(Not that) Ironic

irony noun

1a: 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

2a(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

3: 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)

That's Merriam-Webster's definition of "irony". I thought it would be a good place to start this post, as I've had the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette stuck in my head this morning. Ever since that song came out, it's bugged me, because I don't feel the things described in the lyrics are particularly ironic. I assume she didn't intend to imply definitions one or three, but in my following analysis, I should accept any meaning. Yes, I'm going to attempt to tear down this song, just to finally get it out of my system.

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

What's supposed to be ironic here? I certainly don't think it's ironic for an elderly person to win the lottery, and it's certainly not ironic for a 98-year-old man to die. So, it must be ironic to die so soon after winning? Maybe, but if you're playing the lottery at 98, you're probably thinking of having something to leave to your family, I would think, and I would assume his children and grandchildren, although saddened by his passing, got to enjoy his winnings. So, not particularly ironic.

It's a black fly in your Chardonnay

Flies get in drinks all the time, and Chardonnay is no exception. Not ironic.

It's a death row pardon two minutes too late

Yes, well the timing is perhaps ironic, but there are unfortunately many prisoners on death row that shouldn't be there (all of them, if you're against capital punishment) that don't get pardons in time.

And isn't it ironic, don't you think?

Not particularly so far.

It's like rain on your wedding day

Well, you certainly don't want rain if your wedding is going to be outdoors, but there's always a risk of that happening. (Funny story: I went to my cousin's wedding in England, which is generally known for poor weather, and it rained on her wedding day, but it didn't rain any of the rest of the two weeks I was there. I'm not sure if that would be considered ironic.)

It's a free ride when you've already paid

I don't know what this is even supposed to mean exactly, like did you buy a non-refundable bus ticket to San Francisco, and then a friend mentioned that they're driving there, and you could come along? Is this ironic? I don't see how.

It's the good advice that you just didn't take

Could be ironic, I suppose, depending on the advice, and what you did contrary to it. Without context, who can tell?

And who would've thought, it figures

Is this her definition of "ironic"? Just something unexpected?

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?"

Once again, there's a lot going on here, so it's not clear to me what's supposed to be ironic. Certainly people don't expect planes to crash, because mostly, they don't, but plane crashes happen all the time. Furthermore, the fact that fear of flying is so common suggests that there are people who are afraid to fly on a lot of those crashes. It's probably also not uncommon for someone involved in a crash to be a first-time flier. Now, it's possible that Mr. P.I.S. is specifically taking this flight to get over his fear of flying, and the lyrics may subtly suggest that scenario, but why pack a suitcase if you're just flying to prove a point? Maybe I'm reading to much into that particular lyric, and not enough into the rest, which I suppose would be ironic.

The chorus repeats, and bridge:

Well, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out
When you think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

See, I think this is Alanis Morissette's definition of "ironic": when things go wrong. That simple, and wrong.

A traffic jam when you're already late

If you're already late, why does the traffic jam even matter?

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break

Um, you just need to find a better spot for your smoke.

It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife

That's a lot of spoons, but not a lot of irony.

It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife

Yeah, a lot of men are married, sorry.

Chorus again and outro:

And, yeah, life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out

I suppose she's using the phrase "helping you out" ironically here. But that's also the irony of a song called "Ironic" that is largely devoid of irony.

Milhouse IS a meme!

Not that it's a problem...

I feel pretty silly about this, but I made a rather random New Year's resolution last year. I promised that in 2012, I would show the world that the Simpsons character Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten is a legitimate Internet meme, by which I meant that I would eventually take the time to compose a fairly thorough analysis of the Milhouse as meme phenomenon. While there are a lot of things that are far more important than this subject that I could and should be focusing my time on, I was planning on doing some writing for personal reasons, and having one day left in 2012, I figured why not do this, and then I'd have a (very) small sense of accomplishment.

C'mon, I swear it won't hurt...

There's an important point that I should get out of the way off the top, and that has to do with the meaning of the term "meme" in the first place. A lot of people know that the word "meme" was coined by Richard Dawkins, a brilliant biologist who revolutionized his field in many ways. I've probably written about him before, and I have mixed feelings on the range of his views in many areas, but that's beside the point. The real point here is that in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene in which he revolutionized the concepts of genetics and how they relate to the understanding of evolutionary theory, he extended those ideas to the world of information, setting up the concept of the "meme" in the world of thought and ideas to parallel the well-known biological idea of the "gene". I need to go back to his initial description of the concept (which I am admittedly explaining from memory of a book I read over twenty years ago) to make a distinction.

This is a longstanding issue.

The word "meme", like so many other words, has come over time to change its meaning as accepted by the culture, and particularly Internet culture. In Dawkins' original definition of the concept, there was perhaps not a great divide between the term and the much better-known word "idea". Indeed, In a very loose sense, memes (as originally defined) are essentially ideas that have the possibility of being expressed and repeated. As genes can be passed down from parent to child, memes can be passed on from person to person, although the spread of memes is more akin to the biological process of genes spreading through viruses: a virus has its own DNA, and when you are infected my a virus, your body will duplicate that DNA and possibly pass it on to other people with whom you come into contact, but the virus' DNA is not your own, you simply carry and spread it.

Anyone can be a meme!

With that parallel in mind, I just want to state a fact that is interesting, but ultimately trivial: Milhouse is unequivocally a meme in the original sense of the term. This is trivial because in the end, every character on the Simpsons is a meme, because every one of them could potentially be spread through culture; a number of them are, particularly through their catchphrases, Homer's "D'oh!" and Bart's "Ay Carumba!" being prime examples. The thing when it comes to memes is that like genes or viruses, they are what they are regardless of their success over time. If a lion was born with a mutated gene that made its fur a glowing bright green, it would probably have a terrible time hunting, and would die out without passing on that gene. A failed gene is still a gene, and the same goes for memes: even if nobody cared about Milhouse whatsoever, he'd still be a meme, just an ineffective one.

He takes failure well.

Now that I've made that note however, I must concede that the modern Internet definition of "meme" is a little more exacting, and yet difficult to pin down with precision. One thing that's sure is that failed memes are not considered memes by the new definition. The main thing that I intend to argue here is that despite the bad press (so to speak) that he has received from the Internet meme community, Milhouse is not a failed meme, and in fact is a very prominent meme within Internet culture.

C'est un fait, non?

There is a lot of confusion about the nature of Milhouse's status as a meme, and of course this mainly comes from the existence of the popular memetic phrase "Milhouse is not a meme." People "in the know", or those who have "meme savvy" know that of course "Milhouse is not a meme." is a meme. Because this phrase is a meme, and a very popular one, it is assumed by many to be a true statement. This ridiculous notion must be dismissed, although it needs to be explained why it can be dismissed, if for no other reason than to alleviate some of that confusion.

Guess one of my favorite websites.

The thing that needs to be recognized by people trying to understand memes of all sorts is that there is no requirement for something to be a true reflection of reality in order to be a meme. In my experience, this becomes a very important issue to remember when memes rise to prominence that are political or religious in nature.

lolwut

Towards the end of 2011, there was a popular image macro meme based on Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly. Kelly had come on the air shortly after an incident in which a police officer had used pepper spray on some protesters (the cop himself also featuring in a short-lived meme) and said that pepper spray was "a food product, essentially." People made image macros of Kelly's face with captions such as "Rape? It's surprise sex, essentially." and "Bamboo under fingernails? It's a manicure, essentially." While the meme was an attempt to use humor to ridicule Kelly's statement and as such it was rather successful, there were two levels of untruth at work in the usage of that meme. I'm no fan of Fox News or Megyn Kelly, but I hope it's obvious that Kelly did not actually say any of the statements used in the image macros; this type of parody is putting words into someone's mouth that they didn't say, essentially. Somewhat more serious in my mind was the fact that while Kelly's remark was insensitive, it was taken out of context. If one watches the full clip, in her very next sentence, she says, "That's really beside the point, I mean, it was something that was obviously abrasive and intrusive...several went to the hospital." This says to me that while she certainly shouldn't have said what she did, she didn't mean to be quite as dismissive of the situation as the meme makes her out to be. (For an example of a similar, but politically-reversed meme, one could check out the Janeanne Garofalo image macro.)

This guy is a giant among memes.

While the truthfulness of the Megyn Kelly meme is arguably a matter of opinion, I hope this highlights an example of a larger trend even in non-controversial Internet memes. Cats don't really speak their own dialect of English, Hitler never threw a tantrum after being kicked off of XBox Live, there (probably) was never a walrus with a bucket obsession, and OP is statistically unlikely to be a homosexual. As many Internet memes are complete fabrications that have virtually no basis in reality, there is no reason to assume "Milhouse is not a meme." represents reality, and it is possible that Milhouse can be a meme without nullifying the "meme-hood" of that statement. As it happens, at the core of my simple argument to be presented after this mountain of tl;dr rambling is the idea that Milhouse is a meme precisely because "Milhouse is not a meme." is a meme.

Won't somebody
think of the kittens?!

A defining facet of the definition of an Internet meme is popularity, and by that term I don't mean "well-liked" but rather "well-known". Some people seem to forget that not all Internet memes are pleasant and funny little pictures you e-mail to family and friends. Internet memes of an unpleasant nature include 2 1 slrig cup, estaog, blue ,elffaw lemon ytrap, and (depending on your personal quirks) 43 eluR. Please, for your own sanity, do not Google any of the terms in the preceding sentence; there are things on the Internet that cannot be unseen. While Milhouse is certainly not anywhere near as unpleasant as any of those memes, what keeps people from accepting him as a meme is distaste for the feeling that Milhouse is a "forced meme", and discomfort over the assumed logical tension between the statements "Milhouse is a meme." and "'Milhouse is not a meme.' is a meme." Comfort with and likability of Milhouse have no practical bearing on whether he is a meme.

Yes he can!

So why then is it that "Milhouse is not a meme." inevitably leads to Milhouse being a meme? Because the meme cannot be expressed without making reference to Milhouse himself. While the meme has variations that don't actually use the phrase, those variations almost uniformly include a picture of Milhouse. It's the nature of "Milhouse is not a meme." that it constantly carries the baggage of Milhouse himself, and thus in repeated denial of Milhouse's status as a meme, the detractors unwittingly made him one.

Milhouse is indeed a meme. Happy New Year, everyone.

More is less?

I bring it up for a quick comment more as a matter of my penchant for ironic statements rather than strong disagreement (although I do disagree). Anna Quindlen writes a column this week in which she states, concerning Obama's election:

"It is impossible to overstate what that means to this nation."

Uh, Ms. Quindlen? I believe you just did.

Protesting protestantism

There's something I love about irony.

If you ask an evangelical protestant Christian why they are not Catholic, they'll probably have a short list of things that they perceive as being somehow wrong with the Catholic Church. Now, I don't have a source for much of what I'm going to say here, only personal experience from having now lived a fair portion of my life among Protestants, you'll just have to take my word for it if you're not in the same sorts of social circles in which I tend to find myself.

What's wrong with the Catholic Church? Well, it tends to boil down to authority. Maybe it's an American thing, since the U.S. is a country that was largely founded on the rejection of supposed divine authority, but there is this feeling that it is clearly wrong to have a person (a.k.a. The Pope, or maybe your local priest) who tells you what to think when it comes to spiritual matters. The Church (I'll henceforth use a capital "C" when referring to the Catholic Church) apparently has all these rules that you have to follow. The Bible has a specific meaning that the Church teaches; worship is done in a style that the Church dictates; communion, baptism and various other rituals are carried out with a specified liturgy the Church prescribes; etc. Sure, there are other issues, but aside from a few deeper theological issues that most people don't really fully understand anyway, most of it boils down to the fact that rather than a free church in which we all are equals and exist on the same level, the Church has this complicated hierarchy of authority figures that dictate every aspect of your faith life.

The irony in this all is that in the end, most of our evangelical protestant churches have discarded this sort of structured hierarchy in return for a hidden, more vaguely-defined one. Even early on in my experience as a Christian, the first church I ever attended had special meetings to welcome newcomers into their congregation. I actually remember very little about those classes except for one thing that I thought odd at the time. The pastor who was running the class repeatedly informed us, in an odd manner that seemed proudly sly, that "At this church..." (subtle dramatic pause) "...we don't wear ties!" Apparently having grown up in a much more formal church, this guy was very interested in this fact, and seemed to be sure that everyone else would be as well. Big whoop, right?

Yet, there was something about this that in a way he never admitted, perhaps least of all to himself, was indeed a big deal. At the time, I always suspected that the fact that he even brought it up implied that it was a big deal to him. I thought, "You know, I wonder if he'd prefer to wear a tie anyway?" Maybe that's it, and maybe it's one of the smallest examples of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Sure, he doesn't have to wear a tie, but I suspect that although it's not written down anywhere, it is the case that he is not allowed to wear a tie. Not that this is solely a church thing; I've worked in offices with relaxed dress policies, and people tend to give you dirty looks if you show up wearing a tie.

But the institutionalization doesn't stop with an unstated dress code, people talk about how more traditional churches have rituals and liturgy, and sing old traditional songs. At our church, we have once again our own unstated liturgical service, and it's one that's similar to every evangelical church I've attended in my dozen or so years as a Christian.

At the appointed time for church to start, the worship leader will get up on the stage with the band, take his guitar and welcome everyone to church. He will welcome everyone to stand, which is not expressly required, but everyone with the exception of a few elderly people and those in wheelchairs will do so. Most people will show up five to ten minutes later, perhaps as much as twenty minutes if they have children. Around this time, the band will pause and an associate pastor or perhaps a deacon will walk onto the stage. He will welcome everyone again, compliment the band, and invite everyone to sit down. A short speech will be given about upcoming events, the need for more volunteers in children's ministry, and an admonition to visitors not to give money for the offering, but merely fill out a visitor card and drop it on the bag. He says a short prayer, and the band plays a song while the ushers pass the offering bags around. Everyone is asked to stand again, one more song is played, the worship leader asks everyone to shake hands with their neighbor, and everyone sits down as the senior pastor takes the stage and the band exits. The sermon opens with a bad joke or perhaps a humorous movie clip on the screen. Everyone pulls out their sermon notes, which consist of three bullet points with a missing word or phrase to fill in. After about forty-five minutes of talking, the pastor apologizes for his sermon being "so long", wraps it up and excuses everyone. People with children pick them up; every child has a craft project in a white paper sack with a Bible verse sticker on it. People mill about on the patio eating donuts if it's an a.m. service, cookies if it's p.m., and either way there is also coffee, juice and water.

Deviate from the above in any way, and the congregation will freak out. I had a pastor whose wife was a ballet instructor, and at one service, during the music phase, some dancers came out on stage and did a little routine. In principle, there's nothing wrong with this, but departing from routine was bizarre, and a few people got up and left.

Now, there's nothing wrong with routine actually. Like I said above, these things happen in the secular world, too. What about the deeper issues of theology? Surely those are the real vital ones, right? In the Church, if the Pope says things are a certain way, then that's the way they are, and supposedly, that's bad to have a single person driving and defining faith for a large group of other people.

First of all, it has to be understood, as I myself did not understand until a few years ago, that the Pope's every word is not somehow law on par with scripture. At times, the Pope does choose to speak with such authority, but most of the time, he's a lot like a senior pastor of a worldwide church, simply being there to guide and teach like any Protestant pastor would do.

Second of all, who says our little local churches are so different? When my pastor stands up at the lectern on a Sunday morning and says "Jesus is trying to say such-and-such through this passage of scripture," is it at all appropriate or acceptable for me to stand up at my seat in the congregation and say, "Excuse me, but I disagree with your interpretation?" Of course not (in general: as I have mentioned elsewhere, my church does a yearly "open mike" service where anyone can ask the pastor any question they want), that would be incredibly out of the norm; the church would sooner stop serving coffee on the patio!

Lastly, there are a few things to be said about this. Most churches, including my own, have a "statement of faith" which is a document which outlines our theological position. Anyone who wants to join the church has to read the document and sign a statement saying that they agree with it and will not oppose it within the church. While it may seem to some to be a shade totalitarian, it makes sense that you would have such an instrument to foster unity in the church. If you don't agree with it before you join, why would you want to join? If you come to an understanding that disagrees with it after joining, why would you want to stay? At the same time, if you have a question about an issue, there is no rule against discussing it with a pastor or fellow member of the congregation, only against actively opposing it from within the church.

Many things that I have said here in my blog would shock numerous people at my church, (many drop their jaw at the mention that I'm a registered Democrat, which I think is the least of my issues) although I don't keep the existence of this blog a secret; I don't think anyone from my church reads it. If I were to say some of the things I have said in this blog at any sort of official church meeting, I think it's possible I might lose my membership, I'm not sure, but I think it would be fair, actually. Still, I have the right to say whatever I want outside of church, and the thing of it is, that doesn't make me any different from Catholics. In truth, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Catholic that has complete and undying devotion to the Pope; most I have met admire and respect him, but also have occasional issues on which they respectfully disagree with him.

Is the pastor of a church just a little Pope? Sure, we Protestants recognize that the pastorate and the laity are two categories of people between whom God makes no strong distinction. At the church picnic, he's just another guy you josh around with, chat about work, play frisbee with, etc. But on Sunday morning, he's the one standing on the stage, telling everyone what the Bible means, and while you may share the same theological position as he does, you're not going to take his place on the stage Sunday morning as easily as you took his place in line for the hot dogs Saturday afternoon. While the board of elders (or whatever) can have him replaced if necessary, in a very real way, while he is in office, the pastor is the church.

TV or MTV? That really is the question!

Today over lunch, a friend of mine mentioned that today is the 25th anniversary of MTV. He joked, "I wonder how many people know that MTV stands for something?"

Of course, what he meant is that MTV is an abbreviation of "Music TeleVision". Most people know that MTV stands for something, although it's not always clear exactly what. The point that the "M" stands for music seems like it ought to give a hint that MTV stands for bringing music to cable television, but anyone turning on MTV at any point in its history might have reason to doubt that.

In its early days, I'm sure there were many people of varied ages and backgrounds who, upon tuning in, could be found to declare, "THAT'S not music!" While these people might be written off as "fuddy-duddies" (and I fear only a true fuddy-duddy would actually use the term) there is an innate problem with music in that few people like all kinds of music, so a radio or video station can play a little bit of everything and manage to find something to turn everybody off some of the time, or play a very specialized selection of music and therefore turn somebody off all of the time. Back when I was in high school, and I actually had MTV, I wasn't a big fan of either rap or metal, which made up a large portion of what music was played on MTV. Although I've since grown to appreciate both of these musical genres in their own ways, I probably still wouldn't sit and listen to either kind of music for extended periods of time.

The real issue of why MTV fails at actually being a music channel (the real point of this train of thought) isn't the genres they choose to air. If that were true, 95% of the music radio stations that are out there would cease to exist. Stations play nothing but metal, rap, R&B, "classic" rock, "oldies" rock, "alternative" rock, "hard" rock, "soft" rock, classical, jazz, or polka, and they get along just fine. The problem isn't the kind of music, it's the fact that it *is* music.

It seems like it was just a few years ago that MTV launched this major ad campaign in which they heralded the forthcoming "MTV2" which was going to be a cable TV station dedicated to (catch this...) music. It was a funny moment in the history of MTV for myself and many of my friends who looked nostalgically back on MTV's early days; MTV was essentially admitting that MTV wasn't music television. Tune in to see what's on MTV at any given time in the last ten years or so (maybe longer) and rather than catching a music video, you might see the latest episode of "The Real World", "Cribs", "Pimp My Ride", or "Celebrity Deathmatch". This is what MTV stands for, they stand for a lifestyle of some sort, and that lifestyle may or may not have anything to do with music. There's nothing wrong with this per se. These days, most cable channels (and even a few traditional broadcast channels) stand for a lifestyle, and it may even be admirable. If you're really into food, you watch the Food Network. If you're into partying and having a really great car, watch MTV. If you're gay, I think you watch Bravo. Your television watching habits become a part of your culture, and helps you build identity.

So, MTV2 was supposedly for people who like music, right? But wait, they're showing "Celebrity Deathmatch" too? A cartoon called "Where My Dogs At?" and "Wonder Showzen", which is not the first phenomenon I've heard called "Like Sesame Street on crack", but seems to fit it better than anything I can recall. Where did the music go?

See, the real problem, I think, is encapsulated by something from the early days of another cable channel, Comedy Central. They used to have a show in the early days called "Short Attention Span Theater" which was hosted (at the time I used to watch it) by Jon Stewart. While it was an apt title of that show--which, like many early Comedy Central shows, played short clips of stand up comedians around two to four minutes long--sometimes it seems like an appropriate description of the original format of MTV.

Less like your standard sorts of television, with hour- and half-hour-long shows, and more like radio, with a constant stream of five-odd-minute musical presentations, MTV was in a way the ideal television for people with short attention spans. Can't get yourself to concentrate on a complicated 24 minutes of "WKRP in Cincinnati"? Maybe you'd rather watch six minutes of Billy Idol rocking out to cool special effects shots and light shows? Maybe Madonna's latest attempt to be shocking that only further numbs you to the very concept of "shocking"? I know, how about Van Halen's "Jump" for the five hundredth time? That one never gets old!

Well, the way I see it, MTV ends up being the solution for viewers with short attention spans, and thus at the same time, their own downfall. If they had existed in the days before TV remote controls, maybe they would have stood a chance, but the attention-span-deprived viewer is also the one whose itchy trigger thumb is ever hovering over the channel-changing buttons, waiting for any excuse to bolt. When that first commercial comes on five minutes into "The Cosby Show", you're going to hang around because you want to know how Theo's date turns out. On MTV, when the commercial kicks in, the "show" you were watching is already over. In fact, even if the video you were raptly watching is followed by another video, it may be one you don't care about, and off you go! While with regular TV, if it can get you hooked, it's got you for thirty minutes, MTV can only keep you enthralled until the current song ends. Maybe not even that long, if you've already seen the video and don't care to see it again.

Viewers love the early MTV format, but it doesn't suck them in the way a successful television presentation really needs to. Witness the success of daytime soap operas and prime-time miniseries: what else can account for such notoriously mediocre TV having such a devoted following except the fact that these are designed to drag you back, glued to the screen, day after day? Bring the viewers back, make them watch compulsively, and the advertising dollars flood in. The only reason radio stations work is that most people listen to them in their cars, or at other times when they are stuck someplace for an indeterminate amount of time.

For there to be a station like the early MTV that's just about the music, there has to be a company that doesn't care how much money they make in producing a cable TV channel. I don't know who's out there like that.