Irony SA: Funny The way it is,Dave Matthews Band

                                                                                                      Tyler Derksen

                                                                                                             3/29/2012

                                                                                                                          G Block

                                                                                                                          Irony SA

The way things work in today aren’t so much funny as they are ironic events. In Funny the Way It Is Dave uses situational irony, dramatic imagery, and deep symbolism to show how the world has changed over time and how people overlook some of the simplest events such as a kid walking to school or someone crossing or standing on a bridge.

The way Dave uses imagery makes it seem like both these events whether it's depressing or not these events are happening really close to each other. Such as “On a soldier’s last breath his baby’s being born”. It sort of creates the picture of this soldier badly wounded being rushed down the hallway of a hospital where either in the same hospital or even a different hospital a mother is also being rushed down a hallway about to give birth to a child. All these events that Dave is singing about are dramatic events that are not really funny in any way. And in today’s society these events are not very clearer than they were back than where everyone knew there was a war happening, everyone knew if “Billy” dropped out of school.

In Funny the Way It Is situational irony is shown in all these events Dave is singing about such as baby’s being born, kids walking to school and showing the exact opposite which is people dying and dropping out of school. “A bomb blast brings a building crashing to the floor you hear the children play war”. When someone looks at a topic such as war they don’t usually look at it has a happy joyous moment where you’re laughing and having fun with your friends. But when it’s a child they don’t know the difference is and how big of a difference it is. To them it is all just one big game. But we know it is not. In another sort of way these events are also paradoxes because we know these are not funny events but there may be a deeper meaning behind all these events that makes them funny.

            Some of these ironic events are all symbolism for a bigger larger idea that doesn’t really stand out unless you look at it from a different perspective. “And that war song is playing [why can’t we be friends]”. The symbolism is it is a war song about being friends which is not the case when a war is happening. There is no friendship out on that battlefield. And the big question is when people hear about war now a day’s it is a lot more of asking that simple question “why can’t we be friends?” ; where during times say world war 2 these types of question weren’t as outspoken. “Somebody’s heart is broken and it becomes your favorite song”. When the artist wrote “your favorite song” they had a deeper symbol for that song which might be someone who passed away or someone they loved that left them. But you as the listener do not look at it as that way you look at it as a song that has a good beat or deep lyrics. You complete are ignoring the symbolism of the song. Dave is pointing out how people ignore these deep symbols and it doesn’t affect anyone where music written in the past had meaning and symbols in it and they were not just writing a song to reach their next deadline.

            “Standing on a bridge, watch the water passing under me it must’ve been much harder when there was no bridge just water”. The difficulty of task these days have changed from the past where it seems everyone is sort of in a rush to complete these tasks and not realizing how much easier it is these days. Take buying a music album. Back in the day you either couldn’t buy the CD (because you probably couldn’t afford it) or if you could you would have to run down to the record store and purchase it with the possibility of the store being sold out. And now a days you just can go on your PC and buy it in at least 30 seconds. In Funny the Way It Is Dave uses situational irony, dramatic imagery, and deep symbolism to show how the world has changed over time and how people overlook some of the simplest events such as a kid walking to school or someone crossing or standing on a bridge.

           

SA 1

When you or any solider are one the frontlines of war they tend to have mixed emotions; such as fear or confusion. In the song Frontline by Pillar the band uses strong narration, a serious tone and a first person point of view to display what emotions soldiers in war should show when they’re on the frontline.

The strong narration in Frontline feels as though it is either a high ranking solider or general basically speaking to his troops saying you shouldn’t be scared or confused of what to expect when you are on the frontline of battle. For those of you who don’t know the frontline of a military line in war are the ones taking all the immediate damage from the opposing side. So this could be the general explain what it means to be a solider that has either been on the frontline, positioned on the frontline, or died on the frontline. And the reason he is doing this is because soldiers are all viewed as one in the same. “We live our lives on the front lines, we’re not afraid of the fast times”. What the band is narrating is soldiers on the frontline have to be quick, they have to be able to make decisions right then and their cause when you look at the line “We drive on and don’t look back”.

When someone is telling a story of soldiers they may use a more depressing type of tone to make people feel bad for the solider. Where in frontline when Pillar sings about these soldiers they use a motivating and angry tone to basically sort of display what is happening and what is going through the minds of these men. They don’t want you to see depression in the eyes of these soldiers and you may ask why and they will simply say “Because your sympathy is not our main priority when we are out there and having to decisions right then and there”. “We’ve got to lead the way” this quote shows that it is up to these troops to basically lead the way for all the other soldiers out there fighting.

“We fight to live, we live to fight and tonight, you’ll hear my battle cry”. This shows that we are looking at these insane battles on the frontline through the eyes of a soldier who is literally there in this moment on the front line. It is also obvious from this quote that this soldier is neither scared nor confused. He seems like he’s pumped up or angry and ready for battle. The first point of view works here because if we were seeing this through the eyes of third person we wouldn’t have the same emotional feel that we are getting from the one soldier.     

Soldier have it rough because you never really have to emotional feel for then because most of the time they are offended in some way and start to get mad. They start to say stuff like “you haven’t   seen what I have seen”. But now in this song they are basically saying don’t think or worry about use because it does not affect us in any way shape or form. And that is a complete different reaction than what people usually think. In the song Frontline by Pillar the band uses strong narration, a serious tone and a first person point of view to display what emotions soldiers in war should show when they’re on the frontline.