James Poniewozik has an interesting review in Time of the recent Oscar show, looking at the way Seth MacFarlane acquitted himself in his hosting duties. Poniewozik viewed MacFarlane as a flop; the most particular concern was that the host didn’t understand the lines that surround the profligate use of irony throughout the show:
So he delivered an opening routine that was all about inoculating himself against bad reviews, with William Shatner as James T. Kirk returning from the future to warn him against a disastrous performance, including a song directed at Hollywood women called, “We Saw Your Boobs.”
See, it wasn’t a drawn-out, obnoxious Oscar song; it was a joke about doing a drawn-out, obnoxious Oscar song!
The problem — and the problem with his whole table-setting performance — is: . . . a meta-joke about telling an unfunny joke is still an unfunny joke.
Irony, and its near-cousin sarcasm, is the lingua franca of popular culture. The more deeply we tread into this part of our national consciousness, the more we realize the breathtaking vanity of its values. Irony is, in the end, self-referential, so once it becomes self-self-referential, it has created a hall of mirrors that ultimately implodes into meaningless parodies of itself that are, well, humorless even to those toward whom the jokes were originally aimed.
When everything is ironic, irony ceases to be ironic. It lapses into mere meanness, leaving an incredibly bitter aftertaste. Indeed, the life-root of bullying just may be irony. What struck me last night was the utter brutality of much of the attempts at humor. The writers were equal-opportunity offenders, but this is, to some extent, what we find in a worldview where nothing is worth defending or treating as precious. I have a vague recollection that Henri Bergson once said that humor is the first step toward acceptance; I wonder if the corollary is true: if everything is acceptable, is there anything that can be humorous? Do rules, in some rudimentary way, actually generate humor? If comedy is always transgressive and the world (in the interest of tolerance) no longer allows transgression, then have we lost the ability to laugh? Based on the evidence of last night’s show, I have to wonder.
The answer, of course, is not that we have lost the ability to laugh but rather that we no longer knows what true humor is. Humor rightly understood resonates with the joy that should be in our hearts and spirits. Ever since the insult humor of Welcome Back, Kotter! (“Up your nose with a rubber hose!) and even Happy Days (“Sit on it!”), we have continued to debase comedy in a long arc from insults to irony. To update Nietzsche, “Comedy is dead. . . . And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves?” As a good game of Clue might declare, “It was the transgressive comedian, in the family den, with leaden irony.”
A few weeks ago I met with some young scholars who were very interested in Christian apologetics. One of them gushed, “I can’t wait to learn all of the skills of apologetics so I can out-argue anyone and leave them without excuse.” I tried to remind her that Romans 1:20 makes it clear that they already are without excuse; what they lack is the complete Gospel that stands beyond the initiation of general revelation. This is why John (in 1 John 3:16-24) says that we are known by our loving acts, not our argumentation.
In our culture, more now than ever, we need to speak the truth in love, through love, and with love. Without the slightest hint of irony. When we do, we can be sure that we will speak a variety of language that our bruised and broken culture craves.
February 25th, 2013 | 11:12 pm
Ironic detachment from our irony = speaking the truth in love, through love, and with love. Can’t happen too soon.
As an aside: I wonder if the Merchant/Gervais ‘The Office’ isn’t a return to the art.
P.s. Duane H. Berquist “definition of comedy”
February 25th, 2013 | 11:18 pm
Humor lives!
February 26th, 2013 | 12:10 am
This is very insightful; and I appreciate how you’ve given us some application there at the end. Since so much of Christian cultural engagement is imitation (often creating sub-par “Christian versions” of what culture is doing) it is nice to be reminded that we offer what the culture thirsts for.
February 26th, 2013 | 8:07 am
I won’t defend Total Irony or even just Seth McFarlane (Family Guy isn’t very funny), but I do want to say that Total Sincerity makes Christianity equally impossible. The sincere person says, “What you see is what you get.” But a Christian priest or minister pouring water over someone’s head says, implicitly, “This isn’t what it looks like.” Christianity is always a bit ironic: Christians have to step back from the world and even themselves, since they believe that the really real is not immediately apparent. What could be more ironic than the Christian sojourner in the earthly city saying, “I’m not really here”?
The New Atheists’ chief intellectual vice may be their sincerity, their tyrannical insistence that things are as they seem.
February 26th, 2013 | 8:32 am
And then there is 1 Corinthians 13:1.
February 26th, 2013 | 10:18 am
Two things:
1. Just because many things christians (especially conservative christians) find unaceptable are accepted now, doesnt mean ALL things are found to be acceptable in the world.
2. We unbelievers don´t need an excuse. We need reason. And you still haven´t been able to provide us with one.
February 26th, 2013 | 10:28 am
To Jon Malesic: I think it’s a mistake to imagine that “sincerity” is conterminous with “flat literalism.” C.S. Lewis articulated well the kind of “total sincerity” to which we are called in The Weight of Glory:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ‘ordinary’ people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously – no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. “
February 26th, 2013 | 10:37 am
You sure don’t understand irony in the same way I understand irony. Sarcasm isn’t a cousin. . . More like an illegitimate child. Irony is a wonderful tool for talking about life (God loves it, for the Bible is full of it). I love irony, and I didn’t love Seth, so I think something else is going on here.
February 26th, 2013 | 10:40 am
The world does still allow transgression; it’s just changed the rules. Transgressive acts have been normalized so that to transgress against allowing these transgressions (i.e., to not be “tolerant”) is to break (i.e., transgress) the new rules. But of course, to break the new rules is not cool, and any humor derived therefrom is considered offensive. Oh, the irony.
February 26th, 2013 | 10:40 am
2. We unbelievers don´t need an excuse. We need reason. And you still haven´t been able to provide us with one.
Sergio Mendez – plenty of reasons have been given. You personally haven’t accepted them (as is your right – but that is your own decision) – I can’t speak to the “us” (as in all unbelievers). I would think that each unbeliever has their own reasons for what they believe and choose. You should only speak for yourself.
February 26th, 2013 | 11:56 am
Jon,
You wrote: “Christians have to step back from the world and even themselves, since they believe that the really real is not immediately apparent.”
Amen.
The question then becomes what is the canon or standard of truth for those things that are not as they seem (see Hebrews 12:11)? Opinion? Tradition? or Scripture?
We may always disagree on the intrepetations of Scripture, but to deny the inspiration of Scripture keeps everybody guessing in the dark.
February 26th, 2013 | 1:24 pm
I think it’s ironic that Mrs. Obama involved herself in awarding a film about the heroic government rescue of its endangered diplomats. Jimmy Carter seems a valiant and decisive he-man in comparison, and that is pretty funny.
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