Deconstructing Irony

Ever hear a song that you haven't heard in a while and think "God, how was THIS ever popular?"?

The other day I was waiting in line to get some lunch and Alanis Morisette's Ironic was playing on what I can only assume was HAS-BEEN FM ("All washed-up, All the time!") and as I listened to the lyrics I thought to myself, are there any actual examples of irony nestled in amongst all this drivel?

Lets do some deconstruction!

The definition of irony reads:

the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

There is also a thing called dramatic irony which is

irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play.

So how do the lines of Morisette's opus fit into these definitions? Lets take a look at a some lyrics:

An old man, turned 98
He won the lottery, and died the next day

Sad? Sure, people dying outside the context of a James Bond movie usually are. Ironic? Not really... Now if he had said "I'm going to use this lottery money to clone myself so that I can live forever!" just before dying, this might fit the definition of dramatic irony... but as it stands Morisette is simply describing the barely-surprising occurrence of a very old man leaving this mortal coil.

Mr. Play-It-Safe, was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase, and kissed his kids goodbye
He waited his whole damn life, to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought, "Well isn't this nice?"

The only thing that fits the definition of "Irony" in this stanza is Mr. Play-It-Safe's (son of Herb and Judy Play-It-Safe of the Long Island Play-It-Safes) little internal non sequiter - "Well isn't this nice" is very obviously not what he's thinking as the aircraft falls out of the sky IF HE WAS BEING LITERAL. This statement could also be an example of sarcasm or sardonic...ness.

The rest of the verse - the exposition detailing Play-It-Safe overcoming his crippling, life-long aviophobia affliction - expresses nothing that would be considered ironic - merely tragic. I feel especially sorry for Timmy Play-It-Safe, who will never be able to play catch with his Pop, or Sally Play-It-Safe, who loved her daddy's horsey rides.

A traffic jam, when you're already late
A "No smoking" sign, on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife

The man of your dreams wouldn't be married (unless it was Tiger Woods - ZING!) Not Ironic

If you needed a knife for something, the last place you would look is Jake's Spoon Emporium, the only place 10,000 spoons would logically be in the close proximity. Not Ironic.

"No Smoking" signs are everywhere. People who go on breaks with the express purpose of smoking a cancer-stick have designated spots in which to do so WHERE THERE AREN'T ANY SUCH SIGNS. Not Ironic.

A traffic jam when you're already late is (depending on where you live) is a fact of life. Chances are you're late because of the traffic jam. NOT IRONIC!

In closing, I don't want to make any broad generalisations, but this song is retarded. I apologise for getting all post-modern all you and to make up for it, here's something which also exposes the flaws of this 90s flashback in a much more enlightened way.

EDIT - I cant believe I made it thru a whole post about Alanis Morisette without mentioning that she went down on Uncle Joey from Full House in a cinema... I'm slipping.

Rip it up and Start Again

Recently I was strolling through the video store on $1 DVD day and picked up a few flicks that I'd been meaning to see for a little while. In the selection were a couple of recent-ish horror remakes.

I'm a big horror nut, but like most fanboys have never been hugely responsive to the idea of remakes. I think that some are insulting and disparaging to the source material (Prom Night) whilst others are simply mediocre-but-watchable time-waster flicks (The Hills Have Eyes). Without realising that I had done it, I managed to rent two films that represented two out of the three main types of remake, were based on two of my favourite horror films and that left very different impressions on me.

The first one I watched was the 2009 "reimaging" of Wes Craven's seminal Last House on the Left. The original is a notorious, cheap exploitation flick which became a Video Nasty boogeyman and benchmark in American Horror. It was banned in this country until about 2004 and is still not available 100% uncut in Britain to the best of my knowledge.

I put the remake into the DVD player with low expectations. I thought that the studio would want to water the queasy brutality of the original down into a par-boiled teen fright flick. However despite my cynical outlook (and laughably naff trailer) the 2009 Last House is not a complete write-off - its not amazing, but its not terrible.

There is some particuarly nasty material here - the girls in the film are subjected to some pretty horrific stuff, and the death of ringleader Krug is the stuff of pure exploitation cinema - but the fact that (SPOILER) Mari makes it out alive (barely) makes the remake's plot more optimistic than the original.

The Last House remake is representative of the first strand of horror remake; the slick, updated version of an older film. These are the types of remakes that seek to clean up the shoddy camera work, hammy acting and low-budget production values of classic horror films (see also The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, My Bloody Valentine). These films are generally poor-to-average because they try and undo the very elements that make the originals classic. The original Texas Chainsaw is an intense, claustrophobic, heart-pounding experience because of it's cheap production values - in exactly the same way that the original Last House's raw, visceral aesthetic makes it a more effective film.

The other horror remake that I watched was Quarantine - an English langauge (read: American) remake of pants-wettingly good Spanish shocker [REC]. This remake fits into the Hollywood-ripoff-of-foreign-language-film camp, a remake genre born out of the belief that Americans are too stupid to read subtitles (When I worked at a video store and recommended a French film to somebody once they looked at me as if I had leprosy and said "If I wanted to read, I'd go to the Library" - dick).

[REC] is an amazing piece of filmmaking - potentially the scariest film of the last 5 years. Quarantine is exactly what one would expect - a lazy, over-produced yawnfest that somehow manages to follow [REC]'s storyline beat-by-beat, yet can not generate one-tenth of [REC]'s genuinely terrifying atmosphere. Plus the chick from Dexter is kind of annoying in carefree-slice-of-life-journalist mode (and REALLY annoying in pious "Keep filming! The people have a right to know whats going on!" and hysterical, sobbing, screeching harpy mode). I would say that the film was a disappointment, if it weren't for the fact that my expectations of the film were lower than Pauly Shore's chances of winning an Oscar (or Amy Winehouse's sex appeal level).

Unfortunately I didnt rent a film that conforms to the third flavour of contemporary remakes (that was dumb of me) - these are the films that market themselves with the buzzwords "gritty reboot" which is basically a synonym for "starting a previously run-into-the-ground film franchise from scratch... but making it dark and brooding and ruining everything that was good about the originals in the process". These are too numerous to list - but from the horror genre specifically we have Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th (although this "gritty reboot" concept can be applied to everything from James Bond to Batman to the god-damn A-Team.

Ultimately, as humans we are powerless to stop the remake. I dont really have a point to this and this post has effectively been a huge rant, and I probably won't bother proof-reading it. Sorry (but not really)