The media and the irony of politically serious situations: consequences of the Muhammed cartoons in Finland

Abstract

This article discusses the connections between political conflicts and situational irony and their relationship to the media. The focus is on a continuum of ironic events that started from the crisis following the publication of the Muhammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which led to a satirical comic strip being published on the web pages of Kaltio, a small cultural journal produced in Oulu, Northern Finland, and ended in the dismissal of the journal’s editor. The empirical discussion concentrates on how the newspaper Kaleva, representing the media, functioned as an active participant in the process of making the incidents surrounding the Kaltio comic strip episode appear ironic, even though the matter was in fact politically highly sensitive. The purpose is to illustrate how and with what intentions political discourses and various textual strategies such as explicit and implicit verbal irony are used. The main argument is that making politically sensitive situations appear ironic is a matter of positioning values, in this case raising the value of freedom of speech above religious norms.

Keywords

Finlandization freedom of speech the media Muhammed cartoons situational irony

Is taking humour seriously a semantic paradox (Palmer, 1994)? Amusement and seriousness are conventionally understood as opposites, but, as is well known, something intended as funny can be extremely serious, while serious situations may on some occasions seem funny. Generally speaking, humour is based on stereotypes and social and cultural processes in which self-identities are constructed and sustained through simplified category distinctions between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Jokes about neighbouring countries are good examples of how humour functions as a sociocultural tool through which national identities are maintained. Similarly, the motive for making fun of ethnic minorities or religious groups is ultimately a sociopolitical one and is mainly understood as a socially subjugating practice (see Perks, 2010). Hence it is reasonable to argue that there is no such thing as ‘innocent laughter’ and that all humour has its serious side. In some cases, humour may become serious in drastic proportions, while on the other hand people can often find a funny side in a serious situation. It has been argued that the maintenance of social life, or order in general, is dependent on the practice of ridicule (Billig, 2005: 201–2).

The purpose of this article is to discuss critically the sociopolitical aspects of irony, especially from the viewpoint of how confrontations between the category frames of ‘serious’ and ‘funny’ can turn into ironic situations. The specific focus will be on how the media do not just reflect or present the ironic nature of certain situations but function as active participants in the process of making things appear ironic. This empirical case concerns the media discussion surrounding a satirical comic strip published on 19 February 2006 on the web pages of Kaltio, a small cultural journal produced in Oulu, Northern Finland. This comic strip, Muhammed, pelko ja sananvapaus (Muhammed, fear and freedom of speech), by Ville Ranta, was a critical and satirical comment on how the Finnish political leadership had reacted to the worldwide geopolitical crisis that followed the publishing of the Muhammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Ultimately, the publishing of Ranta’s cartoon was followed by several ironic events, all the way up to the dismissal of the journal’s chief editor. This article focuses not just on how this episode was ironic, but rather how it was made to appear so in the local newspaper, Kaleva. The purpose is to illustrate how and with what intentions political discourses and various textual strategies such as explicit and implicit verbal irony are used in the media to make politically delicate and, from a certain point of view, serious episodes appear to be a sequence of ironic situations. The stance adopted towards the media is consciously critical, but the purpose is not to criticize or to judge acts of journalism but rather to demonstrate how the criticism functions as a route through which the multifaceted role of irony can be discussed.

Perceiving the world through irony

When perceiving politically sensitive and serious situations as somehow ironic, it is crucial to highlight the fundamental differences between the two main classes of ironic phenomena: communicative irony and situational irony (Szerszynski, 2007: 340–3). In communicative irony, the surface meanings of some instance of communication are in conflict with the actual, intended meanings, whereas in situational irony communicative contradictions are not necessary, but rather the situation of the communication itself is ironic as perceived from the outside. It is important to note that one can intend to say something ironic (communicative irony) but one cannot intend to do something ironic (situational irony) (Gibbs, 1994: 363). In situational irony, ‘the understanding of a situation possessed by one or more actors acting within that situation is in dramatic tension with the reality of it as perceived by an outside observer’ (Szerszynski, 2007: 341). Situational irony does not imply an ironist, but the observer of a situation (Lucariello, 2007: 68). It is fair to argue that perceiving the Muhammed crisis and all its consequences as ironic in some way demands Western eyes and a need to place a higher premium on some values rather than others – in this case the value of freedom of speech above religious norms. Thus the question of who the observer is becomes crucial.

When irony is defined, as by Linda Hutcheon (1994), for example, as a strategy of ‘discursive politics’, its cognitive content – which is crucial for the understanding of situational irony – is neglected. Situational irony is by nature discursive. Facts as such are not ironic – they become ironic only after they are mirrored against other facts (Holdcroft, 1983: 493) within certain situational discourses. To perceive certain situations as somehow intrinsically contradictory often demands over-simplification and a narrowing of one’s own perspective. On the other hand, it has been argued that irony helps people to cope with the inchoateness in our everyday lives (Gibbs, 1994: 369). People speak and act ironically because daily events and experiences are conceptualized in terms of irony (Gibbs, 1994: 360), meaning that it is comfortable to observe contradictions in various situations. The intentional use of verbal irony also reflects the speaker’s and/or observer’s conceptualization of situations as ironic in many cases, and this demands an awareness of the incongruity between expectations and reality, suggesting that irony, whether communicative or situational, is not a matter of rhetoric but rather a fundamental figure in the poetics of the mind (Gibbs, 1994: 365). One simple but highly descriptive definition of situational irony is that it refers to a concept of ‘events gone awry’ (Lucariello, 2007). People comprehend events and happenings through script knowledge, knowledge of what is expected to happen, whereas situational irony refers to a more or less paradoxical contradiction or incongruity between different elements of a situation (Lucariello, 2007: 494–5).

Although it may appear strange, or even courageous, to argue that the Muhammed cartoon episode was somehow ‘funny’, no matter how serious the consequences were, there still remained several ironic aspects to the case. In fact, it is not particularly unusual for politically serious crises to be perceived as containing ironic elements. In Israel, for instance, humour turned into a genre with which to deal with memories of the Holocaust (Zandberg, 2006). Correspondingly, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr (2002), analysing the terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001, notes interestingly how the dominant discourse style following the incident, especially among younger people and within the popular culture, was irony. This was strongly criticized and it was widely argued that honest expressions of love for one’s family and country and sympathy for the victims should have been the appropriate reactions in the public discourse. In some points of view, such tragedies have raised questions concerning the necessity for irony. Nevertheless, Gibbs puts forward an important insight when he asks: ‘Does 11 September 2001 really represent the end of irony or does it teach us to love irony more than ever?’ (2002: 146).

The media, as social actors, have a crucial role in the processes by which politically sensitive situations are made to appear ironic. The media are never innocent and always function within and in the service of certain value systems, so that they have been continuously criticized for understanding their mission as being to stretch the limits of tolerance. The basic premise is that the media tell us the truth, the ‘facts’ as they are, while functioning at the same time as routes through which ordinary people can digest their view of the world, while the very nature of irony implies that the meanings mediated cannot be trusted, at least not without a substantial degree of interpretation. Irony is constantly used in all the media, however, as a rhetorical device through which meanings can be attributed to what is being reported at the same time as the ‘facts’ are presented, in effect as facts that do not ‘speak for themselves’ (Glasser and Ettema, 1993; cf. Gill, 2007: 159–61). The use of irony as a rhetorical device in the media is in many ways problematic simply because people do not expect the messages in newspaper writing to be hidden in some way. For an ironic statement to be successful, it is crucial that the receiver should be conscious of the fact that the literal statement is discordant with the intended meaning. According to Bemtsen and Kennedy: ‘successful irony involves an opposition between a literal statement and what the receiver takes to be the sender’s belief’ (1996: 21). This means that in a journalistic context irony often has to be specifically underlined in order to avoid possible misunderstandings (El Rafaie, 2005).

It has been argued that irony is generally used in the media as a device for journalists to avoid being seen as naïve (Kunelius, 2006: 680), but it also has several other roles from a sociopolitical point of view. Ironic figures of speech are often used devices through which dominant discourses, that is, ‘normal’, hegemonic ways of framing events, can be contested (El Rafaie, 2005; see also Mascha, 2008; Ridanpää, 2007, 2010). Elisabeth El Refaie (2005: 787) argues that ‘the purpose of the ironic framing of a meaning is usually to deliver an implicit evaluation and to invite the reader/audience to share the perspective of the ironist’. The question of whether the intended audience shares a similar disposition towards the target of the humour is therefore a crucial one (see Purcell et al., 2009). If irony is focused on marginal groups, and if the medium in question is a leading national newspaper, for instance (e.g. Jyllands Posten), such marginal groups become automatically excluded from the target audience, and an arrangement is constructed in which a clearly discernible category distinction exists between the insider/superior and outsider/inferior groups.

The Muhammed cartoon crisis was an example of how apparently innocent laughter may turn into a serious situation. On the other hand, its consequences in Finland and the Kaltio episode are illustrative examples of how serious topics and the various forms of reaction to them may turn into ironic situations. The material through which the Kaltio episode is discussed concerns 21 contributions published between 24 February and 9 March 2006 in the newspaper Kaleva, a forum with approximately 80,000 readers, through which the episode and its ironic nature ‘materialized’. Kaleva is not perceived as a passive reflector of the events and their ironic nature, but rather as an active operator in the process of making the situation appear ironic. The main questions concern (a) how explicit and implicit verbal irony are used to imply judgements of the participants involved, (b) the ways in which Finnish political discourses became involved in the ironic nature of the situations and (c) how freedom of speech, an intrinsic value in journalism, functioned as a motive for sarcastic and non-sarcastic representations. The next chapter will describe the sociopolitical context and the general details of the events, after which they will be discussed by quoting examples from the Kaleva articles, not chronologically, but rather following the order implied by the above questions.

Background: the Muhammed cartoons and the Kaltio comic strip episode

One of the most dramatic examples of the ‘seriousness’ of humour began on 30 September 2005, when the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammed, an act which ultimately caused multiple politically serious and dramatic consequences. The visual representations of the sacrosanct Prophet first caused general indignation within the Islamic world and then boycotts of Danish products, the closing of embassies, violent mass demonstrations and later suicide bomb attacks, leaving many victims and injured citizens. The cartoon crisis turned rapidly into a political game in which international organizations and national governments had to ‘take sides’. The governments of ‘Islamic countries’ launched forceful and aggressive criticism against the actions of Jyllands-Posten, while practically all the countries of Western Europe kept the flag flying for the value of freedom of speech (for a more detailed discussion, see Adamo, 2007; Bonde, 2007; Dahlgren, 2007; Klausen, 2009; Ridanpää, 2009).

While most of the countries in Europe automatically decided to support the Danish government, Finland was one of the countries where the publication of the Muhammed cartoons was officially condemned by the political leaders. The case became topical in February 2006, when a nationalist organization, Suomen Sisu, published the cartoons online. This was followed by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen and President Tarja Halonen issuing public apologies for the posting of the cartoons. As such, this does not make the situation ironic, but if we dissect it against the discursive background of Finnish political history, certain ironic nuances can be found. Caution in all questions relating to foreign policy goes back to the days of the Cold War, the period of ‘Finlandization’, the roots of which are commonly traced back to the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance concluded by the Finns with their neighbouring superpower and former enemy, the Soviet Union, in 1948. The term as such was invented in the late 1960s by the German political media to refer to Finland as an example of a small nation that is obliged to operate under the control of a more powerful neighbour (Moisio, 2008: 83).

Finlandization has also been interpreted as a certain form of ‘hypocritical Westernness’ (Browning, 2002), but in Finland itself, especially among the political leadership, the term was considered insulting, unfair and embarrassing, giving a false image of the country’s position. In the Western European media the Finnish political culture was perceived as being closer to that of Czechoslovakia than that of the Nordic countries, so that Finland was often satirically dubbed as ‘Kekkosslovakia’, referring to its president, Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, and the strategic line represented by his foreign policy (Moisio, 2008, 83–4). For years, Finlandization meant textually and discursively (re)produced interterritoriality in which, through education and the media, people were socialized with the supposition that the Soviet Union represented a threat to them (see Newman and Paasi, 1998: 196). The fact that internal political decisions were substantially influenced by the Soviet Union served at the same time to alter the self-understanding of the Finnish people (Paasi, 1996). In the case of the media, the politics of Finlandization meant self-censorship. The code in all media discussions was to be extremely careful and polite regarding what one wrote about political relationships with the Soviet Union and how one wrote it. It was only after President Kekkonen resigned in 1982 that the first arguments that were critical of Finnish foreign policy were published (Moisio, 2008: 84); the period of Finlandization is generally considered to have terminated at the end of the Cold War and especially when Finland joined the EU in 1995. In this light, the public apologies issued by the Finnish political leadership and the outright condemnation of the Muhammed cartoons – a political stance analogical in many ways to that which prevailed during the period of Finlandization – raised the question, with certain ironic nuances, as to whether the days of Finlandization were over after all. Did Finland still want to continue hushing up all politically sensitive situations, in this case in its relations with the Muslim world?

Be that as it may, these public apologies were followed on 19 February 2006 by the publication on the web pages of a small cultural journal entitled Kaltio of a comic strip by Ville Ranta called Muhammed, pelko ja sananvapaus (Muhammed, fear and freedom of speech). This told a two-part story which began with an intriguing fictitious situation in which the cartoonist was discussing the Muhammed cartoon crisis with the Prophet himself, and continued with a situation in which the cartoonist was having a conversation with Finnish political leaders who were engaged at that moment in burning the Danish flag. The five-page comic strip did not intend to make a mockery of Islam as a religion, of the Muslims or of Muhammed, but instead discussed explicitly, critically, self-consciously and extremely ironically the whole episode of the cartoon crisis, its political consequences and the reactions of the Finnish political leaders. After the comic strips had appeared online, the Kaltio office received messages from readers, at least one of which contained obscure, threatening nuances (Valta, 2007: 29–31). Three major sponsors of the journal, the Sampo Bank and the insurance companies Pohjola and Tapiola, reacted immediately and announced that they were withdrawing their financial backing. At that point, the newspaper Kaleva became interested in the case, and the publicity given to the incident increased when Kaltio’s chief editor Jussi Vilkuna asked Ranta to translate the comic strip into English. The executive board of Kaltio ordered Vilkuna to remove the comic strip from the web pages, Vilkuna refused, and the board dismissed him the same day. What increases the irony of the situation was that the letter with threatening nuances, written in faulty Finnish and understood to have been sent by a ‘Muslim’ reader, had in fact been written by a young Finnish man (Valta, 2007: 41), probably just as a practical joke.

Vilkuna’s dismissal was noted worldwide, and several international newspapers, including Le Monde, wanted to interview Vilkuna. The publicity gained by the Kaltio case also had unwanted consequences for Ranta’s career. The Schools’ Department of Oulu City Council had commissioned a strip cartoon from Ranta for a jubilee book, but due to all the fuss surrounding the Kaltio case, the working group withdrew their request. Fortunately, the cancellation was later rescinded with appropriate apologies when the worst of the fuss had subsided. The situation was troublesome and embarrassing for Oulu, since the city was a nominee for the European Capital of Culture at the time and the application was to be announced during the same week as Ranta’s commission was cancelled. All these incidents proved what a serious matter apparently innocent laughter can be, but, on the other hand, they also demonstrated how the reactions arising from this type of seriousness may lead into extremely ironic situations. The habit of being careful in politically sensitive situations is a part of Finnish history, and therefore the reactions during the episode were understandable, albeit exaggerated to an ironic extent. The episode was ironic in several ways, but it is especially interesting to ask how it was made to appear ironic. For a situation to be perceived as ironic, it needs an outside observer, and the observer in this case was the newspaper Kaleva. The paper followed the series of events intensively, and 21 articles and other pieces were published concerning it between 24 February and 9 March 2006. At the same time there were other articles focused on themes such as freedom of speech, Islamic terrorism, the limits of tolerance, etc., which could be regarded as tangential explanatory writings. Kaleva represented the forum through which the nature of the events was conveyed to readers.

The Kaltio comic strip episode in Kaleva

‘Isn’t it ironic, that…’

In my opinion the fact that I was kicked out of the project illustrates well the current cultural atmosphere and the appreciation of art and culture among the city’s body of civil servants. Good luck with your application for the European Capital of Culture! (Cartoonist Ville Ranta’s comment in Aho, 2006)

There is a general conception that being ironic is connected with intelligence, sophistication and wit, and therefore is best practised by highly educated white males (Barbe, 1995: 4–5) – a favoured trope of intellectuals (Hutcheon, 1994: 15). Another interesting generalization is that people in marginalized regions are incapable of understanding irony, that only urbanites possess sophistication and ironic ability (Barbe, 1995: 4). Even so, all societies have their social codes of laughter and humour (Billig, 2005: 200); it is just that the sociolinguistic dimensions of Islamic humour (see Muhawi, 1994) are utterly unfamiliar to ‘westerners’. This juxtaposition of owning or lacking a capability for being ironic was implicitly present throughout the Kaltio episode reports in Kaleva. In the case of these media practices one can also refer to the idea of ‘methodological irony’, the way in which ‘experts’ use sarcastic figures of speech to put themselves above the target under discussion, assuming that they are the only participants capable of figuring out the overall picture (Carlin, 2002).

The Kaltio comic strip episode contained several ironic turns, and when the episode began and the first article was published in Kaleva on 24 February 2006, the ironic nature of the situation was immediately noticed by Petri Laukka, a news reporter. The tone of the expressions used in his report remained relatively neutral, and in rhetorical terms it did not contain any direct sarcasm, but rather focused on the basic facts of the situation. For instance, when referring to Kaltio’s apologies to the Finnish government on its internet pages for having made fun of a cartoon published in another country, it was mentioned that the episode had been ‘slightly ironic’ (Laukka, 2006a). Expressions such as ‘isn’t it ironic, that …’ commonly function as explicit irony markers where one participant is involved in two separate actions, which – when perceived from the outside – will construct an ironic situation (Barbe, 1993). The first article concerning the event was relatively neutral in terms of the use of literary irony and sarcasm, but the next two, published the following day, contained several sarcastic figures of speech. Through witty expressions such as ‘while thousands of people were logging in to see the sensational Muhammed comic strip on the Kaltio web pages on Friday, the members of the journal’s board were having a conference call’ (Laukka, 2006b), readers became conscious of there being some comicality involved in the case.

The sarcasm used in the Kaleva articles was not all verbal but also visual. Laukka’s (2006b) article on 25 February 2006 was accompanied by a picture of Vilkuna, with the caption ‘The fired editor of Kaltio, Jussi Vilkuna, playing badminton in Kaakkuri School on Friday evening’. Understanding events through script knowledge implies that there exist a ‘correct’ way and a ‘wrong’ way of behaving in every situation. The perceiving of incorrect behaviour from the outside makes a situation ironic. Interestingly, the situational ‘misbehaviour’ in this case is exhibited by Vilkuna: playing badminton in such a situation is not correct, although somehow amusing, but it does not in itself make a situation ironic. The picture and caption are completely out of context in relation to the discussion, creating two opposite modes of reacting to the situation: panic or taking it calmly. The picture of Vilkuna with the caption referring to his game of badminton questions the seriousness of the case under discussion and carries the implication that the situation is ironic (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Ironically out of context: the fired editor of Kaltio, Jussi Vilkuna, playing badminton in Kaakkuri School on Friday evening

On the same page there was another article, written yet again by Laukka (2006c), which included an interview with Docent Henri Broms. The article pointed out how ironic it is that Erkki Tuomioja, one of the Finnish political leaders condemning the Muhammed cartoons, had been one of the toughest antagonists of the Shah of Iran in the 1960s. In addition, the relationships between fundamentalism, freedom of speech and self-censorship were discussed on a general level. All this on the same page with the picture of Vilkuna playing badminton created an intriguing incongruity. The target of the irony in this situation, however, was not Vilkuna, but rather the circumstances under which he chose to take things calmly and play badminton.

The irony of Finlandization

The prime target or context in most of the articles was the idea of post-Finlandization, the code of hushing up politically sensitive situations. On 26 February 2006, two articles were published which discussed how the case had been widely noted around the world: the previously mentioned article by Aho, ‘Muhammed comic strip controversy reaches the news threshold abroad. Cancellation of the illustrations ordered from Ranta is not an official statement from Oulu City Council’ and Hannu Eerikäinen’s article (2006a) ‘Finland differs from the European line on freedom of speech’. Later, between 1 and 3 March 2006, five articles concerning the Kaltio events were published, and three of them explicitly discussed the Finlandization discourse, in other words, the theme of how Finland is perceived through the eyes of Europe, how ‘they’ see ‘us’. The theme of these articles may be reduced to the question: how could the events surrounding a small cultural journal published on the Northern periphery be of interest to large international newspapers? This was illustrated by an article on 1 March 2006, ‘Chief editor of a Finnish journal fired for publishing a Muhammed cartoon’ which was not written by a local reporter but was a translation of Olivier Truc’s (2006) article published earlier in the leading French newspaper Le Monde. Truc discussed Finland’s political history through quotes from Ranta and Vilkuna, adopting a slightly sarcastic tone. Ranta is quoted as saying: ‘Finland has a tradition of being scared of getting involved in international problems, a tradition which derives from the era of Finlandization, which was permeated by relations with the Soviet Union.’ Vilkuna is quoted in a similar fashion as saying: ‘This proves that our consensus principles cause us to practise excessive self-discipline.’

The discussion about ‘them’ writing about ‘us’ was continued later in Hannu Eerikäinen’s article (2006b) ‘Is Finland short of jokes?’, where he described how the leading German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented on the Kaltio case. Eerikäinen found it comical that, though Finland appeared in the news so rarely in Germany, when it did the headline was ‘The Finns don’t joke’, and the article went on to describe the period of Finlandization in a more or less mean, sarcastic manner: ‘The newspaper recalls the era of Kekkonen when “the skill of speaking quietly”, also known as “cringing in front of Moscow”, reached its climax in Finnish politics.’ In addition to Eerikäinen’s article, there was also a letter from the dramaturgist Outi Nyytäjä (2006) in which she wrote ‘newspapers and their web pages in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Russia write in ironic and sarcastic tones about the dismissal of Kaltio’s chief editor and other actions.’ Nyytäjä perceived the situation as ironic and used sarcasm yet again to accentuate this:

One of the most significant feats of the vanguard of Oulu’s cultural politics has been the resurrection of the concept of Finlandization. It will now be firmly in the European consciousness when Oulu applies for the title of European Capital of Culture. This case proves that the ingredients for drama are not running out in Oulu. The elements for a farce are temptingly on offer: unforeseen funny characters, borders and politics, cringing, fawning and calculation.

It is important to note that if one perceives the Kaltio episode as an ironic revival of Finlandization, there exists a possibility of the writer becoming accidentally a target of double irony. Although the sarcastic criticism of post-Finlandization had its point, is it not ironic that the most notable motive behind the criticism was a fear of what ‘they’ (the world) think about ‘us’ (Finland)? Considering all the articles discussing the theme of Finlandization, it is actually difficult to say whether they are criticizing the ‘small-nation code’ of Finnish political reactions (see Adams, 2004) or whether they just represent other sociocultural practices that strengthen it. Ironically, headlines such as ‘Is Finland short of jokes?’ and ‘Finns don’t joke’ mean in practice that ‘we’ are the ones who lack the capability for handling irony, the ones who lack intelligence, sophistication and wit.

The seriousness of freedom of speech

It was as a matter of course that Kaleva, representing journalism as an institution, chose to defend the right to free expression and look upon the whole episode as ironic. It is crucial to point out that the very first article discussing the episode included a section of Ranta’s comic strip in which Muhammed is pictured ‘disguised’ in a clownish mask with thick spectacles and a big orange nose, something which can be interpreted as a conscious act of ‘taking sides’. If the Kaleva journalist Laukka had considered the reactions of the Kaltio executive board to be legitimate and logical, the newspaper would never have published that excerpt.

Throughout the Kaltio episode, Kaleva’s ‘Facts corner’ included background information on the history of the journal Kaltio, political circumstances in the Middle East, etc. Through this ‘official’ information, the context of the situation was presented, in political terms, as more or less ‘serious’, while Ranta’s comic strip was understood and represented as a piece of ‘innocent fun’. Such juxtapositions create an ironic contradiction, which Laukka referred to in his first article as ‘Kaltio has created its own cartoon brouhaha’. On the other hand, the juxtapositions can also challenge the reader’s interpretation of the incident as being just funny and innocent.

The Kaltio situation was mostly narrated through ironic figures of speech or a specific analysis of how ironic the situation was. It is therefore interesting that, in rhetorical terms, one of the most official-like (= serious) pieces concerned the legitimate aspects of the events from the viewpoint of the rights of journalists. The focus of concern in Jyri-Jussi Rekinen’s article on 28 February 2006 was on the Union of Journalists’ demand for an examination of the legality of Vilkuna’s dismissal, and the irony notably present in the previous articles had disappeared from the figures of speech. The newspaper’s ‘Facts corner’ included details of how the termination of employment is regulated in Finnish industrial relations legislation. It is easy to arrive at an interpretation that, from Kaleva’s point of view, the only serious side of the episode (i.e. containing no ironic nuances) concerned the fact that the intrinsic value of freedom of speech had been questioned.

At the same time as Kaleva’s ‘strategy’ was to systematically defend the rights of freedom of expression, it also published a letter defending the reactions of the Kaltio executive board, in which Professor Olavi Heikkinen (2006) commented that:

Kaltio’s descent began a couple of years ago when creativity turned into blasphemy, or so I felt. With regret, I cancelled my subscription.… I believe in the evolution of culture as a creative force. Maybe the day will come when Kaltio will not demean itself to the level of puberty but instead will provoke discussion through its imaginativeness.

This was the only one of the 21 articles published in Kaleva which unreservedly criticized the actions of Vilkuna and Ranta.

Another ironic incident took place on 5 March 2006, when the theme and plot of Ranta’s comic strip were enacted in real life. The cartoonist held a public meeting with Imam Abdul Mannan in which the intention was to discuss the controversy surrounding the publication of the Kaltio cartoons. The next day, the event was reported in Kaleva by Eeva Kauppinen (2006) in an article ‘Cartoonist and the Imam meet: Jyllands-Posten cartoons and Ville Ranta’s comic strips under tumultuous discussion’. The main argument in the article was that the Imam had confused or entwined the two separate cases, the Danish cartoon crisis and the Kaltio comic strip episode. Kauppinen quotes Abdul Mannan: ‘The image is given that all Muslims are terrorists, including the Prophet Muhammed, because he was depicted with a bomb in his turban.’ Kauppinen then concludes: ‘This gave Ranta reason to say that he was convinced that it was not his comic strip that was under discussion but the Danish cartoons.’ The event and its subsequent reporting provide a heightened summary of how the collision of the dissenting opinions and worldviews had created ironic situations. Two more articles concerning the event were published on 9 and 11 March 2006, after which the case was more or less closed.

Discussion: ‘Freedom of expression go to hell!!’

Perceiving the world through irony is a complicated question. Laughter is rarely, if ever, innocent, and in many cases serious situations may seem surprisingly funny when perceived from a certain external point of view. When I saw the photograph ‘Extreme irony’, taken by Timothy Allen for the first time I was rather amused and started laughing. The picture is taken in the middle of a mass demonstration outside Regent’s Park Mosque in London, organized by Muslim protesters in February 2006 against the publication of the Muhammed cartoons. It shows a group of protesters, one of whom is holding up a large placard on which is written in block letters ‘Freedom of expression go to hell!!’. Freedom of expression go to hell – how amusing to criticize the value of freedom of speech by swearing at it. The image may be funny, but the context and the political background of the picture are extremely serious. The message of the demonstration was efficiently communicated through placards seen on news reports around the world: ‘Europe. You will pay. Your annihilation is on the way!!!’, ‘Jihad against European Crusaders’, ‘Europe, you’ll come crawling, when the Mujahideen come roaring’, ‘Annihilate those who insult Islam!!!’

Overall, the circumstances were very serious, but when criticism of freedom of speech is expressed through placards such as ‘Freedom of expression go to hell!!’, the message manifests itself in the eyes of a Western observer as something of a joke, no matter how serious the background to the case may be. In fact, it is actually impossible to criticize freedom of speech without turning the critical argument into an example of what situational irony means in practice, because freedom of speech cannot be criticized without freedom of speech. The burning of flags in front of Danish embassies all around the world became a symbolic gesture which implied not only hostility towards Jyllands-Posten, the Danish government and Denmark as a country, but towards the whole Western ideology (see Amirthalingam, 2007). When free speech was proposed as a necessary condition for democratic legitimacy (Lægaard, 2007: 482), this, ironically, turned all criticism of it automatically into criticism of the democratic model of society. The paradox is ironic, but far from funny, and the two matters have to be separated from each other, even though Allen’s picture subtly ‘persuades’ the audience to acknowledge the ironic side of a serious situation.

The intention here has been to open up a discussion on how the choice of using sarcasm as a rhetorical effect played a key role in making the Kaltio episode appear ironic. To present events in a comical light is a matter of choice, and in this case sarcasm was used, as a form of verbal aggression (Attardo, 2000: 795; Haiman, 1998: 20), to defend the value of freedom of speech, to make participants criticizing it look like idiots. In addition, the ironic nature of the events was distinctively highlighted and systematically explained to the readers through figures of speech such as: ‘Isn’t it ironic …’. The Kaltio episode involved several ironic turns, but I have tried most of all in this article to illustrate that the humour attached to the incidents is a matter of perspective, a choice of putting some values above others. The actions of the Kaltio executive board and the sponsors of the journal were comically incomprehensible, but only if they are perceived from a viewpoint in which freedom of speech is considered an intrinsic value, which it inherently is in journalism. It is obvious that journalism is not practised by a coherent discursive community with shared values, but it is equally obvious that reporters automatically, and in most cases uncritically, ‘take sides’ in arrangements of this type.

Although it is argued that, as opposed to verbal irony, situational irony is always unintentional (Gibbs, 1994: 363), this does not mean that one cannot intentionally make situations appear ironic. For this purpose the Kaleva newspaper made continuous use of both explicit and implicit sarcasm in its reports. One explanation for the irony in the incidents was found when they were perceived against the political background of Finlandization. It has happened several times in the history of mankind that a lack of freedom of speech has functioned as both a cause and a result of social injustice, but situations such as the Muhammed cartoon crisis keep reminding us that we should probably be more sensitive about how freedom of speech is used. The controversy aroused considerable discussion over what a multifaceted and complex issue humour and the tolerance of it actually is, and how the ways of understanding the dark side of ironic situations vary remarkably between normative communities and between value systems (see Lewis et al., 2008). The Kaltio episode took place in a direct continuum of events that followed the publication of the Muhammed cartoons, but the ‘intensity of seriousness’ in this case was at a totally different level from that of the other consequences observed around the world, exceeding the limits of relevance to such an extent that the incident became a worldwide topic in news reports. According to the Kaleva articles, this was the most ironic part of all. On the other hand, it is ironic that if Kaleva had not made such a fuss over the issue, no ironic situations would ever have arisen.

It has been argued that a sense of humour necessitates a capability for perceiving a topic simultaneously from several perspectives (Alderman and Popke, 2002: 229–30). That may be so, but this does not mean that one should not choose to come down on one side or the other. In order to find the narrative constructed by Kaleva in its 21 articles amusing, one needs to understand the Finnish political background and also hold a personal opinion that is somehow committed to the intrinsic value of freedom of speech. Although Kaleva gave its readers all the clues needed to find the irony in the episode by mentioning several times that ‘this is ironic’, the perceiving of any similar situation as ironic would always remains a matter of the reader’s own individual and personal sense of humour.

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