Last week, Charlie Baker, thesaurus in hand, printed an article in Trinity News bemoaning irony’s dominant position in modern culture.
In his frustration, he even went so far as to suggest that “in some circles, it is acceptable to use racially offensive epithets as a term of greeting between friends”, invoking irony as an excuse. This slightly absurd notion (“Hello, you nigger!”) was a sticking point for Charlie, who overlooked, for the most part (and not necessarily to the detriment of his piece), the grotesque influence irony has had on our consumption of music, as a society.
For this article, Oisín Murphy had lunch with friend Katy Deacon, a Senior Freshman TSM student, with a view to discussing the machinations of pop culture…
“Oh my god, how insane is it that I bought Lady Gaga’s album! Because it’s, like, just pop music but, you know, I’m in ‘college’ and stuff! I should feel guilty about this, right? But it’s so insanely ironic oh-10!” Katy is sitting opposite me, rolling up another cigarette that looks more like a miniature spliff. She licks the seal like a dog.
Are people saying “oh-10” this year? I suspect some must be.
I venture that she ought to spend her money on other music. Tentatively, I use the word “better”, hoping it doesn’t offend, even though I feel I shouldn’t care too much about what she thinks, I don’t want to let on that I resent all womankind, certainly not over lunch anyway, which hasn’t even arrived yet.
“Uh… I don’t really know, I mean, I don’t exactly take myself as seriously as you do…,” she smirks, without making eye-contact, as though speaking in front of an audience of like-minded people, nodding in agreement with her assertion that life is some kind of joke which I don’t get, “It’s just a bit of fun.”
“It does have consequences though, doesn’t it?” I wonder aloud. “I mean, if you buy it, you’re validating its existence – it seems you’re making a relatively negative judgement as to its quality but at the same time providing a demand for its production. Because of irony as well, I don’t really understand –”
“Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t like some of her songs,” she interrupts.
I tell her I don’t like any of her songs. I ask her why she likes them.
“Oh come on! They’re really fun to dance to; I just enjoy them, like.” I think I’m approaching the kernel of truth within the equivocal praise visited upon the Lady Gaga phenomenon: the explanation for her transcendent appeal and applause.
It’s the dancing. It has to be. The music is derivative and familiar enough that people will want to dance to it. Not dance alone in their rooms, of course, but in a club with lots of potential sexual partners and possibilities for being felt up and treated with disdain by everyone there except your friends who don’t actually like you very much but it makes people sad to be alone. It needs to be dressed up in such a way that it isn’t just Cascada, though; poor Cascada just don’t get irony, they’re so desperately naff, aren’t they? Nobody’s going to appropriate Cascada into the listening habits of the middle-classes. So come on, Katy, is it the clubs, the dancing, the bawdiness of it all, wrapped up in absolvent irony so you don’t have to think about it?
She taps her cigarette onto the path, observing passing traffic like some kind of smoking, staring idiot. “I guess it’s just a laugh. I can’t really explain it. It’s not like she’s all I listen to, anyway.”
No, I suppose she isn’t. It would be a bit absurd to only listen to one particular artist for one’s whole life, to be fair. She must see a problem with such an approach to music, though? Surely excusing bad taste with irony creates more problems than it solves – acts as a “Get out of jail free” card for those wishing to abdicate responsibility for their own choices? It’s part of a wider pattern of human indiscretion, yes, but how can it be justified on a commercial plane? Record executives aren’t piling up mounds of worthless irony-dollars with sour expressions on their faces, cursing the knowing smugness of quasi-intellectual college students.
“It doesn’t matter what one person does; why do you take these things so seriously?” she presses me, adjusting her beret.
To me, Lady Gaga represents all that is objectionable about pop music: the commodification of sexuality, the cynical lack of technical originality, self-promotion and the singular interest in profitability – supposedly justified, somehow, through irony. “We ought to feel more responsible,” I suggest, “for the things we consume, and see ourselves a part of the cultural machinations we like to observe as outsiders.”
“If you’re so ‘socially conscious’,” she smiles, “how come you didn’t pay 20c extra for the Fair Trade coffee?”
Fuck you, Katy. She really thinks she’s won because of that. I can see it in the way she rolls herself back and forth on that bastard wheelchair.
