Chic Ironic Bitterness

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Chic Ironic Bitterness Chic Ironic Bitterness R. Jay Magill, Jr. p the university of michigan press Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2007 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2010 2009 2008 2007 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Magill, R. Jay (Ronald Jay), 1972– Chic ironic bitterness / R. Jay Magill, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11621-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-11621-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. United States—Intellectual life. 2. United States—Politics and government—1989– 3. United States—Social conditions—1980– 4. Irony—Social aspects—United States. 5. Trust—Social aspects— United States. 6. Politics and culture—United States. 7. Television and politics—United States. 8. Romanticism—History. 9. Irony—History. 10. Social contract—History. I. Title. E169.12.M15 2007 973—dc22 2007019164 ISBN-13 978-0-472-02432-2 (electronic) for my parents, Ronald and Bonnie Magill, and my grandparents, Harold and Kathryn Magill & Edmund and Evelyn Kling, Jr. Entire strata of the population have been living for a considerable period in an inner somewhere-else. They do not feel bound to what are called the fundamental values of society. —Peter Sloterdijk, The Critique of Cynical Reason (1983) Preface This book began vaguely in 1999. Not that any of it was written but for a small review of Jedediah Purdy’s book For Common Things on a satire website that two friends and I had started—The Saucepot Review—which has since, like all dead websites, become a portal for porn. Now eight years later, the topic of irony as a social attitude, as a form of social critique, is even more palpable and—as Borat so deftly displayed—has even greater effects on political and national identity. September 11, as it shook everything else in the world, only further widened the cultural fault line between the “serious” pundit and the ironic critic. As political speech and culture over the past half-dozen years have become increasingly grave, bleak, and eerie, seriousness has somehow become the litmus test of true patriotism. Yet as we’ve had to adjust to the rhetoric and living conditions in the shadow of terrorism , the fanaticism of religious groups, and the publishing of cartoons about religious ‹gures, irony as a method of wry, skeptical detachment has thankfully proven itself to be far from dead, as many predicted and some even hoped for. When Stephen Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April 2006, it shoved into high relief the tension between the serious and ironic modes of public engagement. Colbert’s tone did not register with many in the audience of decorated military folk, high of‹cials, Hill workers, media bigwigs, and Pentagon types. The blows were hard. Laughs were nervous. The president grew noticeably incensed. Tension, sweatingly palpable, scented the room. The performance glaringly opened up the faults of the present and of politics, making for awkward, weighty silences. Yet scarcely a network mentioned it. Many claimed the performer had bombed. Colbert’s speech, however, far from being insigni‹cant, was a visible emanation from within a culture swimming with knowing assumptions about its nation’s power, politics, and pragmatism. Ironic debasing of the Colbert variety is motivated by a sort of entrenched disgust with the state of our national being. It is, as it’s long been, a method of critique that gets to the heart of this disgust with economy and stealth. It seems at times an alternative, in our cosmopolitan minds, to actual revolution. Raising its perky head most alertly when it sees a dreaded state of affairs passing as normal, the ironic, satiric turn seen so frequently of late is a way to distance oneself from...