking it to the streets. As Michael McDonald.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Said, Uh, camp is another sort of irony, and that's
a little more of the.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Hate.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I mean, I love camp, so I hate to lump
it in with the hipster irony. But that's kind of
what they're talking about, like an ironic appreciation of something.
If something is campy, that's kind of what you're talking about.
And you know, in a lot of cases, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
John, Speaking of the Simpsons, John Waters was on The
Simpsons once.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh yeah, I remember that one he gave.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
He gave a throwaway a definition of camp. He said,
the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic, and then Homer said,
oh yeah, like when a clown dies. John Waters goes, well,
sort of, that's funny.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, all right, I think that's a good time for
a break, and we'll be right back right after.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
This, okay, Chuck. So I think I said, like, I
(32:57):
feel like humans have like a hard wire intuition for
noticing irony, for being able to pick it out, and
it's been used as a device for a really long time,
so much so that it's been found that verbal irony
saying the opposite of what you mean is basically universal,
(33:19):
which is great. And kindergarten children have been shown to
be able to pick up verbal irony, like at that
young of an age. What's kindergarten age these days? Like five?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, like five or six? I think, not bad? Yeah, agreed.
I love the example Livia uses to She's like every
society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny, right,
But I love that I mean that is sort of
a universal thing. Like I love the idea that in
any culture if you had like a very large person
(33:53):
and their nickname was whatever that word is in their
language for like small or tiny, and like everyone gets
that joke.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah exactly. So, yeah, it is universal, and it's been
used as a device long before anybody identified it what
irony was. Like. Remember, Oedipis Rex was written long before Irony,
even though I was dripping with irony. So that in
and of itself kind of shows that it's definitely been
a part of human communication and I guess human understanding
(34:21):
of the world for from time imorial.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, for sure. She gives a lot of examples. One
of my favorites here is and I think we've talked
about the huang Xi before the Taoist text, and this
was in like fourth century bcees it was a very
long time ago, and there was a story about a
tree that was so twisted and gnarl that it couldn't
be used for lumber, so it was useless, and because
(34:46):
it was so useless, it lived a very long life
as a tree, which is like that was the tree's
purpose in use, you know, right there.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Theory though, well, that that's the jhuang Zi from Force
Entry BC, not a noted comedic dome.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
There's trickster stories also, are always dripping with irony, and
they are super duper old Tom so well, way older
than Tom Sawyer. But the one that always comes to
mind for me is Tom Sawyer using reverse psychology to
trick his friends into taking over painting the fence for
him because he talks about how much fun it is
(35:27):
and he doesn't want to share. So now all of
a sudden, they all want to paint, so he just
gets to sit back and kind of laugh at him.
That is really old archetype. I think Joseph Campbell even
talked about that. Yeah, whole Mythology series, which I've not seen,
have you uh nold to watch it together?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
He knew a thing or two about archetypes.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
He did.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He was he was an archetype type archetypist. Don Quixote,
you knows, of course, is maybe the first modern There's
a lot of irony in that. The biggest one is
just that Quixodi himself is a very elevated sort of
ideas about his adventures and the reader knows the whole
(36:12):
time like this guy, it's got that kind of thing.
So that's that's also sort of dripping with irony.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, my favorite ironist of all time is Oh Henry.
He was, yeah, well known as the master of like
the ironic twist, like the Gift of the Magi and
getting better than that, you know, Yeah, I mean that's
just the one that everyone's read, Like every one of
his stories has an ironic twist to it, and you
know it's coming, and he's so good at it, you
(36:41):
very rarely can see what's coming, but it's never you know,
quickly assembled at the end out of whatever parts are
at hand, like it's it's the point of the story
all the way along. He was just a master of it.
And then another one that always stands out to me
is the Monkey's paw.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, do you do?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
You you remember that one?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary,
like the monkeys Paul moves in your hand or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an
ironic consequence, like right, the father wishes for one hundred
pounds sterling and he gets it, but it's as compensation
because his son died at a factory. So like all
of the wishes, the way that they're granted are in
ironic twists that don't pan out very well for the
(37:28):
family involved.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, and sometimes that's funny, but a lot of times
it's tragic. Like I don't know if the gift of
the Magi was supposed to be funny. Yeah, good point,
you know, but yeah, lots of ironic to us. I
guess he was the m Knight Shammelin of the literary world.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
There is something to that though, if you're known for
something like when you go see the m Night movies,
you're just waiting for it, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, but he's like, oh, Henry, Like you don't really
see it coming.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
You know. Sometimes some are better than others.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I will watch every single one of that guy's movies.
I love them.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, I mean they're entertaining. Did you finally see the
one at the concert the pop star? I did?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
That was his daughter who directed it? Right? No?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
No, no, he directed it, so he did. She was
in it.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Oh she was the pop star?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Okay, yeah it was. It was entertaining and it went
just totally nuts. At the end, didn't it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, I mean I thought it was a very fun
bad movie.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I wouldn't say all of his movies are bad movies,
but he has made some bad movies. But yes, agreed,
they're all fun.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, I didn't see the last one, old or whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
It's good. Yeah, I mean it's an m Night Shawmala movie.
It's a little like a bottle episode. It's a little okay,
it all takes place on this beach, almost entirely takes
place on this beach, and that gets a little old
as it were, but you know, it still moves along
pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah. And I remember early in his career when it
was like he was the with Sky and Seeing and
there's some spoilers coming everyone if you haven't seen these
very old movies. But when was it The Village? Yeah,
that was what it was called. Like I remember seeing
that movie and the whole time, I'm like, this is
(39:17):
so like gonna be revealed that it's modern times. Like
I was just waiting on it.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I had I was totally maybe that's it. Maybe I'm
just like super dupable because I had no idea that
was coming. I knew that the twist to the sixth
sense because some jackass told me before I went into it,
which is mean, and then all the other ones, I'm
like what every time, which I need to.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Did he say, hey, have you seen that new movie
where Bruce Willis is dead? The whole time? Yeah? I
don't think that makes you dupable. I think that means
you're like into it and like, can park park that stuff?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
That's a good trait, Okay, as long as it's not
on the dance floor, right, no parking on the dance floor?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
What else, chuck, Well, I mean we can keep going
through literary examples. Well, I mean we should probably definitely
mention catch twenty two because we'll get emails if we don't,
because that's sort of well, it's a satire, of course,
so you hate it, but it's built on it's built
on irony. The whole title is an ironic paradox in
(40:25):
that the catch twenty two of the film is that
anyone who wants to fly in one like a combat
mission as a pilot in war should be removed for
mental health reasons. But if you try to get out
of it by saying like I'm a Section eight or whatever,
then you're obviously sane for doing so.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
So you have to fly. That's where you should be flying. Yeah,
it's a great, great ironic paradox of all time. And
so I okay, I figured out why I dislike satire,
because it hits you over the head with like this
is a problem, this is wrong. Of course it is,
like I think, that's what I don't like about it.
I already know that there's a problem with that. I
(41:05):
already know there's something wrong with it. I guess I've
never seen satire that I didn't already agree was a problem.
So therefore, there was never any satire that really changed
my mind about something.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, I get you. I get what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for
ten to fifteen minutes and then I come to the
basis of it.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Then you got it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Uh, something that I missed that I don't know if
you noticed too. But in Fight Club, apparently it was
meant to be ironic and that like, these guys were
rebelling against society and like a conformist society, and then
in doing so they ended up creating their own fascist
society of their own club.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, super conformist.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Sure, So did you recognize that that was basically the
theme of the movie.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I don't, you know. When I saw that movie, I
was in my twenties, and so I think I was
just more like I think I just were like like
the movie at chase value and it was like, oh
my god, here we go with spoilers again. It's like,
oh my god, there was no Tyler Durdon the whole time.
Like it's just kind of like I thought it was
a cool twist. Yeah, but yeah, like being older now
(42:12):
and looking back, it's like, yeah, these dopes wanted to
you know, they're doing the very thing that they said
they weren't. You know, we're fighting against right.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. I was totally lost on me too. I was
too busy going like maybe I should wear like floor
length for coats and underneath it's a good look. So
I guess we can kind of get to that last point,
like whether or not irony is not a good thing.
And I think overall, if I'm tossing out my two cents,
(42:45):
which I've basically tossed out fifty dollars already so far,
I think cosmic in situational irony is great and there's
nothing we can do about it but appreciate it. And
then on the other hand, Billy, I've heard human created irony.
If done well, then it's great, But most of the
(43:06):
time it's not done very well.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, I mean. David Foster Wallace, you know, the great
writer and essayist, wrote that irony and ridicule were agents
of a great despair and stasis in US culture and
that like in the fifties and sixties, irony had like
great use in breaking down the hypocrisy of the establishment,
(43:29):
but since then it has sort of I think he
felt like it was overused in the literary world and
that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, and that even if you were being sincere, the
reader wouldn't recognize it because they were so primed to
write things as ironic. Right, So he had a really
good point, like JEDIXX really hammered the ironic thing home,
and part of it was elevating yourself above other people
who just kind of accepted things as they were and
(44:01):
couldn't see the reality of something right. And there was
a backlash to that what was called the Death of irony,
which lasted about ten years, where people like Dave Eggers
came along and were like, no, I'm earnest I really
am just gonna share everything, wear my heart on my sleeve,
and you're gonna suck it all down whether you like
(44:23):
it or not. And it came across as smarmy to
a lot of people. A lot of people consider Dave
Ager's work is very smarmy, where it's forced earnestness or
forced sincerity and it clubs you over the head with it.
And there's actually a gen z term now for that
little period through you know, the early twenty tens where
(44:47):
that kind of smarminess was very popular, I guess, especially
in literature.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, has that millennial cringe. That's the zinger that is
a singer. Yeah, I mean again, back to the generational
look at things. I'm a big fan of Beggers, by
the way, I just want to say that out loud.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a
couple of his books and I like them both. I was.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
While, Yeah, for sure. And he does great work through
his charity eight twenty six Valencia and eight twenty six
National I did a thing recently for them. I read
a I read like a passage from a book that
a kid wrote through his charity, and it was cool.
They did good horrible?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah, was it any good?
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah? It was good.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Okay, good because they don't publish bad kids books.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
That's right. Yeah, But back to millennial cringe. That's what
gen Z is about, right, Yeah, And we.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Should kind of wrap it up with gen Z because
they have come up with their own version of irony.
They're pretty preoccupied with it too, but they've taken it
to such a degree that it's become absurdism rather than irony.
Whereas irony is very very well defined. It either is
or it isn't ironic, whatever the thing is. Gen Z
(46:12):
just mashes all sorts of stuff up and you can't
tell whether they're supposed to be ironic or not by
the end of it.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, and they do a good job of it. There's
it's called meta irony, where if you're an outsider looking in,
especially if you're not in the gen Z age group,
so you're not tapped into what's going on. We we
have a tendency to really kind of read into stuff
and try to find the answer to whatever the thing
is or understand it. Yeah, and if you do that
with like gen z meta ironic stuff or memes or whatever,
(46:46):
it's that there, there's that. That'd be madness. There be madness.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Madness. I like that better.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah. I feel like I've been hanging on by my
fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Well. Well, I mean this is a tough one. Again.
It's hard to define irony and it's hard to talk
forty five minutes about.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
It, which is why we talked forty eight minutes about
good point. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I have nothing else.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All right, Well that's it for irony, everybody, and that
means it's time for listener.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
May Hey, guys love the podcast, look forward to new episodes.
I wanted to mention a couple of clarifications. The first
one from the White Boy Rick episode was the pronunciation
of his last name to pronounce worshe as in Hershey,
I don't remember what we said. I don't either, Okay,
(47:35):
it's worshy. The second was Josh kept saying the phrase
East Detroit, White Boy Rick, the Curry Brothers, etc. Were
based out of the east side of Detroit at the
time of their prominence in the drug trade. We mentioned
this because there was a city just north of Detroit
called East Detroit. They're not the same place. In fact,
the city of East Detroit even voted to change their
(47:57):
name to East Point due to confus and negative connotations
about the East side of Detroit. Well, keep up the
great work. We can heard from a couple of people.
But that is from Mike in East Point, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course,
there was an East Detroit, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Well, it's like East Atlanta is an actual neighborhood in Atlanta,
which is east of Atlanta. But it's still not the
same as saying the east side of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
No, and I think there's an East Point around Atlanta too, right,
thinking of Athens.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
No, no, no, there's an East Point. Okay, but I believe
East Point is south. Isn't that down near the airport?
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I don't know. I have blood trickling out of my ears.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
All right, let's just wrap it up, Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Well, who was that from.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
That's from Mike.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
All right, Mike, thank you very much for that email.
We appreciate it. And if you want to be like
Mike and send us well an email address, it to
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and jere Bears here too, And this is Stuff
you should Know, the irony edition. It's a little on
the nose, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I think?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
So? Sorry, let me try again. The isn't it ironic?
Don't you think? Addition?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, well, I mean if you are our age or above,
maybe a few below, or.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
A weird younger person.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, you might have made fun of Alanis Morissett for
that whole thing, because I remember at the time, like
people dissing on that song because they were like, basically,
none of what she mentions is ironic.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
No rain on your wedding day. I mean, yes, it's
not expected, but it can be. You know, it's a
pretty it's very possible. It's just bad luck in that situation.
That's one good example.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, what else a free ride when.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You're already there? No, not really no. Basically, nothing that
she said was technically ironic, but the fact that Atlantis
Morris set Canada's greatest hero felt okay with basically saying
this is all irony and ironic, so much so that
(01:30):
I'm gonna name my song ironic. Yeah, that just kind
of goes to show like how wide open everyone's interpretation
of what irony is is.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah, I mean it's kind of notoriously hard to define.
Olivia helped us with this, and she, you know, the
other sort of cultural example she gave initially was Reality Bites,
And in that movie, it's like it's not a plot point,
but I mean it's sort of not a plot point,
but at some point when on a rider, you know,
is asked to define irony and she really can't. And
(02:03):
then Ethan Hawk, who you know at the time was
supposed to be like this super cool guy, but you
know that movie, the way that movie has age, like
you look back and you're like, he was kind of
a big jerk in that movie.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, I saw something about that that Ben Stiller was
actually the nice guy, but he was, you know, part
of the establishment.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Where Ethan Hawk was not totally.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Nice, but he was like the cool dude, but he
was like that that's a guy that she wanted, right.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, that's the irony of the movie. But yeah, Ethan Hawk,
he kind of makes her feel dumb by like defining
irony really plainly it's when the actual meeting is the
complete opposite from the literal meeting, which is, you know,
at the time it seemed like, oh, how clever, but
it's really not just to read some explicit definition of
one type of irony to prove you're smart. Is they
(02:51):
missed the mark in retrospect?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Sure, and even still like he's talking about such a
narrow definition of irony that he might as well just
kept his darn mouth shut.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah. Yeah, but that's kind of like you said, the
whole point of this is a really hard thing to define.
I think Lyvia did a great job with a tough topic,
and like, you know, looking at it from a historical perspective,
I think helps.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, I just want to jump in. I was silent
because I didn't agree, but I want to say Lyvia
did a great job with this. I think this was
a bit of a a vision quest maybe for her.
I don't know if that's the right term, but it
was very difficult assignment.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, you've been throwing out a lot of these very
esoteric topics lately.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, I don't know why. I guess I don't know why.
I know you think it's because I just turned fifty
but I don't think that's it.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I wasn't going to say.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That, Okay, Well, at any rate, Yeah, this is something
that I've wanted to do for a while, and some
people have written in and asked for it. But yeah,
I think one of the reasons I wanted to tackle
is because I don't no exactly yeah what it is,
but also in the like myriad ways that it's played
like a really big role in shaping society. In fact,
(04:11):
there's this whole kind of schism between the ironic and
people who resent the ironic. Yeah, as we'll see, that
dates back hundreds of years. So let's get into it, chuck,
because irony is nothing new like this. The nineties gen
X slackers didn't invent.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
It, No, not at all. The term itself comes from
a character actually not really a thing yet in classical
Greek I guess drama. The character was E I R
N with a little rooftop over.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
The little puff of smoke coming out the chimney.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah, ieron, I guess or iron.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I'm going with iron.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Well, I guess it would be the second letter, but
that's German, not about Greek. But yeah, irony, let's go
with iron, Okay, but that means one who disassembles. And
that was like, like I said, that was a character,
and a lot of Greek drama and comedy and comedy
writers would insert that character to accomplish like a dramatic
(05:12):
or comedic goal. And one of the ways that they
would do this, they would do it in a lot
of ways, but one of the ways was as sort
of a sort of like a detective who would play
dumb in order to sort of sniff sniff someone off
the case and reveal them as.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
A fool, right, or a fraud or somebody who knows
much less than they they like to think that they do. Yeah,
and it's in a way, it's you're setting them up
to make a fool of themselves. You call it like
paying out the rope that somebody's hanging themselves with. Entire
is what they did. And I guess Plato used to
love this stuff. He would take off his robe and
(05:49):
like twirl it over his head. Yeah, he would get
so excited about using Socrates as an iron. And so
Socrates is basically like he would be really like smarmy,
overly flattering, essentially basically saying please you know so much,
please teach me, and then he would eventually assemble them
(06:11):
in their entire identity.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah. In Latin, that iron word became erronia I r
O n I A. And there was a Roman orator
in the first century name Quintilian who said, it's basically
saying something contrary to what you mean, which is what
Ethan Hawk would kind of intimate many years later, and
the Europeans in the Middle Ages they were like, yeah,
(06:35):
that's that Quintilian definition is the one that we're going
to use as like a like an allegory on a contradiction.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Basically, yeah, And it was basically a devisive speech. It
wasn't like like a whole book could be ironic or
a whole TV show could be ironic, in part because
there weren't TV shows back then, but you get the point.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It's like a one liner.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It was, yeah, exactly, that's what irony was. And it
was no broader than that. It was a very narrow
definition for hundreds of years until the Renaissance came along
and they the Renaissance people were like, oh, okay, we
really like this stuff. They I guess got back into
Socratic irony, which was using people playing dumb essentially to
(07:22):
show how actually dumb someone else was. But they also
identified the irony of fate, which is far and away
the greatest type of irony. It's also called situational irony today,
and that's the one where instead of somebody making a
one liner or Socrates playing dumb, this is like the
(07:42):
universe does this to you, or life does this to you.
Just something happens that no one had any control over,
but it's just indisputably ironic. And that's to me, that's
the money irony.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, I think so too, because it's a recognition of
a thing that happened that wasn't like set up or
contrived or written to be clever or something like that.
So I'm with you totally.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
And I think that that's a big distinction, is we'll
see like being clever and being the hapless subject of irony.
I think that's a big distinction.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, for sure. The German Romantics really got into it. Again, they,
like most people, had a lot of trouble defining it,
but they were very into Like they were into it
in a sense of like, hey, this is how we
can question conventional wisdom by throwing out ironic viewpoints.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, and the way that they did it. So I
was looking into this because I didn't it took me.
I'm like, what are they talking about? Essentially, the Romantics
were the first postmodern people. They were the first to
basically say, hey, you know, life, have you ever stopped
and thought about life? Like? Are there other ways life
could go? What are other things you can do with
(08:57):
your life? And they were essentially like the first to
challenge conventional wisdom in the West as a group, and
they essentially became they prized irony because to them that
was a way of like thinking about things, of like
turning things over in your mind. So that's what the
German Romantics were into. And there were opponents to that
(09:20):
who are like, yeah, no, this is you're going down
a really bad path here.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah. One guy in particular, George Wilhelm Frederick Hegel, he
was a German philosopher but not a Romantic. He was like,
I don't like any of that stuff. And I think
it seems like he kind of saw it as like
a sort of a smart alecky way to go through life,
like you're putting yourself above someone else and you're not
(09:47):
committing to anything, kind of like the like hipster irony
now maybe.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Right exactly, Yeah, kind of like you know, coming up
on something that, oh, you love your life of milk
and cows. Huh, I guess that's all there is to life.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Yeah, So that was Hegel Kurkerguard, who was the Christian ethicist.
He really hated irony as well. He called it infinite
absolute negativity. And so in the way that Hegel like
identified hipster irony as being just annoying and kind of
(10:21):
looking down on people, Kirkerguard kind of took that and
multiplied it by all the people doing this and found
like you could actually as a society lose your way
and like lose meaning to life if you examine stuff
too much rather than just living it. And so he
essentially predicted the postmodern age which we're in right now,
(10:43):
that loss of meaning that happened because people started thinking
about the possibilities that are out there not rather than
just actuality.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Yeah, for sure. As far as like you know, as
time marched on in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it
became a big thing in like the literary world. There
was a essay in eighteen thirty three from a classical
scholar an English scholar name Connop Thirwall who he was
(11:14):
into the irony of faith, meaning, like you said, that's
what we call situational irony now. But he was doing
that through the lens of like you know, works of
literature basically, and that's where we get dramatic irony basically
was from him, which is the idea that the audience
knows something that the characters don't, and when that plays out,
(11:35):
that's a dramatic irony.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, and he retroactively applied it to Oedipus Rex.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Lots of irony there.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
There really is. There's a lot, So there's some in that.
So King LEAs and Queen Jacosta get get rid of
their baby because it's been predicted that their baby's going
to grow up and kill his father, so they're like, well,
let's get this baby away from us. By doing so,
their kid grew up without knowing who his father and
(12:04):
mother were, So he actually grows up to slay King
Leis without realizing that this is his father. So it
happened anyway. They maybe if they had brought him up
and not given him away, he wouldn't have killed them.
That was a pretty big ironic twist in that whole play.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, I think if Alanis Morsat had a sung lines
like that, it's like Oedipis, that's right, killing his dad.
And then there's more irony heaped up on top of that,
which is later on. Of course, he didn't know that
he had killed Leis, so he seeks vengeance against his
(12:43):
the king's murderer, who is himself.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Right, And then there's also a bit of dramatic irony.
The audience knows that Oedipus is eventually going to claw
his own eyes out. Yeah yeah, And at one point
he mocks a blind man for being blind, which is
just cruel. No matter when you you're speaking.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
I'm sure the audience is like, oh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
So yeah, I mean like there's a lot of irony,
and here's this is the thing. So what was the
guy's name? Again? I know it's made up, but.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Come up with Thurwall?
Speaker 2 (13:16):
No way, that's real, weird. So mister Thurtwall basically shows like,
here's irony. Here's irony too, here's irony. But if if
you pin him or anybody else down and saying great,
can you make a universal definition for irony, I'm sure
he would have thrown his hands up, and that's just it.
I think Winona Ryder even says in reality bites like
(13:41):
I can tell when I see it, I know it,
but you can't really come up with a good universal
definition for it. But you can go back and be like,
that's ironic. That's ironic. It's almost like humans have a
innate like sense of irony.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Yeah, and it is funny now that I think about it,
that is so iron that Ben Stiller was the good
guy m because he was genuinely like a really nice
guy and treated her very well in that movie. But yeah,
he was part of he was part of the establishment,
so he wasn't cool and Ethan Hawk, Like, what's he doing?
Not Ethan Hawk? But what would that character be doing?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Now, I don't know. I mean, I hesitate to say,
but I'm sure you know he would have a.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Podcast still, be right.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
He would be very much in love with his own
you know, mind or intellect.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, sure, so he'd have a podcast.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, I think he nailed it.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Actually, All right, let's take a break and we'll come
back and talk about irony a little more. All right,
(15:06):
So we've defined, or at least talked about a couple
of different types of irony. But here comes some more
everybody verbal irony. This gets a little dicey because verbal
irony and sarcasm are like sarcasm is is sort of
a way of being ironic, but to me, it's different
because there's a smarminess to it. Yeah, they're lumped together
(15:29):
a lot like sarcasm and irony. So if you know,
if you were to say, like if it's really raining
outside and the weather is really bad and you're like nice
weather like that, that is irony. It's got a little
smart but not as smarmy as like, oh, that speech
you gave was so great, you know, to a bad
(15:50):
speech like that is super sarcastic and smarmy.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, I think you said. One of us said that
irony is based on one who disassembles. Sarcasm is to
tear flesh. Yeah, you know, and that really kind of
goes to show you like they both do something similar,
but one's way more vicious than the other. Yeah, sarcasm
is pretty lame. It's just a I think it's meant
(16:14):
to be a phase in the development of a person's
sense of humor. It's supposed to come early on and
be abandoned eventually, but some people don't abandon it and
they love Deadpool. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
I try not to be sark Oh, I take that back.
I'm I don't try to not be sarcastic. I think
I think it just sort of fades away. I'm sure
I am sarcastic sometimes, but I don't know. It's not
the greatest look once you're a certain age.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
I can't think of any of you being sarcastic.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Oh you can't.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I can.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
You're not very sarcastic either, I don't think unless you're
just trying to get it, like get a laugh or something.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Sure, yeah, I mean that's definitely My humor is fairly ironic.
But I like to think it's not at the expensive
not anybody. And usually it's if it's at the expense
of somebody, it's at the expense of myself.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Like yeah, sepricat.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, that's another way to put it. Sure, that's how
Ethan Hawke's character would put it. Uh.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Here's a word that I never knew, but I knew
it was a thing. I've never heard of Latote's before
me either. But that's a word that is like a
verbal like understated verbal irony, like if someone asks you
if if you if you like something or not that
you really really hate, and you say, like, not the
biggest fan of that. That is called a.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Litot's I'm so glad you're the one who said that,
because that's not how I was going to pronounce that.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
We can say lightotes. Well, I looked it up because
I get I'm frankly tired of being made fun of
you Mal You're a professional, I'm getting there.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I'm just well, I'm just a lump. So yeah, that's
it has to negate what the like, I don't know
any better way to put it, Like, yeah, I'm not
a big fan, meaning you really don't like something, so
it's an understatement, but at the same time you're negating
the fan part. I don't fully understand it in the
(18:12):
in the sense that like, if you think about something
too hard like economics, right, yeah, yeah, you can suddenly
like lose it and not understand it anymore. That's that's
kind of how that is with me.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, just breeze right on by the light of tease exactly.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Let's talk situational irony, because this is the whole reason
for this episode. Man, Like, there's nothing more delightful than
me than a really good ironic twist.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Yeah, And I feel like this can be played in well,
I mean it happens in real life, of course, but
can be played in in you know, literature and movies
and TV and stuff like that as like a as
like a come up. And sometimes like sometimes it can
be very sad when situational irony strikes, but sometimes it's
like somebody gets what they deserved in a yeah, ironic
(19:00):
way for.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Sure, and then sometimes it's just like an impressive other times,
most of the time, if not always, there's a black
comedic sense to it, or if you look at it
deeply enough, there is something funny about it, even if
it is sad, even if it is tragic, if it's
still ironic, there's something there's something more to it. There's
(19:24):
something more valuable to it than just what it is
on its surface. Like a lifeguard drowning, right, Like that's sad,
of course, Like if you put yourself in the if
you know the person's name, you know the situation of
their death, Like they were trying to save someone and
they drowned. They had like this life ahead of them.
They left a child behind, you know, as a survivor.
(19:45):
Once you know that stuff, it's it's not funny at all.
But if you just step back and you say a
lifeguard drowned, there's something just in that irony. There's something
blackly comedic about it. There's something funny about it. I
think everything has something funny about it.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yeah, I mean I laughed instinctively the second you set
a lifeguard dround because I didn't know it was coming. Yeah,
it just made me laugh. There's nothing funny about anyone dying.
But since that didn't really happen and you just said it,
it was funny.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But even still, it's not like you're celebrating that person's
death by laughing, or you don't care that that person died.
This is something different. It's separate. It's larger than that
person's individual death in that sense, but it's tied directly
to it.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah. I saw a comedian the other day. I can't
remember her name, Oh what was it? But she was
talking about like her worst death would be to be
like the only person that died in a plane crash. Yeah,
and I couldn't figure out where she was going. I
was like, I sort of get it, but I don't
fully get it. And then she was explaining, like when
you see the news reports, you know, there was a
(20:55):
plane crash and everyone's horrified, and then it's like one
person dies and everyone's like, oh, well that wasn't that bad.
You're just the one person.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Oh man, you need to introduce me to that friend.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's not a friend. It was a comedian.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Oh, we'll make friends with them, and they introduce me.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
All right. Maybe someone will write in it, or maybe
she will. You never know.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
There's there's some others too, like a fire station burning
down so funny, especially especially if no one got hurt. Well,
that's what I'm saying. There's like, you might not think
it's funny. I don't even think that's particularly funny. It's ironic,
But I get tee there's somebody out there who finds
that funny. That's the thing. It's not always funny to
everyone all the time, that it could just be one person.
(21:40):
My theory is that everything is funny at least to
one person. No.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
I totally agree. And I think what's getting me here
with the the this kind of irony being played when
I think there's a sometimes karma attached to it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
You know what? I mean, yeah, like that lifeguard hit
a drifter with his car and drove off.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Well, which kind of plays into the next one, which
is cosmic irony, which is a little bit like karmic irony,
and that it's situational irony where you know, the gods
or whatever fate caused something.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Yeah, that's essentially the same thing if you ask me
lifeguard drowning or something. George Carlin, did you see his example? No? Oh,
I sent it to you. George Carlin, he basically did
a bit where he explains the difference between what's ironic
and what's actually not ironic. May I Yeah, you sent
(22:38):
this to me, Yeah, I did. He basically said this.
He said that if you are a let's say there's
a diabetic and he's on his way to buying insulin
and he gets hit by a delivery truck. If yeah, see,
if the delivery truck was carrying sugar, that would be
(23:00):
like poetic and pretty funny, but just bad luck really,
according to George Carlin, Sure, he said, if the delivery
truck was carrying insulin, now you've got irony. I think
both of those things are ironic, whether it's sugar or insulin. Yeah,
but that was his distinction.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That's good. Well, we've already talked about dramatic irony. That's
the next one on the list. And that's again when
the audience knows something that the characters don't. And Hitchcock
had a very famous example of like Lessie has seen
with a couple of characters and a restaurant diner just
talking about whatever, and a bomb goes off under the table.
(23:39):
If the audience doesn't know that's happening, it's some great
tragedy or a shock. If you do know, I mean,
it still might be a tragedy, but it's not a shock.
If the audience knows that that bomb is under there,
and all of a sudden, that adds this real dramatic
tension to what's happening.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, or like the audience knowing Oedipus will tear his
eyes out, just kind of laughing at him, laughing at
the blind guy, right.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Right, like you got to come in your way, buddy.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
There's another one. I didn't ever hear this term for it.
I've always heard it as breaking the fourth wall, but
that is actually called romantic irony, and it's where the author,
the narrator, I guess probably even the character basically breaks
out of the realm of fiction and seart addressing you,
the reader or the viewer. That's romantic irony. And the
(24:29):
reason I think it's called romantic based on the German
Romantics and their love of irony, that in its purest form,
the author is basically stopping the narrative to talk to you,
the reader and say, look at how this guy's you know,
ideals and hopes and dreams are so far off from reality. Right,
(24:50):
I take it as like them spelling things out for
the reader.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
I guess yeah, I like it, you know, for the
sake of comedy. Like it made me think of like
Albert Brooks and broadcast news. I don't remember that, you
don't remember seeing that, or you never saw that, or
you don't remember that part?
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Is it the one where I'm mad as heck and
I'm not going to take it anymore?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
No, that's network broadcasting. I've never seen It was a
James L. Brooks romantic comedy. One of the great movies,
by the way, I got to see it, especially if
you like Albert Brooks.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
I do. I love him. I think he's an international treasurer.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
That's right. He was obviously born Albert Einstein. Fun fact,
what that was his name? The two fun facts about
Albert books as he was Albert Einstein and changed his name,
and the other is that he was brothers with the
super Dave Osborne. Wow, and The Outsiders was written by
(25:51):
a teenage girl.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It's the fact of every podcast now. Yeah, wow, thank
you for that, chuck. Yeah, see broadcast news. It's great,
like look at great movies. Have you ever seen Network?
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I liked it too.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
I didn't say I liked it, No, I loved it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Okay. So getting back to irony. You know one thing also,
I'm proud of us for not being like, was that ironic?
Were you being ironic? We're not doing that, and that
would have been really annoying, So kudos to us. If
you ask me, maybe we'll edit that out.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I was just thinking in my head how funny it
would be if I was just about to say that,
and like the words were sitting in my mouth. That's
why I was being silent. No, I just was saying
that would be funny. Back to iron specifically though, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
The socratic irony is what it's also called or philosophical
irony where you know again you're playing. I think dumb
is usually the way that it's most often described or presented,
but it can be other things, like I think Randall P.
McMurphy Jack Nicholson's character from One Flu Over the Cuckoo's
Nest is considered philosophically ironic by being a sane person
(27:10):
in a mental hospital, and in doing so he shows
like just the unjustness of life in that mental hospital
seems a little I don't know if off is the
right term, but like here's where it's like, Okay, maybe
we need to come up with other terms for stuff
(27:31):
like this and stop using ironic like that.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, that's where like when we get into talking about
satire and parody, like they always use irony. So I
guess it's just sort of like a subgenre or maybe
you know, not a subgenre but its own thing where
irony comes into play.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Sure, let's talk satire. I have a pet theory that
satire is actually super harmful for society.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Oh interesting, I love satire.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
It can take I like parody, but satire I feel
like it can take the actual like anger and discontent
and just release it as it acts as a pressure
valve for society. Oh okay, we'll just laugh all this
off and then the status quo can continue on. And
(28:22):
I think it actually is harmful to society. The better
and more widespread the satire is, the less change will
actually come along. Like society has to go through really
rough periods where it's really upset to affect real change,
and satire kind of prevents that from happening.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I guess that's a kind of satire because there's so
much comedic satire that you love in your life, you know.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Okay, I'll go with like spinal tap.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Okay, I mean The Simpsons is a satire, is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You think? I don't know. Are you saying is it ironic?
Do I think?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
No? No? No, I mean we agreed to not do that.
I mean, I mean, really it is. I think it's
a satire, isn't it. I don't know, man, I think
I like American life and family and stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, I mean I can definitely see that, Like, I
definitely see where you're coming from. I don't know. I
always kind of associate satire almost exclusively with like having
a really important message, which is why to me, it
takes that important message and kind of uses it to
deflate any true feelings about it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Oh interesting, okay, like social satire. Yeah yeah, all right, yeah,
Like I.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Get where it's coming from too, where it's saying like, hey,
we need to let more people know about this. A
good example is, oh, who was it? I think as
Jonathan Swift, the pamphleteer or essayist. I think he came
up with a modest proposal in seventeen twenty nine, and
he'd written a bunch of essays about how the Irish
(30:03):
were starving and how they needed help, and he just
got crickets in return. And then he wrote a modest
proposal and in it he basically talks about how the
Irish just need to eat their babies and that will
solve the hunger issue and a lot of other problems too.
Then he got, you know, all sorts of attention for that. Yeah, yeah,
of course he got attention for it. It's nuts in
(30:24):
some ways, it's funny, in some ways, it's just abhorrent,
and it's very attention getting. But how much change did
it actually affect? I don't know enough about eighteenth century
Irish history to tell you how much change it affected,
but based on my understanding of satire over the years,
especially socio political satire. It probably didn't actually have that
(30:46):
much effect aside from making more people aware of it.
But does that actually make things change? That's my question.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the proponents of
satire would say just getting the conversation around it going
is the point, and the change comes because of those conversations.
But I'm not taking a stance either way. I see
your point fair enough.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And at the same time, one last thing. My position
isn't that we all just need to put up with
the status quo. Oh sure, that's what I'm saying. Like
satire inadvertently can make the status quote continue on when
it shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, you're talking about getting some bricks and baseball bats. Yeah,
and really doing something that's.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Right, taking it to the streets. As Michael McDonald.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Said, Uh, camp is another sort of irony, and that's
a little more of the.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Hate.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I mean, I love camp, so I hate to lump
it in with the hipster irony. But that's kind of
what they're talking about, like an ironic appreciation of something.
If something is campy, that's kind of what you're talking about.
And you know, in a lot of cases, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
John, Speaking of the Simpsons, John Waters was on The
Simpsons once.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh yeah, I remember that one he gave.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
He gave a throwaway a definition of camp. He said,
the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic, and then Homer said,
oh yeah, like when a clown dies. John Waters goes, well,
sort of, that's funny.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, all right, I think that's a good time for
a break, and we'll be right back right after.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
This, okay, Chuck. So I think I said, like, I
(32:57):
feel like humans have like a hard wire intuition for
noticing irony, for being able to pick it out, and
it's been used as a device for a really long time,
so much so that it's been found that verbal irony
saying the opposite of what you mean is basically universal,
(33:19):
which is great. And kindergarten children have been shown to
be able to pick up verbal irony, like at that
young of an age. What's kindergarten age these days? Like five?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, like five or six? I think, not bad? Yeah, agreed.
I love the example Livia uses to She's like every
society comes up with ideas like nicknaming a big guy tiny, right,
But I love that I mean that is sort of
a universal thing. Like I love the idea that in
any culture if you had like a very large person
(33:53):
and their nickname was whatever that word is in their
language for like small or tiny, and like everyone gets
that joke.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah exactly. So, yeah, it is universal, and it's been
used as a device long before anybody identified it what
irony was. Like. Remember, Oedipis Rex was written long before Irony,
even though I was dripping with irony. So that in
and of itself kind of shows that it's definitely been
a part of human communication and I guess human understanding
(34:21):
of the world for from time imorial.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, for sure. She gives a lot of examples. One
of my favorites here is and I think we've talked
about the huang Xi before the Taoist text, and this
was in like fourth century bcees it was a very
long time ago, and there was a story about a
tree that was so twisted and gnarl that it couldn't
be used for lumber, so it was useless, and because
(34:46):
it was so useless, it lived a very long life
as a tree, which is like that was the tree's
purpose in use, you know, right there.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I think that disproves my everything is funny in some way.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Theory though, well, that that's the jhuang Zi from Force
Entry BC, not a noted comedic dome.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
There's trickster stories also, are always dripping with irony, and
they are super duper old Tom so well, way older
than Tom Sawyer. But the one that always comes to
mind for me is Tom Sawyer using reverse psychology to
trick his friends into taking over painting the fence for
him because he talks about how much fun it is
(35:27):
and he doesn't want to share. So now all of
a sudden, they all want to paint, so he just
gets to sit back and kind of laugh at him.
That is really old archetype. I think Joseph Campbell even
talked about that. Yeah, whole Mythology series, which I've not seen,
have you uh nold to watch it together?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
He knew a thing or two about archetypes.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
He did.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
He was he was an archetype type archetypist. Don Quixote,
you knows, of course, is maybe the first modern There's
a lot of irony in that. The biggest one is
just that Quixodi himself is a very elevated sort of
ideas about his adventures and the reader knows the whole
(36:12):
time like this guy, it's got that kind of thing.
So that's that's also sort of dripping with irony.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, my favorite ironist of all time is Oh Henry.
He was, yeah, well known as the master of like
the ironic twist, like the Gift of the Magi and
getting better than that, you know, Yeah, I mean that's
just the one that everyone's read, Like every one of
his stories has an ironic twist to it, and you
know it's coming, and he's so good at it, you
(36:41):
very rarely can see what's coming, but it's never you know,
quickly assembled at the end out of whatever parts are
at hand, like it's it's the point of the story
all the way along. He was just a master of it.
And then another one that always stands out to me
is the Monkey's paw.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Yeah, do you do?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
You you remember that one?
Speaker 1 (37:02):
I remember a little bit about it. I remember being scary,
like the monkeys Paul moves in your hand or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
Yeah, granted wishes, but those wishes always came with an
ironic consequence, like right, the father wishes for one hundred
pounds sterling and he gets it, but it's as compensation
because his son died at a factory. So like all
of the wishes, the way that they're granted are in
ironic twists that don't pan out very well for the
(37:28):
family involved.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, and sometimes that's funny, but a lot of times
it's tragic. Like I don't know if the gift of
the Magi was supposed to be funny. Yeah, good point,
you know, but yeah, lots of ironic to us. I
guess he was the m Knight Shammelin of the literary world.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
There is something to that though, if you're known for
something like when you go see the m Night movies,
you're just waiting for it, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, but he's like, oh, Henry, Like you don't really
see it coming.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
You know. Sometimes some are better than others.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I will watch every single one of that guy's movies.
I love them.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, I mean they're entertaining. Did you finally see the
one at the concert the pop star? I did?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
That was his daughter who directed it? Right? No?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
No, no, he directed it, so he did. She was
in it.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Oh she was the pop star?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Okay, yeah it was. It was entertaining and it went
just totally nuts. At the end, didn't it.
Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, I mean I thought it was a very fun
bad movie.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I wouldn't say all of his movies are bad movies,
but he has made some bad movies. But yes, agreed,
they're all fun.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Yeah, I didn't see the last one, old or whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
It's good. Yeah, I mean it's an m Night Shawmala movie.
It's a little like a bottle episode. It's a little okay,
it all takes place on this beach, almost entirely takes
place on this beach, and that gets a little old
as it were, but you know, it still moves along
pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Yeah. And I remember early in his career when it
was like he was the with Sky and Seeing and
there's some spoilers coming everyone if you haven't seen these
very old movies. But when was it The Village? Yeah,
that was what it was called. Like I remember seeing
that movie and the whole time, I'm like, this is
(39:17):
so like gonna be revealed that it's modern times. Like
I was just waiting on it.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I had I was totally maybe that's it. Maybe I'm
just like super dupable because I had no idea that
was coming. I knew that the twist to the sixth
sense because some jackass told me before I went into it,
which is mean, and then all the other ones, I'm
like what every time, which I need to.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Did he say, hey, have you seen that new movie
where Bruce Willis is dead? The whole time? Yeah? I
don't think that makes you dupable. I think that means
you're like into it and like, can park park that stuff?
Speaker 2 (39:55):
That's a good trait, Okay, as long as it's not
on the dance floor, right, no parking on the dance floor?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
What else, chuck, Well, I mean we can keep going
through literary examples. Well, I mean we should probably definitely
mention catch twenty two because we'll get emails if we don't,
because that's sort of well, it's a satire, of course,
so you hate it, but it's built on it's built
on irony. The whole title is an ironic paradox in
(40:25):
that the catch twenty two of the film is that
anyone who wants to fly in one like a combat
mission as a pilot in war should be removed for
mental health reasons. But if you try to get out
of it by saying like I'm a Section eight or whatever,
then you're obviously sane for doing so.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
So you have to fly. That's where you should be flying. Yeah,
it's a great, great ironic paradox of all time. And
so I okay, I figured out why I dislike satire,
because it hits you over the head with like this
is a problem, this is wrong. Of course it is,
like I think, that's what I don't like about it.
I already know that there's a problem with that. I
(41:05):
already know there's something wrong with it. I guess I've
never seen satire that I didn't already agree was a problem.
So therefore, there was never any satire that really changed
my mind about something.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, I get you. I get what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah. Sometimes I just have to reflect on something for
ten to fifteen minutes and then I come to the
basis of it.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Then you got it.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Uh, something that I missed that I don't know if
you noticed too. But in Fight Club, apparently it was
meant to be ironic and that like, these guys were
rebelling against society and like a conformist society, and then
in doing so they ended up creating their own fascist
society of their own club.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, super conformist.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Sure, So did you recognize that that was basically the
theme of the movie.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
I don't, you know. When I saw that movie, I
was in my twenties, and so I think I was
just more like I think I just were like like
the movie at chase value and it was like, oh
my god, here we go with spoilers again. It's like,
oh my god, there was no Tyler Durdon the whole time.
Like it's just kind of like I thought it was
a cool twist. Yeah, but yeah, like being older now
(42:12):
and looking back, it's like, yeah, these dopes wanted to
you know, they're doing the very thing that they said
they weren't. You know, we're fighting against right.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah. I was totally lost on me too. I was
too busy going like maybe I should wear like floor
length for coats and underneath it's a good look. So
I guess we can kind of get to that last point,
like whether or not irony is not a good thing.
And I think overall, if I'm tossing out my two cents,
(42:45):
which I've basically tossed out fifty dollars already so far,
I think cosmic in situational irony is great and there's
nothing we can do about it but appreciate it. And
then on the other hand, Billy, I've heard human created irony.
If done well, then it's great, But most of the
(43:06):
time it's not done very well.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, I mean. David Foster Wallace, you know, the great
writer and essayist, wrote that irony and ridicule were agents
of a great despair and stasis in US culture and
that like in the fifties and sixties, irony had like
great use in breaking down the hypocrisy of the establishment,
(43:29):
but since then it has sort of I think he
felt like it was overused in the literary world and
that sincerity had kind of been abandoned.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah, and that even if you were being sincere, the
reader wouldn't recognize it because they were so primed to
write things as ironic. Right, So he had a really
good point, like JEDIXX really hammered the ironic thing home,
and part of it was elevating yourself above other people
who just kind of accepted things as they were and
(44:01):
couldn't see the reality of something right. And there was
a backlash to that what was called the Death of irony,
which lasted about ten years, where people like Dave Eggers
came along and were like, no, I'm earnest I really
am just gonna share everything, wear my heart on my sleeve,
and you're gonna suck it all down whether you like
(44:23):
it or not. And it came across as smarmy to
a lot of people. A lot of people consider Dave
Ager's work is very smarmy, where it's forced earnestness or
forced sincerity and it clubs you over the head with it.
And there's actually a gen z term now for that
little period through you know, the early twenty tens where
(44:47):
that kind of smarminess was very popular, I guess, especially
in literature.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, has that millennial cringe. That's the zinger that is
a singer. Yeah, I mean again, back to the generational
look at things. I'm a big fan of Beggers, by
the way, I just want to say that out loud.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I haven't read the most stuff, but I've read a
couple of his books and I like them both. I was.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I liked McSweeney's humor a lot for a.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
While, Yeah, for sure. And he does great work through
his charity eight twenty six Valencia and eight twenty six
National I did a thing recently for them. I read
a I read like a passage from a book that
a kid wrote through his charity, and it was cool.
They did good horrible?
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Yeah, was it any good?
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah? It was good.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Okay, good because they don't publish bad kids books.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
That's right. Yeah, But back to millennial cringe. That's what
gen Z is about, right, Yeah, And we.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
Should kind of wrap it up with gen Z because
they have come up with their own version of irony.
They're pretty preoccupied with it too, but they've taken it
to such a degree that it's become absurdism rather than irony.
Whereas irony is very very well defined. It either is
or it isn't ironic, whatever the thing is. Gen Z
(46:12):
just mashes all sorts of stuff up and you can't
tell whether they're supposed to be ironic or not by
the end of it.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Maybe that's their aim, confuse the olds.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah, and they do a good job of it. There's
it's called meta irony, where if you're an outsider looking in,
especially if you're not in the gen Z age group,
so you're not tapped into what's going on. We we
have a tendency to really kind of read into stuff
and try to find the answer to whatever the thing
is or understand it. Yeah, and if you do that
with like gen z meta ironic stuff or memes or whatever,
(46:46):
it's that there, there's that. That'd be madness. There be madness.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Madness. I like that better.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
Yeah. I feel like I've been hanging on by my
fingernails this whole episode, and I hate those.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Well. Well, I mean this is a tough one. Again.
It's hard to define irony and it's hard to talk
forty five minutes about.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
It, which is why we talked forty eight minutes about
good point. You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (47:10):
I have nothing else.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
All right, Well that's it for irony, everybody, and that
means it's time for listener.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
May Hey, guys love the podcast, look forward to new episodes.
I wanted to mention a couple of clarifications. The first
one from the White Boy Rick episode was the pronunciation
of his last name to pronounce worshe as in Hershey,
I don't remember what we said. I don't either, Okay,
(47:35):
it's worshy. The second was Josh kept saying the phrase
East Detroit, White Boy Rick, the Curry Brothers, etc. Were
based out of the east side of Detroit at the
time of their prominence in the drug trade. We mentioned
this because there was a city just north of Detroit
called East Detroit. They're not the same place. In fact,
the city of East Detroit even voted to change their
(47:57):
name to East Point due to confus and negative connotations
about the East side of Detroit. Well, keep up the
great work. We can heard from a couple of people.
But that is from Mike in East Point, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Nice. Thanks a lot, Mike. We appreciate that. Of course,
there was an East Detroit, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Well, it's like East Atlanta is an actual neighborhood in Atlanta,
which is east of Atlanta. But it's still not the
same as saying the east side of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
No, and I think there's an East Point around Atlanta too, right,
thinking of Athens.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
No, no, no, there's an East Point. Okay, but I believe
East Point is south. Isn't that down near the airport?
Speaker 2 (48:39):
I don't know. I have blood trickling out of my ears.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
All right, let's just wrap it up, Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Well, who was that from.
Speaker 1 (48:46):
That's from Mike.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
All right, Mike, thank you very much for that email.
We appreciate it. And if you want to be like
Mike and send us well an email address, it to
stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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