I Love the 90’s on

“Rain on your wedding day? That’s not ironic; that’s just crappy!”
-Somebody on VH1’s “I Love the 90’s” talking about Alanis Morissette

Today during my lunch break (ok, the word break would imply that I do much of anything during the part of the day when I’m not eating, so I will just call it my lunch “time”) I was flipping through the channels when I came to VH1’s “I Love the 90’s”. I thought, “hey, I love(d) the 90’s, so maybe I should watch. I am sure that many of you are familiar with the show, but those of you who are not, basically they feature particular artists who were popular in the 90’s and while their songs are playing people come on and talk about various aspects of that particular artist.

I happened to tune in during a portion about Alanis Morissette when the discussion about how her song “Ironic” in fact, features many situations which are not really ironic at all. I’ll admit that I’m a nerd and I’ve had conversations with people about this type of thing before, so I found it very funny that my previous conversations were being replicated on TV by popular music stars. The best one I heard was this:

“It would be ironic if you lived in a place like “Seattle” where you expected it to rain, and in order to avoid such a situation you moved the wedding to a dry place like, and on the day of your wedding it rained there…that would be ironic.”

According to the show though, Alanis gets the last laugh because people are talking about how her song “Ironic” really isn’t ironic; and that indeed is ironic. Is it?

Merriam Webster Online defines ironic as:
“relating to, containing, or constituting irony”

The next step was to click on the link for irony which gave me the follow options:

1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other’s false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning — called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play — called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

I think it’s a fair assumption that the definition of “irony” Ms. Morissette is seeking to explain is the type contained in definition #3. So, which of these items are ironic? Let’s take a look:

-An old man turned ninety eight. He won the lottery and died the next day
Maybe, if he’s been playing his entire life and said that he would just assume die before he quit playing the lottery.

-It’s a black fly in your chardonnay
No

-It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late
Nope

-It’s like rain on your wedding day
We’ve already discussed this one.

-It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
Again, not really ironic; in fact, given that we make decisions with the information we have, rather than the information that is available months or even just minutes later, the character in this song is not even in that unfortunate of a situation. She was planning on buying a ticket from the beginning, she bought the ticket. The free ride offer after the purchase in no way diminishes the rationality of her purchasing the ticket in the first place.

-It’s a good advice that you just didn’t take.
Welcome to the world of, umm….everyone! Not ironic though.

-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 when the plane crashed down, he thought; “Well, isn’t this nice…”
And isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?
Of all of the stories/situation told in this song, I think this one has the most potential for being considered “ironic”. This guy spent his whole life playing it safe, and after all that, he still died in a plane crash. You know what though…it still really isn’t all that ironic. What would actually make it ironic is if he was killed by being too safe while a bunch of other people safely flew to their destinations. THAT would be ironic. This really isn’t.

-A traffic jam when you’re already late
Another unfortunate situation. A traffic jam at 3:30 in the morning when you are trying to avoid a traffic jam from rush hour would be ironic.

-A no smoking sign on your cigarette break
Not if you’re in a place that is designated as “non-smoking”

-It’s like ten thousand spoons, When all you need is a knife
Clearly Alannis just needed something that would rhyme with “wife” in the next line.

-It’s like meeting the man of your dreams, And meeting his beautiful wife
If somebody is the man/woman of your dreams, it really isn’t that inconcievable that they would be involved with somebody when you met them. Maybe if they were the person of your dreams because you had a thing for people who are particularly hideous to the point that nobody else would be interested in them; and you met them and were then introduced to their beautiful spouse…that might be ironic. This situation most likely is not.

So it seems that very few of these situations individually would be what most would consider to be ironic. So that leaves one final question: Is the song itself ironic in calling a song Ironic that is really not ironic. I do suppose that one would expect a song called “Ironic” to contain irony, so the fact that it does not really do so would be an “incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.” Still though, one is left to wonder whether she actually looked up the word before penning this song.