My Cliché Diatribe

Believe it or not, there are some things that aggravate me in the entertainment world. Two of these are clichés and a lack of irony. Now, I’m not going to tar all cliché-users with the same brush, but I’m not going to pull any punches either, and when it comes to rubbing me up the wrong way and getting on my wick, cliché-exponents are in a league of their own, and I admit I do have an axe to grind.

Commentators and journalists are the worst of a bad bunch. Just when you want someone to step up the plate and give it 110%, this group end up with their intellectual tail between their legs. Those who write for a living are supposedly at the cutting edge of journalism, yet just reading what the average critic has to say is about as fun as playing hide-and-seek in a corridor. One wishes that they’d think outside the box every once in a while.

When I talk about clichés in almost every media form, I’m talking about the whole nine yards; movies, newspapers, sports, radio, and everyday speech. To be fair, a lot of people just wear their heart on their sleeve, and say it like-it-is, but that doesn’t mean it’s not lazy! Even the average blogger feels the need to launch into a tirade and talk in expired clichés until the cows come home. Movies these days too, are like a diamond in the rough if they don’t actually have an ending you’ve worked out by the middle of the film. Some might say that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, but personally when it comes to Hollywood, I’d rather stick with what I don’t know! Sadly, a leopard can’t change its spots and perhaps we shouldn’t expect better from a lazy overpaid community of plagiarists.

At the end of the day though, the cliché is a convenient way to speak so perhaps we can agree to disagree. Let’s face it, when the shit hits the fan and we’re groping in the dark, it’s often more efficient to just let the words do the talking, than be at sixes and sevens scratching our heads, lost for words, and incomprehensible ranting like we’ve got a bee in our bonnets.

I still feel like a fish out of water though whenever I’m forced to endure the latest “pop music” offering, “blockbuster” movie, or sporting rhetoric from commentators. Some might say I’m barking up the wrong tree, but with these “experts” who seem incapable of saying anything original, I feel it’s a case of the blind leading the blind in a vicious circle (but perhaps it’s just jobs for the boys). One hates to put the cart before the horse but let’s call a spade and spade and admit that all is not what it seems in the media world. The critics will say I’m cutting my nose off to spite my face, but I’m just playing devil’s advocate. Ok I admit my anti-clicheism is but a drop in the ocean and my harangue a mere flash in the pan, but I must fight the good fight and say what needs to be said, because the alternative is a fate worse than death. Every cloud has a silver lining however, and for all the formulaic contrived garbage that the mass media dreams up, they do put bums on seats, so perhaps I should forgive and forget.

But I see the modern languid engine of journalism and entertainment on its last legs and living on borrowed time. The writing is on the wall and soon it will give up the ghost, and how then the mighty will have fallen! Even then I’m not saying it’ll all be hunky-dory but a cliché-free life would be an entirely different kettle of fish. That may be a knee-jerk reaction, but I’m not going to pass the buck. Instead I’ll nail my colours to the mast even if I am preaching to the choir or even if it does throw a spanner in the works. I think it’s important to be original and we as consumers should demand nothing less once in a blue moon! But asking a newspaper, commentator, or movie, to avoid its staple of rote clichés is like trying to get blood from a stone.

Even if you don’t agree with everything I’ve said about clichés and irony, I hope you can read between the lines, even if I did seem to run out of steam near the end, this article might have seemed more like sour grapes than a shot in the dark – please take what I’ve said with a pinch of salt and don’t dwell too much on it! After all, tomorrow is another day.