Chic Ironic Bitterness

R. Jay Magill
University of Michigan Press

In the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center, pundits heralded the end of the "Age of Irony," claiming that the tragedy would awaken America into a new seriousness. But programs like The Daily Show remain as popular as ever (even birthing a spin-off, The Colbert Report). Magill examines how and why irony is so entrenched in American pop culture, beginning with what is actually meant by irony (a once-specific literary term that has come to be conflated with broader concepts like cynicism and hipness). The basic idea is that the above-it-all attitude is an outgrowth (de-evolution, perhaps?) of the emphasis on the self that was the foundation of Romanticism. As contemporary culture becomes ever more over-stimulating, people feel more and more strongly the need to demonstrate and defend their individuality by marking themselves apart from society. Magill further posits that irony's pervasiveness is a sign of American disenfranchisement in the political process. Magill makes no bones of being a fan of irony, and he lets out some lulus in his defense of it: "Contemporary American life is, frankly, somewhat of a nightmare. Our everyday existence is in a constant siege state, beset by affronts to our moral character and identity." (Read the international news much?) Magill explicitly invokes the morality of irony as a form of protest and authenticity, finding virtue in sarcasm, without considering that it may be a convenient stance to shore up complacency. That he claims American life is "a nightmare" makes me think he hasn't really thought about his own privilege in a global context, which may explain why he hasn't mustered more potent counter-arguments to the anti-ironists' claim that a constantly ironic attitude is immoral beyond "Just because we act like we don't care, doesn't mean we don't." That blind spot aside, this is a sharply perceptive and very well-researched cultural study. Magill keeps the book approachable by cloaking his academic research in a chatty style (the footnotes are often quite funny.) It's not quite a light read, but it's a fascinating one.