Right, Irony

Uh, ok. To review:

The art of narrative is based exclusively upon ironic juxtapositions. The four types of irony, verbal, situational, dramatic, and cosmic, (and sometimes historical) are combined and arranged into a kind of ironic superstructure, which is the story within a work of narrative art. Such structures of irony underline both Comedy and Tragedy. If a work is not a Comedy or Tragedy, it is a History, which will use historical irony in place of some of the other forms.

Stories can be considered in terms of their ironic density and ironic height. Ironic Density is simply the frequency of the occurrence of ironic moments.

Ironic height is the degree which a particular irony shocks the audiences expectations. The greater height, the more power it to the work. The funnier the comedy, the sadder the tragedy, the greater sense of importance to the here and now granted to a history.

Note: all ironies, of whatever height, must ultimately make sense on some level. If the irony is not, ultimately, logical, it is not an irony, but an absurdity. Absurdities, are not ultimately interesting to the audience, although they can be used effectively as set-ups to irony. The way in which an irony ultimately makes sense could be called the ironic return. It is the way in which an irony subtly makes some broader point about the world. Any comment a work has to make, pertaining to politics, religion, culture, whatever, should be tied up in an ironic return. Otherwise the point is simply polemic, and times spent upon it dilutes the ironic density of the narrative.

The denser the ironies in a story, the better. The higher the ironies, the better. Multiply the density of the ironies (d, let's say) by the highest irony (h, let's say) and you get the "objective" quality of a narrative (N, let's say). So: d x h = N, or dh=N.

However, works of narrative art are not merely stories, but also the format in which the stories are relayed. Multiply objective quality of a narrative by the degree to which it's form accentuates it's ironies (F, let's say), and you get the "objective quality" of a a work of narrative art (A, let's say). So, NF=A.

Of course, irony is largely dependent on context both to be recognized and to be appreciated at a certain height. As context changes from person to person and culture to culture, the value of N, and thus A, fill fluctuate from person to person. Which account why have such a hard time agreeing upon which works of art are superior to which. However, within a defined time or place, the rough values of such should be calculable, so that you can say that, at least, Shakespeare is superior to Michael Bay. Or Shakespeare is superior to Marlow, or Tarantino is superior to Bay, if you want a more a focused time and place, and an identical artistic medium, for the purpose of your comparison.

But make no mistake, the value of a work of narrative art can be judged, and, though inaccurately, measured, by studying it as a structure of ironies.

The Stuff Stories Are Made Of, Part 1

When I decided to be an English major, one of the things I remember being disappointed by was when I learned that literary criticism didn't really concern itself with matters of what was good and bad. It was concerned with meaning. There would not really be an attempt to reason with what stories—novels or short stories—were good or bad. That was just subjective. And in the one and only creative writing class I took, we were told, when critiquing each others stories, not to suggest plot points to each other. Just tips on writing. There was one quite good reason for this, which is that if you told someone what should happen in a story, it stopped being their story, and started being your story. But on the other hand, often what was wrong with the stories was that the stories were just bad stories. Uninteresting. I didn't care what happened to the characters. By saying that the we couldn't critique the events in the story, the class was effectively saying, there are no bad stories, just badly told stories.

But I think there are such things as bad stories, and good stories, separate from the how they're conveyed to their audience. You can have a well made movie or a well written book, and they can still have good moments, well-cut action sequences or beautifully florid passages of description, but they still won't add up to much and most people won't enjoy seeing them or reading them.

So what makes for a good story? What elements make for stories that people want to read/watch? There are elements that people say they read things for, or go to movies, that are not related to form. Good characters. Lots of people talk about how important characters are. Or suspense. People read to see what happens next. Or conflict. Conflict is really important. Most plots center around some central conflict. People read on to see the conflict resolved. Mystery. Maybe there isn't some tension are work in the story any more—the killer has already killed, or something—but people want to know what actually happened. They want the unknown revealed. Little moments. Some stories ain't even all that great, but there are some moments in it that are really good. Little moments of quiet sadness, or uproarious comedy, or touching kindness, or shocking cruelty. Many comedies are comprised of really pointless plots that are just excuses to string along a series of funny bits on (Monty Python and the Holy Grail jumps to mind as a masterpiece of this format). And of course, in the big stories, they want some commentary, or insight, on the human condition, or life and the universe or something. In order for a story to be great, it usually needs to knock us around a bit and leave us thinking big thoughts.

But what makes these things interesting and meaningful. What makes for good characters? What makes something suspenseful? What makes us want to see a conflict concluded, or find out what we didn't know? What makes those little moments special? What makes comedy funny and tragedy cathartic. What makes a story great?

So this is what I thought about.

And the answer, I decided, is irony.

Now, when I say irony, I mean it in the broadest sense of the word. I don't mean it the way people mean it when they talk about people being ironic, or how they meant it when, after 9/11, everyone was talking about the Death of Irony. Usually when people use it in that sense they just mean either verbal irony, or base sarcasm, or something in between. And this misuse has lead to a lot of blather about how no one really knows what irony really means.

That's nonsense. Irony is a very simple concept; all it is the going against of expectations. And what stories need to be interesting is irony. In fact, I think you could say that stories are built out of ironies. Big ironies and little ironies.

Why irony? Well, any good story has to fulfill two somewhat contradictory things. They need to 1) justify why the story is unique enough to be told and 2) be relatable to the rest of human experience.

No one wants to hear a story where nothing interesting happens, like the last time you went grocery shopping. Nor do they want to hear a long string of pointlessly absurd events that have no relation or meaning to each other. Now, you could create art out of such situations. You could write a good poem about going to the supermarket, and the average episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus is basically an series of absurd and unrelated events. But that doesn't mean your poem about going to the supermarket is a good story, and no episode of Flying Circus has anything like a continuous plot (with the possible exception of the one about Scott of the Antarctic, but I think that one just has one really long sketch in it).

An ironic situation manages to fulfill both qualities. In fact, irony is inherent in the fulfillment of both qualities. Any ironic situation is more unique than most situations, since it goes against what is expected—that is, what usually happens. And of course, an implicit aspect of any ironic situation is that, though it goes against expectations, it's rooted in some logic, some sense that what doesn't seem to make sense actually does. Thus it's relatable. If the situation doesn't make sense, then it's just absurd, and absurdity isn't really interesting or relatable. (Although absurdities can be used quite well as a set up for ironies. They heighten the relevant factors by stripping out other, complicating factors, that would undermine the situation. Beckett and Python do this a lot.)

So in any ironic situation there is a kind of return. Let's call it the Ironic Return. The Return is the way in which the ironic moment offers some insight into the world, and thus makes some comment upon it.

More later.

WVW: Theory of Social Change

(I have decided to write a series of posts elucidating my world view. As this is a bunch of vaguely related concepts and ideas, not necessarily in any specific order, but more strands of a whole, I have decided to call it my World View Web. Today, I tackle my Theory of Social Change.)

I don't consider myself a Democrat. I don't identify that way. When I fill out voter registration forms, I always end up putting independent. Not that I don't invariably end up voting for the Democrat. I do. It's just, my politics are so divergent from the Democratic positions, that pretending to be one of them would seem ... dishonest, somehow. At the end of the day, in the statistics, I should just not be counted among their number. I need to in that small way register my divergence, even if for all purposes (thought not intents) I am a Democrat.

My politics vibrate between the poles of democratic socialism and anarcho-communism. i am not to the left of the left, but to the left of the left of the left. I am out there, an extreme outliers. Now, to say I am somewhere between a democratic socialist and an anarcho-communist is not to say that the policies that I should be enacted now at this moment are those policies. It is to say that I think that these policies, these systems, would be those that reflect a true and just society. I don't think society, as it stands now, has the structure or cultural opinions necessary for such systems to work. Before those systems would be viable, people would have to come around to my way of thinking about a variety of issues.

Needless to say, I think that my opinions are correct, and that the nature of the culture at large is based on erroneous assumptions. If I'm wrong, however, well, I am wrong, and since I support the endpoint policies that I do based on my other opinions, which is where my true fealty lies, then I have no problem changing my political opinions if or when my views are proved wrong. My fealty is to Truth, not ideology.

But in the meantime, those are the positions I take.

And here is where we get to my Theory of Social Change. Since my opinions are so far outside the mainstream, I don't think it is possible for my ideas to just be argued for on the political stage. I may argue for them on my own, but I accept that there is no place for them yet in the mainstream.

Yet.

As far as I see it, socio-political change needs to occur at a gradual rate. It needs to move through stages, like on a staircase. Sometimes, We falter and walk back a couple of steps, like we have after WWII. Sometimes we take the stairs two at a time, like during the new deal. However, if you try to just jump up the entire staircase, and it's a big staircase, you will fall flat on your face, probably somewhere around midway, and spend a while falling down. Like Soviet Russia. Or the French Revolution.

So social change needs to be gradual, to a degree. America is just not ready for socialism. The world just isn't ready for anarchy.

So what do you do if you think that those should be the actual endpoints for society? Well, obviously, make sure we walk up the steps! As quickly and as safely as possible. Perhaps even taking two at a time sometimes.

This means, the real goal for anyone who agrees with socialist or anarchist views is voting green or burning down buildings or rioting. That is sowing seeds that simply will not grow, my friends! No, it is working to push the conversation as far to the left as possible, doing whatever at the moment will lead to the conversation moving as fast as possible.

If this view is accepted, then the correct topic of debate concerning politics, not just for socialists and anarchists, but for anyone to the left of the mainstream, anyone who could qualify as being mocked by the Judean People's Front, is what tactics will lead to the advancement of left-wing goals, and at the fastest rate.

Well? What is it?