What Is The Meaning Of Irony?
what is the meaning of irony?
The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life « Writing 495 Notes
Matheson, C. (2001). the simpsons, hyper-irony, and the meaning of life. In W. Irwin, M. Conard & A. Skoble (Eds.), TheSimpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer(pp. 108-125). Chicago: Open Court.
"…today's comedies, at least most of them, are funny in different ways from those of decades past" (p. 108).
"…today's comedies tend to be highly quotational: many of today's comedies essentially depend on the device of referring to or quoting other works of popular culture…they are hyper-ironic: the flavor of humor offered by today's comedies is colder, based less on a shared sense of humanity than on a sense of world-weary cleverer-than-thouness" (p. 109).
"By going outside of the text via these nearly instantaneous references, The Simpsons manages to convey a great deal of extra information extremely economically" (p. 112).
"There is no joke like an in-joke: the fact that many people don't get The Simpsons might very well make the show both funnier and better to those who do" (p. 113).
The Big Book of IronyLearn more
Jon Winokur
"We are surrounded by a pervasive crisis of authority, be it artistic, scientific or philosophical, religious or moral, in a way that previous generations weren't…if the crisis I described were as pervasive as I believe it to be, how might it be reflected generally in popular culture, and specifically in comedy?" (p. 117)
"When faced with the death of the idea of progress in their field, thinkers and artists have often turned to a reconsideration of the history of their discipline" (p. 117).
"…if the topic of progress is off the list of things to talk about, an awareness of history may be one of the few things left to fill the disciplinary conversational world" (p. 117).
"One way of looking at all of these transitions is that, with the abandonment of knowledge came the cult of knowingness. That is, even if there is no ultimate truth (or method for arriving at it) I can still show that I understand the intellectual rules by which you operate better than you do" (p. 120).
A Case for Irony (Tanner Lectures on Human Values)Learn more
Jonathan Lear
"…comedy can be used to attack anybody at all who thinks that he or she has any sort of handle on the answer to any major question, not to replace the object of the attack with a better way of looking at things, but merely for the pleasure of the attack, or perhaps for the sense of momentary superiority mentioned earlier. The Simpsons revels in the attack. It treats nearly everything as a target, every stereotypical character, every foible, and every institution. It plays games of one-upmanship with its audience members by challenging them to identify the avalanche of allusions it throws down to them" (p. 120).
Thesis Connections
This work may help to further historicize moves to citationality, irony, and quotationality in the late nineties.
The author argues that these moves stem from a breakdown of authority resulting from deconstruction movements. I'm not sure if I buy it. He seems to confuse "liberalism" with "conservative family values" in a way that makes me suspect of his use of "authority" here.
Much of this is predicated on specific analysis of Simpson's episodes and themes that I read quite differently than him. Matheson seems to universalize much of his own experience of watching the show and makes several claims about humor and poignancy that really don't jive with my own tastes in humor or my own conceptions of comedy.
I will be very careful about using this article in my thesis and may not include it.
Follow-up
If I find that any of the ideas or theories in this article seem to be useful, I will seek further support for some of the claims about intellectual and comedic movements to supplement these quotes.
I will ask Eileen about picking small parts of an argument while rejecting out the ultimate conclusion–is this an appropriate use of a source? Does this only work if I make a critique of the article along with citing the useful parts?
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