The BBC recently tackled one of the great questions of the modern world: do Americans get irony? And, no, they weren’t joking. Or, at least, not as far as my feeble, irony-deprived American brain can perceive.

The notion that Yanks don’t get irony permeates British culture. A few years ago, for example, The Daily Mirror got into a bit of a tiff with multi-millionaire Steven Bing, the American cad who impregnated Liz Hurley and then insisted the child wasn’t his. The Mirror chivalrously took the side of poor, defenseless Liz, who risked being cast out into the street with nothing more than her own millions. In fact, The Mirror took its duty to protect British womanhood so seriously that it printed Bing’s home number, and urged its readers to make their feelings known to the dastard. Bing retaliated with a $40 million lawsuit. Ultimately, he agreed to settle when The Daily Mirror agreed to print an apology. The apology turned out to be a full page affair which went on at eyebrow-raising length about just how incredibly heartbroken the paper was that they even thought about defaming “a philanthropist and humanitarian” such as Bing. Just in case any of its readers missed the point, The Mirror printed an article on the facing page with the headline “Why Americans Can’t Get Irony Or Sarcasm.” They were, in essence, placing a $40 million bet that the stereotype was rooted in fact.
From the Daily Mirror’s point of view, the money couldn’t have been safer if it was locked in the Tower of London. In the British mind, Americans are no more capable of expressing or understanding irony than they are of spelling “flavour” properly, or driving on the correct side of the road.
That attitude has always puzzled me. I wouldn’t expect an Englishman to have read much Mark Twain, of course, and even most Americans aren’t familiar with Ben Franklin’s brilliantly ironic essay justifying the enslavement of white Christian Men. But the British love The Simpsons as much as Americans do, and Michael Moore vastly more. Many of them have had at least some exposure to Larry David, The Onion, Jon Stewart, or Doonesbury. And they certainly know that we put George W. Bush in the White House–they can’t think we meant that seriously, can they?
The unjustness of the accusation rankles even more when I recall all the times that British people have failed to understand my own irony. I once, for example, told a British friend of mine that she had better not make me angry, since I had just taken the first martial arts class of my life, and I was no doubt now a human killing machine. She gave me a puzzled look, and then said, in the tones you might use to break the news about Santa Claus to a teenager who still believes in him, “I think it would take many years of study to reach that point.” This, mind you, is an intelligent and sophisticated woman, who frequently makes ironic comments herself.
The problem, I think, is that of all forms of humor, irony is most dependent on subtle cultural assumptions. I know enough about the American can-do spirit to know that, no matter how optimistic we may be, none of us would expect to transform our body into a weapon without years of study (or, at the very least, a 30-second training montage backed by zippy pop music.) She, however, has probably witnessed Americans trying to do something that a Brit would consider unachievable–so how could she know what we’d consider practical?
Similarly, on more than one occasion, I’ve ironically proposed some crazy money-making scheme to an Englishman, only to endure a somewhat condescending explanation of why my plan wouldn’t work. I try not to get annoyed when that happens. After all, my countrymen invested billions of dollars in utterly implausible dotcoms. Why shouldn’t I be serious when I suggest that the UK could eliminate income tax entirely if Prince Charles simply agreed to marry a different woman every day for the rest of his life, thereby generating billions of pounds in limited edition commemorative plates and pay-per-view televised weddings?
Contrariwise, Americans think of the British as polite to excess. So when a British paper publishes a full-page ad stuffed with groveling apologies, well, how are we to know it’s meant to be too polite? Even after 17 months here, I still can’t always tell the difference between polite and “polite.” At last week’s BAFTA awards, host Steven Fry’s introductions of the actors who were presenting awards was so thoroughly fulsome that I had to ask a British friend if he was “taking the piss.” (It turns out he was entirely sincere in his groveling–unless my British friend is taking the piss out of me.)
In short, when an Englishman speaks to an American, he detects no irony in anything the Yankee says. Meanwhile, the Englishman’s own ironic remarks pass entirely unnoticed. Each side walks away believing the other to be just a little too serious–and in that mutual assumption of mild superiority, peace between nations is assured.