QUESTION: your best examples of.....IRONY?

[Melissa L]

I want to do a mini-lesson on IRONY as part of my closure with THE CRUCIBLE.

 

I was just thinking, it would be best to introduce this with examples from TV!! 

 

Think of your favorite sitcom (or drama, reality television program, etc.)

 

Can you remember a great example of irony - verbal, situational, or dramatic?  Preferably something that is so popular I can pull it up on youtube?

 

For example, I LOVE using Seinfeld.  I've taught pronouns with the Susie episode and speaking in the third person with the Jimmy episode.  I'll share those links if anyone is interested. 

THANKS!

[Kevin Dooley]

Here's a file of ironic pictures (irony pictures?).  Several are of "irony" graffiti (not ironic graffiti).

Enjoy.

[Kevin Dooley]

Often I've shown a clip to my students for figurative language: analogies, idioms, etc., but I just realized (DUH!) how perfect it is to illustrate irony!

In Disney's "Mulan" a soldier, Shang, is training new troops, while singing "I'll Make a Man Out of You!" and one of the newbies is, ironically, a woman: Mulan!

One lyric is: Did he send me daughters/When I asked for sons? (Meant as an insult, Mulan is a daughter who chose to join the army herself!)

The major irony is that, through the course of the song's action, a woman, Mulan, albeit in disguise, gives them all the confidence to "Be a Man!"

This clip is available on YouTube.  (The Jackie Chan version in Chinese is very cool, BTW!)

[Rachel Kooiker]

This is too funny (and ironic).  I was in the middle of teaching a mini-lesson and activity on irony (taugh along with the reading of MT Anderson's great novel Feed) when this discussion cropped up.  I used some ideas found on a CUNY film school website today, but in the future will use clips of Arrested Development (one of my favorite shows for irony- there is one clip/episode where they explain irony as something ironic is happening!)  Also, Feed is rife with all types of irony if you have not read it. 

[Terisa King]

I am looking for clips of an old TV series called "My Mother the Car" starring Jerry Van Dyke.  the idea was that the voice of the main character's mother comes through the radio of an old Model Ford. Irony comes in the play of words. Who drives us?  Who takes us where we want to go? ect.  Can you love a car as much as you love your Mother?