Alanis Morisette? But she completely fails to grasp the concept of irony!'
So said one of my learned friends when I told him of my plans to make my first column of the year an encomium to the Canadian singer-songwriter. And his feelings are not uncommon. Sadly, Ms. Morisette, once a popular and admired musician, is today most commonly treated as an object of derision.
And so I believe the time has come for a full scholarly reevaluation of Ms. Morisette's ouevre; I would like to begin the examination process by concentrating in this space on an analysis of her 1995 hit song, "Ironic."
It is this piece that has generated by far the most controversy, as Ms. Morisette's critics insist that its lyrics are marked throughout by a fatal misunderstanding of the very irony to which the title refers. I intend to demonstrate here that such is far from the case.
In fact, Ms. Morisette's lyrics conceal a deep erudition almost completely unheard-of in today's musicians. But first let us consider the evidence.
Supported by a strong chorus of, "Isn't it ironic? Dontcha [sic] think?," Ms. Morisette proposes that the following illustrations, inter alia, are instances of irony:
* Rain on your wedding day;
* A free ride when you've already paid;
* Good advice that you just didn't take;
* A traffic jam when you're already late;
followed by:
* A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break;
* Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife;
* Meeting the man of your dreams and then meeting his beautiful wife.
Now, rhetoricians commonly define the concept of irony (from the Greek eirwneia) to mean, "speaking in such a way as to imply the contrary of what one says, often for the purpose of derision, mockery, or jest," (Silvae Rhetoricae).
The notion can be further expanded to include dramatic irony, "a relationship of contrast between a character's limited understanding of his or her situation in some particular moment of the unfolding action and what the audience, at the same instant, understands the character's situation actually to be" (Glossary of Critical Concepts).
At any rate, the reader will note that none of Ms. Morisette's cited instances conform to either definition--in short, none of the illustrations are actually ironic. How do we explain this discrepancy?
Ms. Morisette's critics would leave the matter here, as an accident--her misapplication of such a basic term of literature, they argue, exposes her as a writer of little intelligence.
But I wish to go further. Is the entire song truly an embarrassing accident, or is something subtler happening, just under the surface? Consider the sheer number of individuals involved in the production of a modern pop song: producers, editors, sound technicians, backup singers, marketing executives and so on. If Ms. Morisette's lyrics are indeed so fatally flawed, are her critics telling us that not one of these individuals noticed the error?
Not one had the presence of mind to say, "Alanis, baby, why don't you put something really ironic into your song, like, 'It's like King Oedipus realizing he's killed his father and married his mother,' so legions of American fans don't decide you're a moron?" Was it really such an accident?
Consider instead the possiblility--nay, the certainty!--that Ms. Morisette's misapplication of irony was intentional. Why would she ever do such a thing?
Perhaps because the chorus--"Isn't it ironic? A little too ironic?"--is referring not to any of the individual instances, but to the entire song itself. Because what is more ironic than a song about irony in which not a single instance of irony appears? Isn't that the most ironic thing ever?
In this reading of her lyrics, unquestionably the correct one, Ms. Morisette's self-presentation as a ditzy songwriter who doesn't know what she's talking about is revealed as a subversive guise. And in the process, she has given the world the first recorded instance of meta-irony, which is surely the most ironic thing ever conceived, cloaking it all in the semblance of an innocuous pop song.
Only an artist extremely well-versed in rhetoric, literature and semiotics could have accomplished such a feat.
Conclusion:
Alanis Morisette is a genius. I am very drunk.
Rob Goodman is a Trinity junior. His column appears every third week.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.