(Today’s post inspired by the ghost of Andy Rooney.)
Don’t we get to have our cheap movie clichés anymore? The well-shod feet walking away in the rain… the lonely figure in silhouette, illuminated by headlights at the mouth of a dark alley… the mirrored medicine cabinet that swings shut to reveal the knife-wielding maniac? These are movie inventions, and every one carries with it the emotional aura of a thousand iterations in a thousand films, and all those images add up to a part of cultural memory. Which is where they should stay. Who needs them here in the real world with us, where it’s raining and the neighbors are blasting death metal and I really don’t like the looks of that mole on my shoulder? What I’m saying is, do we really need a calendar in which the pages automatically sever themselves and fall to the ground? This is, of course, a venerable movie device to signal the passage of time. Here in the actual world, however, it’s an advertising gimmick cooked up by a German agency. Parenthetically, it seems worth noting that the pages don’t fall as much as they do plummet, which sends a subliminal message that is perhaps even more dark than intended. (Message: Time is passing, and it is passing really really fast.) Also, the connection to the advertised product (leaf blowers?) is tenuous at best. So here’s a plea to advertisers: Let our movie clichés stay in the cineplex where they belong. On the big screen they’re iconography, weighted with memory and meaning. Out here in the everyday world, they’re just weird.
(This just in: Apparently Andy Rooney is still alive.)