Examples Of Popular Culture Irony That People Don't Seem To 'Get'

Cafe Society
81

When it comes to televangelists, I’ll throw out one more layer of irony. There’s an outfit called The Trinity Foundation which keeps tabs on televangelists, runs a charity for the homeless, and publishes The Door Magazine, which does very good Christian satire. I believe they get told they’re going to hell several times a month. While I’m piling on, The Trinity Foundation originally did fairly neutral monitoring of televangelists. They are a Christian organization and were in favor of televangelists when they first started to get significant airtime back in the 1970’s.

Then two things happened. First, they started to notice the tone of the broadcasts. Second, they had people coming to their homeless ministries who had given televangelists their last dollar in the hope of rewards to come. They’re one charity I recommend whole-heartedly.

CJ

82

Yes, Springsteen is pissing on the flag. And Paul is dead. And Jerry Mathers died from eating Pop Rocks in Vietnam.

83

It’s hard to believe Lennon’s back-pedaling when you read the quotation in context from the London Evening Standard:

84

Shylock’s “If you prick us, do we not bleed” speech is a notable move toward sympathy for a Jewish character in a time and country where Jews themselves had been banned for three centuries.

Shakespeare could as well have meant the play to be about Christian hypocrisy. Bassanio has squandered his wealth and now wants to marry for money. Portia gives her famous speech about the quality of mercy, and then shows none of it to Shylock in court. Lorenzo is not only in love with Shylock’s daughter Jessica, he’s eager for the jewels and money she promises to steal from her father.

Do you want incredibly anti-semitic? Contrast Shylock with the title character in The Jew of Malta by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Marlowe. He is directly responsible for seven murders in the play, as well as poisoning an entire convent of nuns. And when his daughter dares to fall in love with a Christian, he murders her.

85

Actually, no, I hadn’t. I’d never heard it called anything but “Time of Your Life.” Given that, I hardly think it’s fair to fault people for not noticing any so-called irony, especially considering that I don’t remember anything about the lyrics that even hints at irony…

What I found ironic was the popularity of TAFKAPrince’s “1999” being played all the time during that year, considering it was about nuclear holocaust…

86

I’m looking at the back of Nimrod right now, and it says:

The lyrics can be interpreted as a sappy memorial, but taken within the context of the title, it is quite clear that the protagonist is quite bitter at the turn of events (presumably a break-up).

I see what you’re saying, but it doesn’t really seem to make much sense. You don’t generally call a parting that you’re sorrowful for a “riddance,” ironically or not. Irony needs to have a purpose; and if the title is ironic in the sense you mention, it seems to lack a purpose.

The song makes a lot more sense when “I hope you had the time of your life” is taken sarcastically.

Maybe not. In R.E.M. Inside Out: The Stories Behind Every Song, the following paragraph appears:

87

Back in the 90s a film starring Debra Winger was made from Dominick Dunne’s novel An Inconvenient Woman.

The title referred to a sincere but not-too-bright woman, and the “inconvenient” part, IIRC, refered to the guilt and other consequences that come to a party who takes advantage of her.

There is a film teacher who reviews movies for a local public radio station in St. Louis. She may be great shakes as a profssor (I don’t know), but as a reviewer she is a master of the obvious, and of nothing else. She went on a rant when the movie came out, insisting–no kidding-- that its existence proved not only that its producers were mysoginistic, but that all of the Hollywood film industry hated women. One of her proofs was the title: she thought it was terribly unfair to denounce the abused woman as being “inconvenient”.

88

An R.E.M aside:

gex: What does your book say ‘Stand’ (off Green) is about? I’ve always been baffled by that one.

89

The Village People’s “In the Navy” does not strike me as ironic; it seems quite straightforward in suggesting that the navy is a good place to meet guys if you are gay, and while homosexuality is banned in the U. S. military, it is just possible that there really are one or two servicemen who are gay anyway.

What does strike me as ironic is a UL I heard back around 1979 or 80 that some folks in the U. S. Navy considered using the song in recruitment ads until somebody pulled them aside and gently explained to them what the song was really about.

The history of homophobia in America abounds with ironies. Many of the most outspoken homophobes of recent times were themselves active homosexuals: G. Harrell Carswell, the Rev. Billy Sol Hargis and Roy Cohn come to mind as examples. It can count as irony that a good many easily swayed people accepted that gays are boogie-men on the say-so of such people.

Then there are the publicly homophobic figures such as Ronald Reagan, who sniggered during the Vietnam War that long-haired protestors said “make love, not war”, but didn’t look as though they could do either. While shunning gays publicly, on first learning that Ronald Jr. wanted to study ballet, the utra-sophisticated Ronald Sr. sought the advice of a close friend he knew was homosexual, and asked him if liking ballet meant that his son was “funny”. In an interview with Playboy, Anita Bryant admitted, apparently without self-consciousness, that it was not until she was well into her anti-homosexual campaign that she found out what homosexuals “did”.

While on the subject of bigotry, there is the regard with which Hitler and his inner circle seem to have actually held some Jews. While it has been the subject of a good deal of ridiculous tabloid-style journalism, it appears Hitler really did have a fetish about The Spear of Destiny, and he is said to have relied on a Jewish astrologer. While ranting about their supposed inferiority at every opportunity, it appears that Hitler on some level actually felt that Jews were “magic”.

There also comes to mind the the strident support some right- wing Christians show for Israel, while remaining convinced that unconverted Jews rot in Hell for eternity, an attitude they reflect daily in their dealings with the few Jews they meet.

As for Shakespeare, I don’t agree that Shylock’s speech was
meant to be ironic. One of the many things that made Shakespeare’s writing brilliant was his ability to see greatness in the base and baseness in the great; consider that Hamlet’s uncle lamented that he could not truly repent of his sin, or that Caliban took comfort in the beauty of music. Even in fashioning a villain like Shylock he was able to see his underlying humanity.

90

See, that’s my point. I think it’s a rather weak/poor sort of irony where the ONLY way to tell that it was ironic was through the title, especially in a world where probably 80% of the people who know the song know it from the radio, which always, as far as I know, gives the title “Time of Your Life.” At least with all the other music-related mentions on this thread, you can actually TELL what it’s saying when you read the lyrics. You can’t in this case, and I don’t think it quite fits in this thread, because it’s hardly the public’s fault that they “don’t get the song.”

91

I consider a song’s title to be as integral to the meaning of the song as the lyrics, just as the title of a poem or book can provide insight into the work itself. Frankly, if the public couldn’t be bothered to learn the correct title to the song, it is their fault that they didn’t “get” the song. Which, of course, makes it so much the more amusing for those of us who got it from the start. :wink:

92

Even without the titel of the song it seems pretty f*ckin bitter

The tone isn’t a caring loving parting its more of a hope youre happy. And I agree it’s their fault for not looking up the title of the song. Can blame them and will :wink: .
-PSM

93

That reminds me of something I heard on a radio show a long time ago. The host (Howard Stern, I think) was talking to a particularly funny and caller. I think he was an amateur comedian. Howard asked the caller to define irony. Without a second’s hesitation, the caller* replied, “It’s how the water that comes out of the fountain at the park tastes!”
*I still remember the caller’s name because it was so damn funny - Colt Forty-Feinburg.

94

Huh? Why should they have bothered to ltry to seek the correct title? As far as they’re (and I was) concerned, the radio had SAID what it was, and it was NOT “Good Riddance.” Where was the clue that all was not right, besides the snickering of people feeling superior (not you or anyone here in particular; generally)?

And anyway, there are very few songs that I know of that don’t have their titles in their lyrics, so it’s not like it was a stretch to assume that what we were told was right…

psychomonkey: Sorry, I’m not seeing it. Mebbe I’m tired, I dunno.

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This is true, but consider that most people don’t remember what comes after the famous bit. Here’s the whole thing. Shylock is asked what the pound of flesh he’s after would be good for, and he replies thus:

He is indeed making a plea about his own humanity – but he’s doing it to justify taking horrible bloody revenge. And on the other hand, as he himself says, he really isn’t that much worse than the rest of the characters in the play, who are for the most part a band of shallow hypocrites. So it’s very complicated – but the speech isn’t really the sympathetic moment it’s taken to be, out of context.

96

Actually, I remember hearing (on a VH-1 show, IIRC) that Joel actually wrote the song about Bethlehem, PA, a steel town, but decided that the name didn’t have an American sound to it, so he changed the name to Allentown (despite the fact that Allentown didn’t have a steel mill).

Actually, I think you may have misunderstood the lyric here. He says “Every child had a pretty good shot.” Past tense. That is, in previous generations, every child had a chance to get at least as far as his father, but not anymore. Or at least that’s how I understood it.

97

<<It’s not just that I didn’t get this song (which, incidentally, is not called “I Dig the Mamas and the Papas” but rather “I Dig Rock and Roll Music”), it’s that all these years I thought that the song was by the Mamas and the Papas.>>

Wendell, it WAS by the Mamas and the Papas. I have a copy. Maybe Peter, Paul, and Mary had another song. But your memory is completely accurate.

98

Ahh, maybe you want to go back and look at that album again. This site list the writers of this song as

Not sure about Mason and Dixion, but Stookey’s first name is Paul. As in Peter, Paul and Mary

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<nitpick>

www.gaylib.com/text/rept11.htm+%2B+%22G.+Harold+Carswell%22+%2B+%22homosexuality%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8]G. HAROLD Carswell

Billy JAMES Hargis has been conflated with
Billie Sol Estes. Estes has never been (to my knowledge, anyway) either a homosexual or a man of the cloth.

100

I’m not usually one to defend televangelists but that sounds like a very consistent position if “take” is used in any context stronger than “accept” - the entire point to Christianity is that it’s voluntary.