Emily Hoeven | A cliché culture

Growing Pains | And the cliché of writing about it, too

By Emily Hoeven 02/23/16 12:51am

Every week in my creative writing class, the most common critique of people’s writing has been that it is too cliche. When I wrote my first short story assignment, I was careful to not include any cliches in any aspect of the story, whether in regard to the phrasing, the plot or the characters. I turned it in with bated breath, hoping that the other students in the class would find my writing fresh and novel.

Yet when the time came for criticism, the comments I got the most often went something like this: “That simile is cliche.” “It’s so cliche that that character would say that.” I looked back at the sections they’d pointed out and realized that they were right. What I had thought was new and exciting was actually a comparison that had been made a million times before, or a line of dialogue that had been printed in every story ever written about a slightly angsty teenage protagonist. And it struck me then just how hard it is to not be cliche — how hard it is to find new and original ways of expression.

We have arrived at a time where expression is a commodity. Expression — the different ways in which we represent ourselves on different platforms — is produced and consumed on mass scales and it is constantly being replaced. There are always “new stories” to scroll through on Facebook. There are always new snap stories to watch on Snapchat. There are always new breaking news stories on CNN. There are always new topics that are trending. There is always another person to swipe past on Tinder. You can always refresh whatever internet page you’re on, and something new will come up.

With all of this influx of information, faces, words, pictures, stories, videos, articles, how does anything stand out as novel? How is anything not cliche? Is it even possible to say something in a way that it hasn’t been said before?

As it gets harder to find meaningful and original ways of expression, and as we compete for the attention of an audience that is increasingly dismissive and distracted due to the sheer amount of constantly circulating information, we have to resort to more and more drastic means in order to get noticed.

And thus we get magazine covers like the one of Kim Kardashian that “broke the Internet.” We get political scandals like that of Anthony Weiner. We get performances like that of Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus at the 2013 VMAs. We get endless songs about shaking booties and putting one’s drinks up with provocative videos and catchy beats attempting to mask meaningless, repetitive lyrics. There is a certain irony in that as the number of channels for expression increases, the quality and meaningfulness of that expression seems to decrease.

This is due to the fact that our culture of expression has become simultaneously more banal and more sensationalist — we are communicating more often even though we have less to say. Since when did it become interesting to send a Snapchat to your friends of the Chipotle burrito you ate for lunch with the caption “Guess what I ate for lunch?” Is it really even necessary to communicate that?

In choosing to document everything, everything becomes cliche. Even things considered to be sensational or scandalous — the things that almost have to be sensational in order to break through the ceaseless tides of cat videos and photos of food and status updates — are only sensational momentarily, before they are replaced, effaced, supplanted by something even more outrageous. This is the danger of a viral culture: It wipes itself out.

Of course, the irony of all of this is that it has become rather cliche to write about how our culture of expression is cliche. After all, it’s all been said before. Ad nauseum. This is just another article about the consequences of mass media, of sensationalism, of the banality of compulsively scrolling through various social media accounts, yet this article will probably be something you come across while scrolling through one of your various social media accounts. In fact, I’m probably going to post it on my own social media account. It’s cliche, and contradictory, but it’s also pragmatic: How else does anyone share their perspectives anymore?

EMILY HOEVEN is a College sophomore from Fremont, Calif., studying English.  Her email address is ehoeven@sas.upenn.edu. “Growing Pains” appears every other Tuesday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.