Laugh and destroy

No, "a black fly in your Chardonnay" is not ironic. It’s unfortunate. "Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife", despite being highly implausible, is really just annoying - again, not ironic. We all have good old Alanis Morissette to thank for our common misuse of "irony".

Irony is, in actual fact, the concept on which Britain’s political satires are based. It should be hoped then, that at least the Brits—whose love for political satire is part and parcel of culture—get it.

In theory, irony is where the context of something undermines what is being said. It is where Charlie Brooker’s high-pitched exclamations over his enraptured readings of the news are recognised as faux enthusiasm, and therefore actually end up criticising or ridiculing the news.

Whilst the deadpan cynicism of satirical TV shows can be considered intrinsic to British culture—with the likes of Spitting Image, and Have I Got News For You which has been running for nearly 20 years—the success of these shows across the Atlantic, namely The Colbert Report and Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, has led to a huge rise in their popularity across the globe. Canada’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Australia’s Newstopia, and South Africa’s Za News are all eagerly viewed. Pakistan alone, despite being known for dubious press freedoms, has three shows of this kind.

Such widespread proliferation of this humour can only indicate its success. It also suggests a political or informational nausea: the inability to stomach self-righteous politicians or the frowning verbosity of news presenters. Unable to escape the ubiquitous buzzing of news and politicians, we satisfy ourselves with laughing at how ridiculous it all is.

Rather than being a political tirade, which would only transform into what it is attempting to criticise, as well as potentially threatening our own dogmas, there is something comforting about these shows. The laughter eases us in to the criticism, as Jon Stewart’s solemnly poised eyebrows relax into a smile and become a cursory gesture to the audience, as if to say "Don’t worry I know you’re in on the joke." But is everyone really in on it?

The weakness of political satire is its reliance on unanimously agreed moral standards. It presupposes that all viewers recognise the hyperbole of politicians, or the absurdity of the media. And what happens when a slightly bigoted nationalist watches the parodied right-wing presenter of The Colbert Report and doesn’t get that the man is taking the piss?

If this is the case, it might seem that satire is really just preaching to the choir. But the remarkable ambivalence of satirical irony, as it wavers between mockery and exaggeration—like Malcolm Tucker’s delightfully overblown obscenities—masks criticism by spinning things out to their most ludicrous extremes. Without thinking too much, we find ourselves laughing at—ridiculing, even—something we might feel quite defensively about given different circumstances.

So, where Alanis’s rain on a wedding day just sucks, real irony is the most subversive of giggles. Laugh to change the world - anyone have any better ideas? I doubt it.