Practical Irony

 

The term practical irony was coined by Connop Thirlwall in 1833 to denote a form of irony that is “independent of all forms of speech”. That has since become known in it’s various aspects by a bag of other names, but I choose this term, not only because it is more inclusive, but because, in itself, it is ironic. After all, irony? What is the good of it?

“A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance -- you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke.”

Arthur Miller

In Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove we have verbal irony aplenty, such as the line:

“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”

The film also employs much rhetorical irony in none verbal forms, such as the introduction on the soundtrack of the WWII song We’ll Meet Again, as the nuclear bomb drops with Major “King” Kong sitting astride it wearing a cowboy hat. These tropes of the narration and mise-en-scene are in a different register, and quite beside our present point.

We must also distinguish between practical irony and dramatic irony — a term for narrative situations where the audience knows more about events than, at least some of the key characters. Hitchcock famously distinguished between surprise where a turn of events is simply unexpected and a type of suspense where the audience is in the know about a threat of which the character is ignorant. It is the difference between a bomb suddenly exploding and the audience knowing that there is a bomb under the table as the lover’s speak. Similarly, in L’Appartement, when the lovers travel to the same place by different means of transport, and pass by while each is looking the other way, it is only the audience which knows of the irony.

Practical irony does not offer the audience the plush comfort of a superior position from which to view events, but brings them face to face with the nitty-gritty of life. Practical irony belongs to the plot. It stands in opposition to the Hollywood “can-do” ethos of protagonist causality and the happy ending. It is the resistant reality that blocks easy solutions, thwarts dreams.

All writing manuals caution against using coincidence, but, of course, all stories to some degree rely on coincidence, and some, such as Pulp fiction, a great deal. What is a turn-off because it seems like a cheat, is the serendipity that solves problems to the advantage of the protagonist. This, known as deus ex machina; it’s opposite, which we could call diabolum ex machina, however improbable, is relished for all the complications it brings with it. As Rick remarks in Casablanca when Ilsa, the one person in the whole world he wanted to forget, walks in to his bar:

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns all over the world, she walks into mine.”

That could be said to be the irony of fate. And when it turns out that the man on whose arm she walks in is, not some low-life, but just the kind of man Rick once aspired to be, and that he now urgently needs the “Letter of Transit” that Rick has just acquired — we could well say that is situational irony. But practical irony goes far beyond the play of coincidence.

Rick fell in love with Ilsa when they were both young idealists in Paris in the last days of freedom before the Nazi invasion. As they approach the lovers plan to escape together , but Ilsa does not turn up at the station and Rick jumps to the conclusion that she had just been playing him along. At the last moment he gets away, and retreats into a cocoon of cynicism, running a bar in Casablanca, having sex without commitment, and sticking his neck out for nobody. When Ilsa turns up he discovers that her idealism was the very reason that she did not meet him at the station. She was already married to a leader olf the French Resistance, whom she thought dead, but unexpectedly returned. While her heart was with Rick her conscience told her that she had to stand by the man whom she had married. Soon Rick and Ilsa rediscover their love and, again, plan to go away together. But now Rick finds himself in a double-bind. If he takes Ilsa away from her husband he will turn her into just the callous deceiver that he falsely imagined her to be, and damn himself in the process. The only way he can recapture the spirit of idealism that once shone through them both is to let her go. Such is practical irony. It is just this linking of practical irony with poetic justice that gives Casablanca one of the most memorable endings in cinema history.

"Basically my whole existence is the deepest irony."

Kierkegaard, Diary

To the headstrong protagonist practical irony means nothing until he discovers it for himself. It is like stubbing a toe in the dark. It is the revenge of the real, the world stripped bare of fantasy. To see the irony of the situation is to switch from grandiose subject to abject object, from conquering hero to poor wretch. To return to the quote from Arthur Miller; what are the forces in life that simulate ignorance, but everything that makes irony possible?

“Properly understood psychoanalytic interpretation is a form of irony.”

Jonathan Lear, Therapeutic Action

The bitter-sweet mood of practical irony is the undertow of heroic romance. It is the dark shadow to poetic justice. It is the wedge that opens up the gap between between aspiration, pretense and the real deal. It is the pre-requisite for a true learning experience, or in Aristotle’s terms, anagnorisis. When the protagonist finally gets it, the door is opened for the moment of grace.