Directory of Lost Causes

In this article about Sarah Silverman and irony, I found a link to this article about '9/11' and the 'death of irony'. After reading the article (the second one, by Roger Rosenblatt), I was incensed, and posted this very brief entry on my blog.

I've been thinking a lot about irony recently, and this probably won't be the last irony-related entry I post this week. Irony is a fairly significant element of my existence, but this can be a distinct disadvantage when talking to those without a sense of irony. Or rather, their lack of irony can be a disadvantage to me. I don't necessarily mean in the obvious way that they won't realise when I'm being ironic. I also think that irony is a key that allows access to other areas of thought and sensibility. Therefore, it's possible that I will also be accused of being ironic when I'm not so much being ironic as exploring those areas to which irony has given me access. I don't know if I should even make provision for the possibility that someone with a very low irony threshold might be reading this, but the Joseph K. in me moves forward to anticipate his accusers and meet them half-way. I shall issue a warning here, therefore: I am about to critically tear apart an article dealing with the events of September the 11th. If you feel particularly sensitive about this issue, well, first of all, that's not my fault, and secondly, what I intend to attack here is simply an article that someone has written. My observations do not extend to the actual events of September the 11th except insofar as they have been manipulated and fictionalised by opportunists.

Okay, since I've got nothing planned, I'm just going to go through this line by line, starting with the title and subtitle of the article:

The Age of Irony Comes to an End
No longer will we fail to take things seriously

I mentioned the implications of this title in my previous post. This is possibly the worst part of the entire article. The age of irony comes to an end. Why? Because Americans have died. Well, history is long, and a great many people died before the US was built, and a great many died so that the US could be built, and I didn't notice anyone proclaiming the death of irony then. Within the space of several weeks at the end of 1937, the Japanese massacred hundreds of thousands of Chinese in what has become known as 'The Rape of Nanking'. Did this spell the death of irony? Apparently not. In 1945, an American plane dropped a bomb on the Japanese town of Hiroshima that also caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, mainly civilian. In the early part of WWII, German bombers destroyed over a million homes in London, and ended tens of thousands of lives. In 1945, the Allied Forces decimated the German town of Dresden in a bombing raid that also ended tens of thousands of civilian lives. And the casualties, as we know, have certainly not stopped with the end of WWII. On a smaller scale, terrorist activity in Britain, partly funded by American money, caused death and injury throughout the seventies, eighties and nineties. Did any of this spell the end of irony? Apparently not. None of it had any meaning at all, because none of it took place on American shores. Or, looked at another way, perhaps these events had just as much meaning as the events of September the 11th, but happened in countries where people have enough sense of history and geography to realise that such events are not unique, and that life, and irony, goes on.

I have only just started. Let's move on to the subtitle, "No longer will we fail to take things seriously". As soon as I read this, I knew that I would be unable to take the article seriously. A canny psychologist once conducted an experiment in which he asked a stutterer to play someone with a stutter on stage. When he tried to stutter, he could not. Being told that I must take this article seriously (because that's what the subtitle means), I cannot. Taken together, this title and subtitle are very revealing. What was Rosenblatt's first reaction on hearing the news of the destruction of the Twin Towers? It was to rub his hands together in angry glee at the opportunity he was given to strike down his enemies, the ironists. And why are the ironists his enemies? Because they refuse to take the likes of Rosenblatt seriously, thus defusing his authority. Authority hates humour. When people have forgotten how to laugh, when they are bowed and sheepish and ashamed, they are easy to control. Laughter, however, is an irrepressible force, and therefore a threat to humourless authoritarian figures.

One good thing could come from this horror: it could spell the end of the age of irony.

This is the very first line of the article, the very first thought in Rosenblatt's head about what has taken place. He shows no concern for the victims, who are anonymous in the cliche of the word 'horror' - he turns immediately to his enemies, hoping to borrow the destructive energy of the event to destroy them.

For some 30 years — roughly as long as the Twin Towers were upright — the good folks in charge of America's intellectual life have insisted that nothing was to be believed in or taken seriously. Nothing was real. With a giggle and a smirk, our chattering classes — our columnists and pop culture makers — declared that detachment and personal whimsy were the necessary tools for an oh-so-cool life. Who but a slobbering bumpkin would think, "I feel your pain"?

I don't know who these "good folks" are who are in charge of America's intellectual life. I don't live in America, and I haven't made a study of it, but I wonder if Rosenblatt knows who they are, either. Does anyone? Can somebody tell me who they are? Rosenblatt quotes Clinton here, framing the quote within the ironic-rhetorical question that he imputes to his imaginary ironists. The implication is that irony brings with it a lack of compassion. Perhaps that's true in some cases, depending on how you define irony. If irony is defined as 'thinking yourself to be clever' then that might be the case. However, I'm more inclined to see that as a failure of irony. Another way of looking at irony is 'not being taken in even by your own identity', which would, of course, prevent any ideas of one's personal cleverness. However, my purpose here isn't really to champion irony. Rosenblatt is absolute in his wish to destroy irony. I do not wish to pursue any such absolute. Absolute irony, anyway, would only destroy itself. And it is the absolute nature of Rosenblatt's thinking that turns his attempted earnestness into irony.

The ironists, seeing through everything, made it difficult for anyone to see anything. The consequence of thinking that nothing is real — apart from prancing around in an air of vain stupidity — is that one will not know the difference between a joke and a menace.

There is no difference between a joke and a menace. This article is both.

No more.

I would be ashamed to adopt such a sanctimonious tone after the events of 9/11. "No more", he writes, like the hammiest of ham actors giving a speech. Reading this makes me feel sick, and I begin to wish to strip all such disgusting melodrama from my own writing.

The planes that plowed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were real.

No they weren't.

The flames, smoke, sirens — real.

No, they weren't.

The chalky landscape, the silence of the streets — all real.

No, it wasn't.

I feel your pain — really.

No you don't.

In his review of James Frey's, A Million Little Pieces, John Dolan writes, "It's a pity Frey never studied Stevens. If he had, he'd have known that the more times one repeats an assertion, the less convincing it becomes." The same could be said of Rosenblatt's tactic here. Since he has no actual point to make, all he can do is repeat the word 'real', with each repetition revealing how little there is behind his use of that word other than a wish for you to take him seriously. The final assertion, "I feel your pain - really", is pathetic. The "really" at the end only emphasises how unconvincing the statement is to which it is appended. Rosenblatt is either lying, or he's very bad at telling the truth.

History occurs twice, crack the wise guys quoting Marx: first as tragedy, then as farce.

Those wise guys quoting Marx, eh? Would that be Karl or Groucho? Whoever it is, it's obviously some damned commie comedian.

Who would believe such a thing except someone who has never experienced tragedy?

Maybe someone who has experienced more history than you, Rosenblatt, and has experienced history playing twice.

Are you looking for something to take seriously?

Not particularly, no.

Begin with evil.

Oh, you mean I should begin with you, Rosenblatt?

The fact before our eyes is that a group of savage zealots took the sweet and various lives of those ordinarily traveling from place to place, ordinarily starting a day of work or — extraordinarily — coming to help and rescue others.

This has nothing to do with the 'death of irony', and that Rosenblatt should use this material for his own ends is revolting.

Freedom? That real enough for you?

I'm sorry to say that this is hilarious. The answer is no, it's not real enough for me. Especially not with the likes of you making damned sure that it stays unreal by repeating it into meaninglessness.

Everything we cling to in our free and sauntering country was imperiled by the terrorists. Destruction was real; no hedging about that. Hans Christian Andersen wrote that famous fairy tale about The Most Incredible Thing, a beautiful, intricate clock that was smashed to bits by an ax, which act was then judged to be the most incredible thing. No fairy tales required this week. Where the Twin Towers were, there is now only empty air.

Sanctimonious. There is something truly odious about this particular sanctimony, and I wonder if I can articulate what it is. I think that it's the feeling I get of Rosenblatt puffing himself up like a great toad, ready to strike out at someone. His pompous compassion is compassion only for himself. His ludicrously overblown righteousness is really only self-righteousness. He displays what Sarah Silverman described as the mix of ignorance and arrogance she found to be prevalent in the country of her birth. If a small, defenceless child were injured by a big, bully, you might feel some kind of indignation, and it might even assume a lofty tenor, as you avenged the child against the bully. But in this case, the injured child is just a bloated journalist writing for Time magazine, avenging no one but himself, and lofty on behalf of no one but himself.

In the age of irony, even the most serious things were not to be taken seriously. Movies featuring characters who "see dead people" or TV hosts who talk to the "other side" suggested that death was not to be seen as real. If one doubted its reality before last week, that is unlikely to happen again.

I still doubt 'reality', and 'death', so that blows your theory there, Rosenblatt. This section reveals another element underlying this article - the fear of death, and the need to trade on the fear of death. Be afraid, says Rosenblatt, be very afraid. Because he likes adding these kind of redundant, emphatic words, like 'very' and 'really'. It's real. It's real. It's really, really real. That's how real it is.

Which brings us to the more amorphous zones of reality, such as grief and common sorrow. When the white dust settles, and the bereaved are alone in their houses, there will be nothing but grief around them, and nothing is more real than that.

I'm surprised that Rosenblatt has the nerve to go here. Anyone who begins a paragraph with "No more" while writing about 9/11, would be spotted by Holden Caulfield as a phoney a mile off.

In short, people may at last be ready to say what they wholeheartedly believe.

And, wearing their victim badge with pride, not to listen to what others wholeheartedly believe.

The kindness of people toward others in distress is real. There is nothing to see through in that. Honor and fair play? Real. And the preciousness of ordinary living is real as well — all to be taken seriously, perhaps, in a new and chastened time. The greatness of the country: real. The anger: real. The pain: too real.

Yeah, you'd like a "new and chastened time", wouldn't you, Rosenblatt? I bet you're big on the chastening. The last three sentences here are basically a manifesto for war: "Let our great country, in its pain and its anger, go forth and chasten." And that, in short order, was what happened, as those of us currently living through history know. I don't see much honour and fair play in that, and not much kindness, either.

The moral maturity of this article is that of a seven-year-old: "I have been hurt, therefore I am morally right." Guess what, Rosenblatt, we've all be hurt, and some of us by you, but you're so moral that you'll never see anyone's hurt except your own.

Imagine the following rather bizarre scenario. There is a seven-year-old boy in the body of a greyish middle-aged man. He is the son of the wealthiest family on his street, and has always got his own way. In the mornings he skips up and down the street, throwing his litter into other people's gardens, stealing the milk from their doorsteps, kicking their pet cats, puncturing the tyres of the cars, and so on. On one occasion, because he was impatient to have a ladder that someone was using, he pulled it away while they were still on it, with the result that they broke their neck, which he failed to notice. People began to get pissed off with this kid, and one day, some cranky old man - probably, no one knows for sure - decided to take a pot-shot at the boy with an air-rifle. It hit the boy in the neck and he started to scream and cry. "Evil! You evil bastards, shooting at a poor defenceless boy! I'm going to wipe your evil from the face of the earth." And it just so happens that his rich parents have given him a gun - purely for self protection - for his birthday. I think you know what happens next. The boy runs into the houses more or less at random, shooting people, confident that good is on his side, because he's been hurt. Anyone who tries to talk him out of it is considered to be on the side of the cranky old man who shot at him. He shouts and shouts and shouts, and he shoots, and he does not listen. And this is proof to him of how moral and good he is.

That may not be a perfect analogy, but when I read Rosenblatt's article, I hear someone shouting and shouting about how good he is, shouting as loud as he can, to try and drown out any other voices that might tell him that he's not the only one who's been hurt.

This is the most ironic thing I've ever read, here.

I expect I'll write more about irony later.

Additional, as Captain Kirk used to say: It's half past two AM, and I'm about to go to bed. I've just been having a conversation with someone about the article linked to here, which by now is quite a few years old. Anyway, I felt that I wanted to make it clear that I'm not tittering inanely and thinking that I'm clever. That article made me angry. I imagine that I'll write a separate blog entry later explaining why, but basically the whole idea that 'the age of irony' is over only when American lives are lost is offensive. The assumption behind it is that non-American lives are worthless - an assumption that we see at work in the invasion of Iraq.