Cynical net art often chooses Sonic as a consciously-ironic central subject, as if in homage to the nerd tragedy of his fall from grace, or in mockery of the fans who do poorly-drawn but earnest Sonic fan art from a place of endless youth.
Postscript, via e-mail, under the ironic, mock-Teutonic subject line "DEVEREUX Konzept": "I didn't mean to be coy," Mr. Lamos writes from cyberspace.
The movie's lack of irony is all the more ironic since its subject is the recklessness of mankind in daring to synthesize humans androidally in order to extend our own control over the universe.
Also telling is the mantra that appears on another scrap of paper: "Light and ironic on serious subjects without frivolity".
For a culture that once created the Kama Sutra and the erotic carvings at Khajuraho, it's ironic that many subjects remain taboo – among them, men having sex with men, drug abuse and the issue of easy access to condoms.
He posed a slightly formal diction in ironic juxtaposition to gritty subject matter: war, drugs, poverty, madness, moral disequilibrium, betrayal — varieties of human folly set against epic backgrounds.
Not only are we all alone, we're all going to die, too – and Burnside sets out, in poems whose rare and memorable beauty feels at times like an ironic comment on their subject matter, to make sure we don't forget it.
Actual posterity, in the form of reprints of all his writing ("Morte D'Urban," $12.95; "Wheat That Springeth Green," $12.95; "The Stories of J. F. Powers," $14.95) by New York Review Books, has been kinder, though it seems sadly likely that the combination of Powers's refined style, ironic pessimism, and chosen subject — priests and more priests — will eventually deal his work a second death.
Actual posterity, in the form of reprints of all his writing ("Morte D'Urban," $12.95; "Wheat That Springeth Green," $12.95; "The Stories of J. F. Powers," $14.95) by New York Review Books, has been kinder, though it seems sadly likely that the combination of Powers's refined style, ironic pessimism, and chosen subject — priests and more priests — will eventually deal his work a second death..
But for every ironic take on the subject, every "Married to the Mob" or "Prizzi's Honor," there are a dozen films, like "The Godfather" or "Once Upon a Time in America," that aspire to transcend the genre or merely blow it out of proportion.
