Podcast

Friday, August 27, 2021

Episode 31: Irony


Welcome back to the Secrets of Story Podcast! James and I have both had epic vacations, so we’re rested and ready and raring to go. For this episode, we got into a long, unproductive, and very contentious discussion about whether comedy ages well, but I snipped all that out, so you get 69 minutes of sweetness and light as we discuss Irony in Casablanca, Blazing Saddles and Mulan!

Here’s the video I did about Irony in Mulan, so you can see some of these in action:

7 comments:

Jonathan Auxier said...

I appreciate your discussion of this important topic -- I think that irony is one of the most important angles in Matt's book. Three things:

1) Thanks for the plug about the Artist/Artifact/Audience episode. I'm still pretty excited about this idea and have been applying it to my process and how I approach critique. Someday I will do a TED Talk about it that no one will watch.

2) Can you unpack how "sardonic" is different from "sarcastic" or "ironic"? I got a little lost there.

3) I can't believe you didn't actually give us the 30 minutes of Matt and James fighting about BLAZING SADDLES.

Matt Bird said...

1) I regret that I buried that episode. Everyone should unearth it.

2) I didn't get the difference either, but James said there was one, so I went with it. I see that google says:

sar·don·ic
/särˈdänik/
adjective
grimly mocking or cynical.
"Starkey attempted a sardonic smile"

So I guess I can see the difference.

3) As I said on Facebook when someone asked to hear it there, you can always tell that a discussion is going well when one person is reduced to sighing and saying, "Look, what do you want from me here?"

Friday said...

So, continuing this pattern...

1) Is this really the first podcast episode on irony? Wow. Call me shocked because that is the single biggest take away (for me anyway) from the book which the podcast is based on!

2) Using three different types of films to show the different types of irony really worked well for me -- sweet!

3) Episode flew by so I'm extra bummed we didn't get thirty minutes of Matt and James fighting about Blazing Saddles!

James Kennedy said...

Matt won't post the Blazing Saddles content because I won the argument.

LMNtrees said...

I also really want to hear the argument about Blazing Saddles.

Steve Bird said...

Reminds me of Del Close’s cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off https://fb.watch/7QuBZdHOOm/

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