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.
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