An understanding of the ironic is essential to a better understanding of our culture. It pervades it on every level, both in the expression of irony in the arts and media and in an ironic appreciation of art and media expressions (which is sometimes referred to as "camp appreciation"). Despite its current omnipresence, the term seems to be subject to inflation: it is applied to many a thing nowadays that would, one might argue, not be considered ironic by anyone's standards fifty years ago. The problem starts with definitions.

        Two meanings are most commonly ascribed to the term. In the first, rhetorical irony expands to cover any disjunction at all between language and meaning, with a few key exceptions. (1) In the second, situational irony (also known as cosmic irony) occurs when it seems that "God or fate is manipulating events so as to inspire false hopes, which are inevitably dashed". (2) At face value, this seems to be the more straightforward sense, yet in a way it has opened the door to confusion between irony, bad luck and inconvenience.

        Irony can be seen as having four important epochs:

Phase one: Socratic irony
Phase two: Romantic irony
Phase three: Irony as satire
Phase four: (Post)modern irony

        Socratic irony is simply a canon of rhetorical techniques devised to get the better of your opponent in debate. The idea, demonstrated in the Platonic dialogues, was to pretend ignorance, to feign credence in your opponent's thoughts even, only to mislead and eventually outsmart him. The German philosopher Schlegel framed the term differently:

"In [irony] everything should be all jest and all seriousness, everything guilelessly open and deeply hidden... It contains and arouses a sense of the indissoluble antagonism between the absolute and the relative, between the impossibility and the necessity of complete communication. It is the freest of all licences, because through it one transcends oneself, but at the same time it is the most prescribed, because [it is] absolutely necessary."

        In Schlegel's account, irony had become more of a philosophical tool, with the focus on a divided perspective, saying at the same time what you really believe and its exact opposite, as a means of understanding the whole. This romantic (or philosophical) irony has greatly influenced Romantic writers, including Samuel Coleridge: the commentary running alongside the narrative of Rime of the Ancient Mariner divides the story's perspective as in a similar way.

        The first signs of irony as a mainstay of popular culture took hold during World War I. The gross contrast between patriotic rhetoric and the reality of the war itself led to a widespread use of irony as a means of puncturing deceitful propaganda. Every instance of today's ironic, satirical news forms (The Onion in the US, Viz in Britain) has its roots in the Wipers Times, the First World War trench newspaper, which would expose propaganda's fraudulence by (seemingly) agreeing with it in part, and printing the most outrageous "counter-propaganda" (i.e., "The Germans Have Plentiful and Tasty Meats") next to it. However influential in firmly planting irony into our common culture, this use, in stating the lie as to expose it, is still quite different from the use of irony so specific to this day and age.

        Our age has not so much redefined irony as focused on just one of its aspects. In that sense, irony seems to echo the concept of postmodernism. (3) Its core implication is that art has depleted its resources, that art is somehow "used up", so therefore it constantly recycles and quotes itself. Its completely self-conscious stance rules out the existence of an ultimate truth or moral certainty, even seems to preclude sincerity or sentiment of any kind. Irony, in this context, undermines the mere possibility of a meaningful moral position. In this sense it is, indeed, indistinguishable from cynicism. In the views of some culture historians, this use of irony has been "hijacked" by artists and, more importantly, media, to assert their right to have no position whatsoever. Zoe Williams of the Guardian writes:

"So, you take a cover of FHM, with tits on the front - and it's ironic because it appears to be saying 'women are objects', yet of course it isn't saying that, because we're in a post-feminist age. But nor is it saying 'women aren't objects', because that would be dated, over-sincere, mawkish even. So, it's effectively saying 'women are neither objects, nor non-objects - and here are some tits!'"

        However a succinct observation of our condition this is, it fails to mention the underlying problem: it is only by explicating this confounding message that it becomes salient. Our culture is littered with such implicit expressions of (post)modern irony, which nobody feels compelled to protest against mainly because they are so subtle, confounding, and of no explicit opinion whatsoever. This goes to illustrate how irony, descended down from the Classic philosophers and Romantic writers and developed and refined through two world wars as a powerful tool for expression has eroded to a bad excuse for having no opinion and getting away with saying anything. How ironic. ***

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Footnotes

(1) Allegory also entails a disconnection between sign and meaning, but obviously isn't synonymous with irony; and lying, clearly, leaves that gap, but relies for its efficacy on an ignorant audience, whereas irony relies on a knowing one.
(2) Jack Lynch, "Literary Terms".
(3) This term is disputed by some, but generally taken to refer to art or other cultural expression that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes, or a combination of both.