Monday, September 15, 2008

Scales ask if his life is ironic. The first responder correctly pegs this as Catch-22, a particularly cruel situation where doing A causes B, which prevents C. But not doing A prevents B, which causes C. In life, all human beings like to think they have a choice. There is this magical thing called "free will" which exists in some sort of ether, and a Catch-22 violates this precept. The easiest thing to do is to laugh about Yossarian and Milo and Major Major Major Major, because laughter is easier than feeling bad about it. Irony is that catchall term where we don't know what to say, what to do, how to get by with what we see in front of us.

5 comments:

alex butterfield said...

Hey. I have a question about irony.

In the UK when soldiers complete their basic training they perform a Pass-Out parade. It's to do with passing out of the training phase for the Royal Marines and into service, or something - I'm not sure.

But lots of soldiers get very light headed because they are forced to stand upright for so long during the parade. To prevent this they stamp their feet - i guess it gets blood flowing better.

So is it ironic that soldiers pass out during their pass-out parade?

alex butterfield said...

Wikipedia describes situational irony as follows:

irony of a situation is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by 'perverse appropriateness'.

That seems to include my example above.

seanahan said...

I don't actually include most situational irony in my concept of irony. It is terribly broad, and not really well defined. The Pass-Out example is interesting. Nowhere is it being used somewhere other than its literal intention though. It is a coincidence that two things going on at the same time both have the descriptive term. In fact, the one causes the other.

alex butterfield said...

I've thought about it, and I think it definitely fits the definition of situational irony.

I did read that situational irony is a controversial area, but I'm not sure why.

To stick with my example - there are many others - it contains a perverse appropriateness, which I think is a very good way of putting it.

This perverse appropriateness should have a way being recognised. And it seems that is what has passed into the public usage as a working definition of irony.

Language is 99% usage, and 1% convention. I understand the necessity for strict rules of grammar and punctuation. But meaning and usage evolves. Irony might have been a definition of what is essentially now broadly considered sarcasm, but if it has developed a new definition which can be sub-classified as situational irony, then I am willing to accept it.

What else could you say to bring to attention the perverse appropriateness of an event?

It's interesting that the wikipedia article says there is a discrepancy between results and expected results.

Your previous post suggests that you apply statistical likelihood to determine this.

In that case, soldiers passing out during their pass out parade is bound to happen and therefore shouldnt be unexpected.

Would this disqualify it? I'm not sure.

If we take the prominent examples, from Alanis Morrisette's song.

Like rain on your wedding day - that just sucks. That's definitely bound to happen as well. Could you add anything to that situation to make it ironic? What if it was the wedding of the guy who invented weather control? That would seem to qualify it for situational irony but not irony as otherwise defined.

But again, I think if it rained on the weather control man's wedding, that has a perverse (in)appropriateness that needs recognising.

If not irony, then how would you recognise this?

seanahan said...

If the rain occurs on the wedding of the man who invented weather control, there are two possibilities. If he designed a crappy weather control system, then this is what I referred to as "karmatic" irony. Human beings enjoy it when people get what is coming to him.

Now, if he designed a good weather control system, say 99% accurate, but his wedding happened on the 1% day it didn't work, this is "bound to happen". People don't understand how statistics work, so they say "irony", when they mean "unlikely", or "unlucky".