The reaction by so many critics at the time to Jagged Little Pill and specifically the song Ironic became forever linked in my mind to another less important but still revealing cultural happening.
It was a few years after the release of JLP that NYT Book Review published a piece about a guy named Jebediah Purdy. I think the title of the review was “Against Irony”, or maybe it was the title of the guy’s essay, but in my memory NYT made him out to be a modern day Thoreau. Took him very seriously. And his observations were just the most unselfconsciously sanctimonious, condescending and privileged observations about culture you could imagine.
Even though there was no clear link that I can remember between the two things, the phenomenon of male music (or non-music) critics bloviating about Alanis’s use of the term ironic seemed in retrospect like a precursor to the later bloviator. Instead of dealing with Alanis’s music honestly, male critics (and a lot of men in general) focused on critiquing her speech and arguing she didn’t understand irony, labeled her “emotional,” “irrational,” etc.
