Cliche

Cliché.
In our quest to carve our niche, we try to quell out the clichés. But clichés nowadays are not over used ideas,something done over and over that it fails to generate that buzz around it. In fact it is a rare commodity.The knight in shining armor for example. It is as rare as a black swan. Yet it is tossed around like such a common occurrence that it loses its grandeur.
A ridiculed metaphor.

How about “And they lived happily ever after”. We frown at the ending. Cliché. But if you stop to think, who lives happily ever after, after all? If I am not mistaken, it is the toughest art to master. To remain happy what so ever. Hence we try to urge people to think positively and in constant hope, says a mediocre Bollywood film director.

But on a different note, what happens when scenarios, actual cold blooded ones turn into clichés?
When you scan through the news paper and are bombarded with the usual (read cliché) events – you know rape, abuse, trafficking and of late, terror. People don’t want that anymore. Its common place, its boring. They want show biz. Not even show biz. They want scandal. Controversy. Dirty public laundry.

It makes me wonder how our brain works. It is actually a biological process after all. Conditioning. But is it a reflex to the information overload or is it a defence mechanism. Or is it our state of being so pre-occupied that we cannot let go of our world for a second and step into someone else’s devastated one?

Or is it plain boredom.

Pavlov’s dogs responded to the lab coats because they reminded them of food. So do men get turned on in a lingerie shop? I am hoping not. But humans have definitely evolved to mankind’s disadvantage and their advantage. They can zone in or out, whatever you want to call it. They can turn a deaf year to a yelp of a bitch, they can watch a video of a turkey being battered and relish it the next instant, they can become immune to almost anything as long as it does not directly tie into theirs. If there was a moral holocaust, we would out run or squish out the roaches any day!

We have such a precarious control over our mind, yet we have that weapon – control. I thrive on the bling bling of air headed beauties , I thrive on my f5 button to be up to date with my ever growing base of face book contacts. But I don’t flinch when I read of a murder anymore. Which is why the media needs to make it a story. You know, add a twist – an affair, adultery and some get more creative – now I have got all the reporters nodding.

So it brings me to a conclusion. It is boredom. We are bored too easily. Some of us, even before we got interested. That my friend, is our Achilles heel. Cliché again. In the words of Orwell, a dead metaphor. Something that starts out so grand (or heinous) and becomes so blatant (common place and global) that we stare right through it and forget it.

Which is why I think the media can play a much more powerful role. All that fuss about neuro marketing is not hum drum. They can get inside your head. But can they alter your thoughts. Can they for a second sell to you the rare commodity called empathy?

Can you imagine the terror of lying under your bed whispering to your husband the last good bye before they drag you out to shoot you (Cliché?) (Sabina Sehgal R.I.P) Can you see the glazed eye of a rape victim and know that tiny ember of life in those eyes have been stamped into the ground? (A million women across the globe) Can you for a second imagine the home invasion at Cheshire where Dr Petit heard his family being tortured and razed to the ground? (pray for their souls)

If you could, you would avoid it. You would fight for them so that they would fight for you. So can the media scare you to ACT? Can it force you to think by sticking up a tooth pick in between your eye lid and show you footages because you have forgotten what words mean?

Or because you are reading so fast, while all along waiting to Like the article and Share it with the rest of the world?