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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 90.213.249.79 (talk) at 11:20, 22 May 2011. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


Incorrect Statement

The following statement is found in this article: It is one of only two songs by Morissette to crack the top-ten on that chart, the other being "You Learn", backed with a live version of "You Oughta Know", which reached number six.

If it is correct that "Ironic", "You Learn", and "You Oughta Know" all made the top-ten, then it should not say "one of only two songs", but rather "one of only three songs" or perhaps (as might have been intended) "one with only two other songs". The logic of the statement is incorrect. Not to mention, it is a tad bit of a run-on sentence and would sound better if it were two sentences. 24.49.35.99 (talk) 21:46, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

perhaps?

Why does no one think that "a black fly in your chardonnay" is ironic. Chardonnay is typically refered to as a white wine. McHonza 18:28, 7 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, I don't think that fact alone increases the irony. If instead through some strange twist of fate the circumstance was such that you had a glass of chardonnay which was black in colour (maybe a weird cocktail with Kahlúa), and an albino fly landed in it, then that would be ironic. 202.12.144.21 06:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Neither of those are truly ironic. I'll let the master, George Carlin, explain:
"Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father’s it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is 'a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result.' For instance:
If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck, he is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony."
Irony has to have that "in mockery of" element. Coincidence and/or unexpectedness aren't enough to make something ironic. There must also be that feeling that god (or the universe, whatever) is intentionally screwing with your head. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.192.128.11 (talk) 11:05, 16 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Stubbing of "linguistic controversy" section

Well, this development (user:Dtcdthingy's stubbing of the section on linguistic controversy) is, indeed . . . um, well, you-know-what, since this aspect of the song is what led to the creation of the article in the first place. I agree that this section had become unwieldy, but I don't think it's particularly fair to delete a big section wholesale and then add a section-stub tag asking people to expand it. I will see what might be salvaged from the prior version. Jgm 13:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is certainly a lot of valuable information in that section and simply removing it is not the right way to go about a change. There are some parts that require a rewrite, I agree. violet/riga (t) 14:49, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

what's so controversial?

"A black fly in your chardonnay" may not be ironic to people who drink chardonnay all the time; but if someone only drinks it to celebrate special occacions they certainly don't expect it to be tarnished with flowers. Similarly, the rain on your wedding day can certainly be contrary to your expectations if you have a beautiful summer wedding planned. The most striking example is the old man winning the lottery and dying the next day; it's folly/vanity to play the lottery if you're going to die, anyway, or to play the lottery all your life knowing that your chances are a slim as they are. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sunnan (talk • contribs) 07:03, 28 January 2006.

Irony is not merely unexpected misfortune, or a bad situation becoming worse, it's about reversal. e.g., the thrill of winning the lottery causing a fatal heart attack, not merely dying for unrelated causes. -- Jibal 23:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fail to see the irony of a black fly in your chardonnay regardless of whether you drink it often or on special occassions. Same thing with a rainy day on your wedding. You can't plan good weather. You hope it doesn't rain on your wedding day, but you simply can't expect it not to rain. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Azn Clayjar (talk • contribs) 05:16, 6 May 2006.
The lottery one is perhaps slightly ironic - winning the lottery one day, and then coincidently losing the cosmic lottery the next day and meeting your maker might be considered so. However I believe this is reading far more into the song than actually was intended.--Breadandcheese 15:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The whole 'cosmic irony' thing is nonsense and quite simply incorrect usage. 'A traffic jam when you're already late' is not in the least ironic, merely unfortunate. However, a traffic jam when you're already late to attend a Mayor's ball in celebration of the effective tackling of inner-city traffic problems would be. It's not about just being unexpected - perhaps incorrect using by the colonials on the west side of the Atlantic may have earned them a dictionary definition in their favour, but anyone who can grasp irony knows that these events clearly aren't ironic in any way.
Something tempts me to disagree on the traffic jam. I think if you view "being late" as a true-false state, with whether you are late five minutes or five hours bearing no differing importance, the situation can be seen as somewhat ironic. Granted, I suppose it still lacks sufficient description to make the irony readily apparent to the audience; but a traffic jam is a frustrating affair, and if asked why one would likely point out that the traffic jam causes to him/her/it to be late, however once you are already late, a traffic jam should not according to that data (and that data alone) frustrate you nearly as much, a thing which it presumably does: hence the irony. Still, I do not deny that one has to conduct considerable analysis (taking into account that this is a song that is meant to be understood, presumably, in a few moments) and do it with a degree of bias. That, and I do have a habit of rating art on how easy it is for the audience to appreciate and/or understand it (Do you need to understand art to enjoy it? Maybe when you enjoy it, you understand it, only at a level useful only to you and not in the sense the rest of us would think? But then again, hey, I'm far enough off the topic already).
Anyway, to sum it up, the "inspirations" for the song certainly do seem to have been ironic, the issue being largely miscommunication and not lack of understanding of the concept.Ar-Pharazôn 23:09, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This bit is quite enlightening:
"Morissette discussed "Ironic" and recounted an incident where "a woman came up to me in a bookstore bathroom and asked 'Is the ironic thing about "Ironic" that it's not actually filled with ironies?' I nodded and smiled.""
Perhaps she nodded and smiled because finally someone had given her a get-out clause.
In a sense, the subtext (in Britain) of the Irish comedian Ed Byrne mocking Morissette's song was that here was another American (Canadian-American) showing a lack of understanding of the concept of irony.
Also: is it just me, or does the sentence "This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject." seem rather odd?
After all, the link I clicked at the top of the page said: "discussion".
Enlighten me (although if someone replies to this, ironically, we're breaking the rules again).
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.139.91.187 (talk • contribs) 18:10, 5 December 2006

Neutrality of linguistics section

The current text seems to be advancing the novel POV that the events described in the song are actually ironic:

The situations Morissette describes in the song are generally examples of cosmic irony, events that, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, appear "as if in mockery of the fitness or rightness of things," such as "a death row pardon/two minutes too late." A few examples of irony from the song, however, appear to be merely incongruous (not even improbable or coincidental), such as "a black fly/in your Chardonnay."

But I don't think that's very accurate at all. The events in the song are things that suck, but not that are particuarly ironic. For example - "rain on your wedding day" - that can be annoying and upsetting, but there's nothing ironic about it. If you lived in Seattle and had your wedding in Arizona and it ended up raining there while it was sunny back in Seattle, then that would be ironic. For something to be ironic, it has to go against expectations - not just be something that's unfortunate. Things like not taking good advice or being able to get something for free after you paid for it are the latter but not the former. Generic69 07:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the emphasis is out. One or two are arguably cosmic irony (which is one of the lesser forms anyway), most are just "shit happens". - Just zis  Guy, you know? [T]/[C] 13:20, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I just took out a big section of dictionary definition which is off-topic, as well as an analysis of what Morrisett's quote "demonstrates", which is at best original research. I think what's left is actually a pretty decent summary of the "controversy"; in any event I don't think neutrality is the problem here, so I've taken that tag off. Jgm 18:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At this moment: looks fine. Some think the use of the word "Ironic" to refer to the situations Morrisette Morisette Morissette describes is unacceptable, some think it's acceptable, there are good reasons on each side, she has her own view—it's all there, crisp and concise. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No one has offered any good reasons why it's acceptable, not even Morissette, who appears to concur that it's not. -- Jibal 23:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you had 10000 spoons when all you needed was a knife, that would not be irony. If you rejected the use of all 10000 spoons, disposed of them and went to great efforts to procure a knife, then found out once you got the knife that a spoon would have done, that would be irony. 192.18.1.36 (talk) 17:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Rain on your wedding day would be ironic if you were a weatherman. Other than that, it wouldn't be ironic. ----

Language section note

Whoever added the phrase "The song's usage of the word ironic attracted attention from people concerned with the precise use of the English language." gets a cookie. I just spent about 5 minutes cracking up when I realized that this was the most polite way of putting 'grammar nazi' into an article ive ever seen. Despite me being in the it's not irony camp, someone just earned themselves a beer. -AKMask 18:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wesley Willis parody video?

If I recall correctly, wasn't the parody music video refered to in the article a Wesley Willis number? Christian Campbell 07:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

End of music video

The article says that at the end of the music video, the car stalls. I was actually under the impression that it ran out of gas - thus providing the "irony" that the car ran out of gas soon after she filled up the gas tank. --Jtalledo (talk) 03:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Verbal irony

The one instance of irony I found in the song was Mr Play-It-Safe's sarcastic dying thought: "Well, isn't this nice?" That's gotta count as verbal irony. 222.155.148.253 09:27, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, don't even bother. The official meme is "Isn't It Ironic" doesn't contain irony, and pointing out the many definitions of irony, and the fact that Morissette's song uses them, will not make a dent in the pseudo-certainty of all the scolds and school marms and linguistic retards out there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.85.125.152 (talk • contribs) 06:21, 6 April 2007
I think the best example of irony in the song is "Uh, yeah, I really do think..." - listen to the tone of voice as she refers to her "definitions". Unfortunately, Miss Morissette should have known better. History shows that irony is essentially misunderstood. Which is rather ironic, when you think about it.~ 208.179.21.221 23:39, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is as close to the truth as i've found so far on this discussion page. While A.M. admits that she didn't think of any of this consciously while composing the song, maybe her writing partner did. The central lines of the chorus are Isn't it ironic / Don't you think? which are totally ironic in the strictest literary sense of "A statement in which the implied meaning is the opposite of the actual meaning. "Isn't it X" is something you say to someone to communicate "It is X," and "Don't you think" qualifies the statement with the meaning "I'm sure you agree." On the other end of the chorus "Who would've thought, it figures" when reapplied to the first two lines could be intended to flip the meaning in a sort of meta-irony. Read it "It ISN'T ironic. You don't think." Who-would've-thought-that-it-actually-figures, *especially* when everybody criticizes the song for it's lack of irony? --PopeFauveXXIII (talk) 18:37, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also, i just checked the dates, Reality Bites came out a full 2 years before this song. I think that's a pretty compelling piece of evidence. --PopeFauveXXIII (talk) 18:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar Nazis

There is one article defending this song pretty well, but I forget where it is. Ironic is so broad and vague that it seems whenever you say something is Ironic someone is there to tell you it isn't. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.75.180.31 (talk) 00:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

That may perhaps be true; however that isn't tantamount to an argument against the demonstration of Morissette using the word incorrectly, which might be one of the much less equivocal cases. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.12.144.21 (talk • contribs) 05:56, 31 October 2007
I concur that the criticism of the usage of the term ironic in the eponymous song before us is an egregious case of grammar fascism. My stolid Duden defines irony (in German) as: a paradox constellation which might be interpreted as the frivolous tinkering of a higher power, e. g. an irony of fate or history. I would thus encourage the detractors to acquire a fornicatin' life. Maikel (talk) 14:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Malapropism Queen?

Isn't Alanis calling herself a "Malapropism Queen" a misuse of the word "malapropism" just as much as the entire song is a misuse of the word "ironic"? A malapropism is the use of a like-sounding but inappropriate word. Saying "ironic" when one means "iron" would be a malapropism. Use of the word "ironic" to describe the events in Ironic is simply incorrect usage, not a malapropism. It is likely not ironic that she uses another word incorrectly when describing how she used "ironic" incorrectly, but it is perhaps amusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.242.212 (talk) 05:38, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I agree with this, or with the additional sentence added to the article saying it's not a malapropism. Not all malapropisms have to be because of a phonetic confusion. It could be "The word that is used means something different from the word the speaker or writer intended to use." See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism#Distinguishing_features. If one misunderstands the definition of "ironic" to be "anything unfortunate" and then uses it as such, I believe that is a malapropism. Or, to more precisely fit the definition, the word used (ironic) means something different from the word she intended to use (unfortunate). Xargque (talk) 20:18, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree with 24.6.... The link Xargque gives to the definition explains, precisely, and contrary to his/her contention, that part of the essence of a malapropism is the aural confusion: It's the first of three requirements given. Her (Morissette's) use of malapropism is thus an ironic comment on the quality of her education ~ in a country where i also received much of mine; i'm guessing we didn't go to the same schools. To draw this back to the article (purpose of this Talk page), her self-reference as the "MQ" is thus appropriate. Cheers, LindsayHi 07:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Define Ironic

Okay so obviously some examples of irony are obviously more apparent than others, such as if Iron Man was anemic. Irony is primarily broken down into three: Dramatic: Knowledge is held by some, while concerning parties have no idea. 

    Example: Hamlet, we know he's only acting insane, and we know he plans on killing Claudius.

Situational Irony: The opposite from what is expected happens. 

    Example: Tartuffe, after conning Orgon, brings an Officer to carry out an order of eviction, only to be arrested himself.

Verbal Irony: What is said is opposite from what is meant. Usually sarcasm, hyperbole, or litotes can be tied into verbal irony. 

    Example:  "You've always been kind to me"(an employee to a mean boss)

Of course there are other ironies but they can be categorized within these three. Now, in the song I'll admit that not all of her examples are all that ironic, such as a traffic jam when you're already late, (the opposite in that situation would more likely be catching all of the green lights when it no longer matters if you're on time). A black fly in a white wine, is definitely opposite from what is expected. There is no limit on what can be ironic. It can be as minute as sleeping like a baby when your own infant is up all night and a terrible sleeper, or as grand as the sun causing blindness when it lets us see. Something happy happening causing something tragic is an example. Something bad happening on a day that's supposed to be happy. Doing something after avoiding it and then it causing your death is again an example. Everyone needs to understand there is no standard, so even if it's not a perfect example, it's still an example. IdentityM (talk) 05:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Which of these 3 does cosmic irony fit in as? Xargque (talk) 22:28, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mr. Play-it-safe

If he was afriad to fly and dies in a plane crash I would suggest it would be truly ironic if his second name actually was 'Play-It-Safe'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Calindreams (talk • contribs) 12:48, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unable to make an edit, but it appears "On that country, "Ironic" was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)" should be "In that country" referring to the USA which was mentioned in the previous sentence.

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