"Irony" has been one of the most used and least understood terms in cultural criticism for a decade now. After September 11 there were righteous predictions of the end of irony, as if it had been an irresponsible pose struck by shiftless adolescents who would now have to grow up. With respect to narrative, irony is not, of course, merely an attitude but a genre, a fundamental approach to experience that dramatizes the distance between the real and the ideal. If it went away we'd simply have to reinvent it. I feel as if it's being called out of me all the time, and perhaps never more so than at Christmas.
For this reason I'm downright grateful for Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, which presents a raunchy burlesque show in desecration of what passes for Christmas spirit (see Zwigoff's comments at the end of this article). But irony per se is not the key. Strange as it may sound, both of the Hollywood movies that people take to be straightforward expressions of holiday spirit--Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and George Seaton's Miracle on 34th Street (1947)--are technically works of irony.
Irony positions itself against tragedy and romance, which feature noble protagonists who are capable of heroic efforts that may end badly as in a nightmare or successfully as in a fantasy, respectively, but either way resonate in an enlarged existential context. Irony tracks such plots but presents, by contrast, the wrong man for the wrong job bringing about the wrong outcome (alone or in any combination), and offers us the experience of baffled expectations as the only "explanation" we're likely to get in this life. Irony doesn't feel as profound as tragedy or as stirring as romance, and it doesn't provide a discursive theme any more than comedy does. But it does get at how fucked-up life can feel and teases us, sometimes sadistically, for wanting the exalted insight and austere consolation of tragedy or romance's sensuous wish fulfillment and orderly system of justification.
The irony of It's a Wonderful Life resides in the fact that George Bailey (James Stewart) is an unlikely hero. He himself is so disappointed with his life he's about to commit suicide when an agent from heaven descends to show him what the small town he lives in would have been like if he hadn't been born. That is, his heroism is apparent only by a supernatural vision of the negative alternative. Since George has never accomplished anything beyond the scope of that small town, the movie is ironic in its rescaling of what "heroism" means. Which is to say that whereas formally it's irony, it's irony of a paradoxically romantic kind. Normally, irony undermines the ideal by incongruously incorporating the real--Don Quixote chasing windmills undermines the chivalric romance Amadis de Gaul that has addled his brains and sent him out on his nag. It's a Wonderful Life attempts to do the reverse, to elevate the real by recasting it as a new, theretofore unappreciated, ideal.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Really outstanding and thoughtful analysis, Alan. It's definitely got me thinking backwards through the Chaplin movies.
I tend to think of irony as a subset of humor, but your explanation of it doesn't seem to imply that at all. Most intriguing.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. Irony has a lot of overlap with comedy, esp., I think because it works by incongruity, which is one of the main tools of comedy. Double Indemnity is a classic American example of the wrong man for the wrong job with the wrong outcome model of irony, is an ironic version of a tragic situation, and feels like a nightmare while it's happening, but when I think about it afterwards I always feel that I'm laughing with Billy Wilder at MacMurray's foolishness. Irony is also on a continuum with satire: irony is the more reticent, mysterious end, satire the more explicit end. Irony can also be grouped with comedy over the issue of the protagonist's status with respect to the audience: in irony and comedy we tend to look down at him whereas in tragedy and romance we look up at him. It's all pretty fluid, though--all the genres are constantly spilling over into each other. Makes it more interesting to think about.
3 - Eric Olsen
Thanks as always Alan, the book looks very impressive, feel free to link it from Amazon.
4 - Frantic Freddie
NO THANKS!