Word: cliches
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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However falsified it may now be, however much of a cliché it may have been even at the dawn of the 20th century, there's no doubt about the Edenic promise of California to generation after generation of Americans. To the gold seekers of 1850 no less than to the desperate migrant Okies of the Depression, to the wannabe actress on the bar stool in Schwab's as to the migrant lettuce pickers from Mexico and the Jewish kid getting into the nickelodeon business, California signified hope, plenty, release and transcendence. It was the New World's New World...
...simplest reason is that the show is built for suspense, and those who watch each week do so because they can be secure in the knowledge that they're not trying to outguess some over-appreciated TV writer with clichés for brains - this stuff unfolds like a live-on-tape sporting event (unless you believe the lawsuits) and all CBS can do is edit it to look like fictional television. Which it does very skillfully, even when there's no action whatsoever to work with...
...that there are news producers in Washington, New York and New Jersey who are desperately hoping that the 24 crew members don't come home any time soon. They have their fingers crossed that a diplomatic imbroglio blossoms into a full-scale "hostage crisis" - "crisis" being another inflammatory journalistic cliché that news producers dearly love...
...what, exactly, is the problem? American investors have become used to the cliché that Wall Street and Main Street are two very different places; right now it seems as if the City and the High Street aren't any closer. Then again, consider how surprised Wall Street professionals have been by the U.S. slowdown. It was only last November that they were predicting growth of 3.4% for this year. To this can be added the fresh terror of another Asian meltdown. Maybe the market is signaling that there are real problems out there that just aren...
...shelflessness may be a useful critical tool. For example, how do you rate "Gladiator" for shelflessness? A little higher than is comfortable for a Best Picture, I would say. Russell Crowe is one of those actors who is interesting to watch, but, gaudy decapitations aside, "Gladiator" advances unapologetically from cliché to cliché (the "Spartacus"-meets-"Sleepy Hollow" note, the British Romans, the decadent incestuous homoerotic touches dragged in from "Spartacus," "Quo Vadis" and elsewhere) and on the video shelf, is never going to be more than routine escapist entertainment defaulted to when you can't find something else...