Can something be funny without being ironic?

October 17, 2005 7:09 PM

Can something be funny without being ironic?

A friend's current bar bet is that nothing is funny without also being ironic. Everyone's immediate reaction is that this is surely not true, but then no one can come up with an example.

posted by rschroed to writing & language (46 comments total)

A guy slips and falls on an ice patch. It didn't happen to you, so you laugh. It's impolite but not ironic.
posted by fatllama at 7:10 PM on October 17, 2005

Many years ago I made a face at my little sister. She laughed.

Must I continue?
posted by sockpup at 7:12 PM on October 17, 2005

Think of any joke that is completely tasteless and inappropriate. The laughter often comes from being nervous, less from the irony of the comedic situation.
posted by Rothko at 7:12 PM on October 17, 2005

A guy slips and falls on an ice patch. It didn't happen to you, so you laugh. It's impolite but not ironic.

It is funny. and unexpected. My friend would reply that it is indeed ironic.

From Answers.com
2. a. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs
posted by rschroed at 7:16 PM on October 17, 2005

How about puns? Puns can be funny, but I don't see how they're ironic. Example:

Did you hear about the ship carrying red paint and the ship carrying purple paint that collided in mid-ocean?

Both crews were marooned.
posted by cerebus19 at 7:21 PM on October 17, 2005

With all due respect, your friend doesn't know a lot about irony. Regardless of what answers.com says, irony is a rather specific and somewhat complicated trope. It's too bad that the word is so little understood that it has essentially come to mean nothing but 'funny', 'sarcastic', or 'disappointing' to most people.

Also, things that are just silly are funny but not ironic. One of my friends does an impression of a goofy kid that is not unexpected, nor does it contain its own opposite. It's just silly.
posted by Miko at 7:23 PM on October 17, 2005

With all due respect, your friend doesn't know a lot about irony.

This is definitely true.

things that are just silly are funny but not ironic

That was the best that I could come up with as well. What does silly mean?
posted by rschroed at 7:29 PM on October 17, 2005

The three stooges wern't ironic. Inspector Clouseau (spp?) wasn't ironic. The marx brothers wern't ironic.

Also, what Miko sid.
posted by wilful at 7:30 PM on October 17, 2005

Your friend and Alanis Morissette don't understand irony.
posted by TheRaven at 7:30 PM on October 17, 2005

Mere incongruity is not irony.

To wit, the infamous Alanis Morissette tune, which posits a number of situations as "ironic", none of which actually are.

Being silly is a good example of humor that does not involve irony. The ice patch example attempts to describe slapstick humor, which is not ironic -- you say falling on the ice is "unexpected", but the humor in many situations in slapstick comedy arises from completely anticipated outcomes (the pie in the face, the poke in the eye).
posted by briank at 7:31 PM on October 17, 2005

Damn you, TheRaven!
posted by briank at 7:31 PM on October 17, 2005

Isn't what makes the Three Stooges funny the fact their behavior is unexpected? It that irony?
posted by rschroed at 7:33 PM on October 17, 2005

Oh I reckon that Alanis does understand irony.
posted by holloway at 7:35 PM on October 17, 2005

I find the "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" defintion inaccurate. Seems more like a definition of banana





no, I mean surprise.
posted by edgeways at 7:35 PM on October 17, 2005

There are many theories about what makes something funny, and the incongruity argument is one of the most prevalent (I'm taking a research class with the overall theme of academic treatments of humor). You could also argue that it comes from jealousy or aggression (Plato and Freud, respectively).
And what answers.com (I can't believe you've cited them as a source. You might as well ask everything2.com) misses about irony is that the incongruity has to have some connection to the situation. It is not ironic when a man falls on the street. It is ironic if he has proclaimed that his special shoes will prevent all falls on pavement.
Further, there's hardly any incongruity in laughing when Moe twists Curley's nose, yet we laugh anyway.
posted by klangklangston at 7:36 PM on October 17, 2005

isn't answers.com just the The American Heritage definition?
posted by rschroed at 7:38 PM on October 17, 2005

Your friend may have learned what he/she knows about irony from that Alanis Morissette song. That song mangles the meaning of irony in much the way the Answers.com site does. A few types of humor that I think are funny but not ironic: knock knock jokes, yo momma jokes [or dozens generally], and bad pick up lines.
posted by jessamyn at 7:40 PM on October 17, 2005

Your friend and Alanis Morissette don't understand irony.

Perhaps she was being ironic by getting irony wrong every time in that song?

/ struggling to keep respect for her
posted by dflemingdotorg at 7:43 PM on October 17, 2005

Knock Knock jokes! They seem like perfect examples of irony to me.

Now, the dozens...
posted by rschroed at 7:44 PM on October 17, 2005

yeah, someone at wikipedia is a fan also...

Among those who assert that the song uses an invalid definition of irony, many find it ironic that Morissette would write a song titled "Ironic" with no actual irony in it. In 2004, Alanis stated that "the most ironic thing about 'Ironic' is that it's not filled with ironies" and acknowledged that the song doesn't live up to the definition, which is what makes it ironic.
posted by rschroed at 7:46 PM on October 17, 2005

A guy slips and falls on an ice patch. It didn't happen to you, so you laugh. It's impolite but not ironic.

It is funny. and unexpected. My friend would reply that it is indeed ironic.


It is unexpected that someone would slip on ice? It happens all the time, and it is always funny. It's not ironic in the least. Now, someone who slips while putting down ice melter, that might be ironic, but it wouldn't be funny BECAUSE it's ironic. It would be funny because people falling on their asses is funny.
posted by spicynuts at 7:52 PM on October 17, 2005

In 2004, Alanis stated that "the most ironic thing about 'Ironic' is that it's not filled with ironies" and acknowledged that the song doesn't live up to the definition, which is what makes it ironic.

Yeah...nice try, Alanis. 'I meant to do that!'
posted by Miko at 8:01 PM on October 17, 2005

0.5)A guy gets whacked in the nuts by a ball.

What would be the incongruity there?

1) Any Helen Keller (sic) joke. The jokes exploit her handicap for comedic effect but it's hard for me to see an incongruity. (It's not like we don't know what her disabilities are.)

2) George Carlin's skits on censorship? (I'm not completely familiar with them, so maybe they aren't a good example.)

3) A guy farts/belches some word/saying. This can be ironic, if, for example, the guy is entering a not guilty plea on an indecency charge, but it doesn't have to be. We used to laugh when the farters (seriously) performed around the bonfire at the beach. I don't see an incongruity there either.

4) Jokes that abuse stereotypes (like Jewish cheapness, Polish stupidity, etc.,). These are similar to the H.K, jokes they are funny (if they are funny at all) because we know the stereotype and expect the outcome.

5) The Aristocrats.

6) Watching people flail about trying to catch slippery pigs. We know exactly what is going to happen, and it's still funny when the people fall on their faces.

6) Finally there is my favorite kind of joke, the shaggy dog joke. Here is an example:
A boy owned a dog that was uncommonly shaggy. Many people remarked on its considerable shagginess. When the boy learned that there are contests for shaggy dogs, he entered his dog, and the dog won first place for shagginess in the local and regional competition. The boy entered the dog into in ever-larger contests, until finally he entered his dog in the world championship for shaggy dogs. When the judges had inspected all the competitor dogs, they remarked about the boy's dog, "He's not so shaggy."

Heh, I love that joke. (I also know a particularly obnoxious joke that comes in three parts, takes more than half an hour to tell and is side splittingly funny, but only if you've heard it before.)

This last joke perhaps gives us an insight into what your friend was getting at. The ending is indeed unexpected, but that isn't enough to make it ironic. I don't think this joke is ironic because we don't have any expectations about how it's going to go. The expectation of some specific action or outcome is crucial to irony. Without it, what we get is perhaps coincidence, or a surprise, maybe even shocking, or a sense that karma was served, but not, I don't think, irony. (This may be true of The Aristocrats joke also.)

As an example (and at the risk of being a pedantic bore): It is ironic that Alanis Morrisset's named her song "Ironic" because we have a specific expectation that we will get some examples of irony, and then we don't. Instead we get something like "It's raining on your wedding day." What is ironic about that by itself? Nothing. What if you think rain is romantic or good luck (as some do)? Then, rain on your wedding day is fortuitous and not at all ironic. (It would be ironic if the bride had moved her wedding to some desert to avoid rain and was then rained on. But that is probably to verbose for a pop song.)

Finally, (hooray) there is a pretty good book "Jokes" by Ted Cohen. It is a pleasant read and has all sorts of good stuff on how joking works. I got the shaggy dog joke from the book (but don't let that stop you from looking at it yourself).
posted by oddman at 8:03 PM on October 17, 2005

So, um yeah, evryone knows about that song. Well when you risk being a pedantic bore, sometimes, you actually are one.
posted by oddman at 8:05 PM on October 17, 2005

I'd like to conjecture that if you honestly believe that all humour is ironic, then you don't have a sense of humour.

Let me explain.

Things are ironically funny because they aren't actually funny. So if you think that the only humour out there is ironic humour, you must honestly believe that nothing is actually funny. If you think nothing is funny, then clearly you don't have a sense of humour.

Q.E.D.
posted by vernondalhart at 8:10 PM on October 17, 2005

This might clear it up:
If a buddy of mine gets hit in the nuts with a ball, it's not ironic, but it sure as hell is funny. If I get hit in the nuts with a ball while I'm laughing at him, it's ironic. But it's really not funny.
posted by horsewithnoname at 8:26 PM on October 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

horsewithnoname, that's funny.
posted by fatllama at 8:33 PM on October 17, 2005

Re: Alanis' Irony... I always thought the "free ticket when you've already paid" was ironic. If it was a free ticket, why the hell did you pay for it? Maybe I'm just stretching this one.

horsewithnoname wins.
posted by jmgorman at 9:11 PM on October 17, 2005

oddman: I think the Aristocrats is ironic because of the whole build-up about it being the dirtiest joke ever told and the joke that comedians tell each other but never the audience, and then the actual joke ends up being an unfunny excuse to be very vulgar and only a "joke" in a very limited, technical sense.
posted by mullacc at 9:12 PM on October 17, 2005

Oddman: Now, see, you're not quite on there. And, by any chance, was that book called The Philosophy of Jokes by Ted Cohen? That's the one I've got, and it's fantastic.
But there is irony in the Shaggy Dog story (which you were much, much too brief about): the irony comes from the expectation of a joke, and the conventions of telling a humorous narrative. We expect a punchline, which the joke keeps promising with its monumental buildup, but then- nothing. Not so shaggy. The irony is that the joke is being played on the listener, not on the subjects of the story.
posted by klangklangston at 9:52 PM on October 17, 2005

Further, there's hardly any incongruity in laughing when Moe twists Curley's nose, yet we laugh anyway.

Do you actually? There is a difference between laughing and being amused.
posted by semmi at 9:57 PM on October 17, 2005

Semmi- Look, I laugh. Especially when he goes "Nyow nyow nyow." What can I say?
posted by klangklangston at 11:26 PM on October 17, 2005

I personally find the premise of the documentary "Grizzly Man" to be hilarious. Note that I don't mean to demean the victim, but a man goes to live with grizzly bears, gets eaten by grizzly bears: hilarious, and completely anti-ironic.

Similarly, people find the Darwin Awards funny, but the idea of people killing themselves by doing stupid things that are likely to kill them is not at all ironic.
posted by dsword at 11:58 PM on October 17, 2005

Irony:
DHS is infiltrated by al-Q.

Firehouse burns down.

Fox guarding the chicken coop.
posted by Goofyy at 12:28 AM on October 18, 2005

Well, I happen to disagree about "Ironic" -- I think they're lousy but mostly acceptable examples of certain types of irony. Irony is not just tragic irony, for instance. "Rain on your wedding day" is not tragedy brought on by your own actions, but it is "irony of fate" in that the Fates are seen to have interfered in your mundane life.

Mainly I find the debate over the song pedantic on one side and obtuse on the other -- or perhaps, ironically, the other way around ....

The confusion between humor and irony, however, is rooted in the fact that both are founded on a kind of dual-track communication. Irony is not necessarily funny, nor is funny necessarily ironic, but they both stem from differening expectations or differing messages in the same communication. Hence it is not irony itself at the root of humor. But someone who only understands irony in a sense of jocular humor might easily make the confusion.

The Greeks were able to subdivide Rhetoric into hundreds of different tropes with their own names. I don't expect every last person on earth to know what litotes means, for instance, but it exists and we can label it and discuss it. It's one thing to sloppily use "ironic" in your everyday life, it's another thing entirely to get into a debate over whether casual misuse of a term justifies treating it as a synonym for another.

The AHD usage note is instructive.
posted by dhartung at 2:06 AM on October 18, 2005

Noted improv educator Keith Johnstone teaches that the humour inherent in a slip-and-fall incident is directly related to an observed status change in the victim. (See also: Sideshow Bob getting hit with a pie.)

Watching Lord Poncey Bolster-Pfister slip on some ice and fall on his ass is funny, because he's accustomed to being treated as the most important element present. The universe made him fall against his will. He has lost his preferred status. He is gravity's bitch.

Is this irony? Is this the unexpected? Maybe, but it's also watching him get his bubble popped.
posted by Sallyfur at 3:00 AM on October 18, 2005

oddman: That joke you speak of wouldn't be the clown joke, would it? And, if so, you've only gotten it up to a half hour?
posted by Captaintripps at 5:06 AM on October 18, 2005

klangklangston, This is what happens when you try to keep you post short. I thought about just that kind of irony factor in shaggy dog jokes but I consider that to be something like meta-irony. It's trading on your expectations about joke telling not on your expectations about shaggy dogs. It seemed to me that the poster's friend was only interested in the irony of the content of the joke not its structure. The same goes for The Aristocrats, it's meta-irony. As dhartung points out (and I gestured at) this may not even be irony at all, it just happens to trade on similar linguistic/social expectations.

The book I have is just titled "Jokes" though it has a sub-title "Philosophical thoughts on joking matters." I copied the shaggy dog joke verbatim. Perhaps yours is a larger work?


Captaintrips, no it's a joke about sheep, cows, and John Wayne. I also know a similar joke about a purple worm. Please, please send me an e-mail with the clown joke. I love shaggy dog jokes.
posted by oddman at 6:55 AM on October 18, 2005

Irony is the most butchered term in the English language. I would hazard to guess that it is misused about 95% of the time. George Carlin gives a perfect example of what consists of comic irony right here:

“If a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck, he is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony.”
posted by any major dude at 7:29 AM on October 18, 2005 [1 favorite]

Irony is the most butchered term in the English language. I would hazard to guess that it is misused about 95% of the time.

Do you not see the problem here? How do you define the English language if not "what is spoken by native speakers of English"? What if I were to tell you that dog actually means 'cat'—it's just that 99.999999% (everyone but me) uses it wrong? You'd laugh, right? Well, ironically, you're really laughing at yourself!
posted by languagehat at 9:00 AM on October 18, 2005

Obligatory link to this Guardian article.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:48 AM on October 18, 2005

One of the reasons things are funny is relief that something bad is happening to someone else, instead of happening to you. As Mel Brooks said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."

My favorite appraisal of "Ironic" was on Popup Video, when an English professor described the song as "really just a series of bummers."
posted by kirkaracha at 10:07 AM on October 18, 2005

Not so shaggy.

The term 'shaggy dog joke' is meant to describe the joke. Underneath all the fur on a shaggy dog may be a very small dog. Similarly, underneath an elaborately built storyline there is a very small punch line. So it is shaggy after all.
posted by Miko at 10:13 AM on October 18, 2005

What about character-based humor? I'm thinking of films by Jim Jarmush, Mike Leigh, Paul Thomas Anderson, Henry Jaglom and Whit Stillman; plays (and stories) by Chekhov and Phillip Barry; novels by Jonathan Ames and Jane Austen.

"Lost in Translation,"
"Murial's Wedding,"
"Lolita,"
"Napolean Dynamite,"
"Freaks and Geeks."
"The Office" and "Extras"

Most of the humor comes from wildly different personally types interacting with each other.

This is my favorite kind of comedy -- really the only type that I deeply love (I enjoy other types, but they don't stay with me -- they are fun, cheap thrills). Some people don't see these sorts of stories as funny (I think those of us who do are a minority, but a large minority), so maybe that's why no one brought them up.

Granted, some of the examples above might contain ironic elements, but I don't love them -- or find them funny -- for their irony. I find them funny for their quirky characters and quirky social exchanges.
posted by grumblebee at 11:27 AM on October 18, 2005

Do you not see the problem here? How do you define the English language if not "what is spoken by native speakers of English"? What if I were to tell you that dog actually means 'cat'—it's just that 99.999999% (everyone but me) uses it wrong?

no, because the people who use "irony" wrong don't understand how it is different from other, more general concepts. It isn't merely a disagreement between two schools of belief; it's a failure on the part of some percentage to really grasp the fundamental notion. Take "deja-vu" - some percentage of people use this as if it means "been here before!" - not to refer to a strange/ unsettling neurological experience, but to refer to a perfectly ordinary repetition of an everyday event. Some people use it this way as a joke, but some people just don't know what deja-vu is, and think it just means "being in a familiar situation". But just because people use it that way doesn't mean that is the right way to use it: the word still has a correspondent that is only expressed by this term.
posted by mdn at 11:48 AM on October 18, 2005

Exactly, mdn. Consider irony a technical term. If 99% of the population were misusing nuclear fission no one would claim that to imply a redefinition of the term.

Also, the type of joke mentioned upthread is commonly known as a "shaggy dog story" [wikipedia link].
posted by nobody at 3:14 PM on October 18, 2005