Certain cliches are not really cliches anymore because nobody uses them. I thought it might be fun to examine some.
How about starting with the dreaded “Madwoman in the Attic”? Most famous from Jane Eyre, but used in other books such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Milbank. Milbank’s sole claim to fame is being mentioned as one of the three books owned by the Ingalls family in the Little House on the Prairie series. I own a copy of Milbank. Cool!
The latest I saw this creaky plot device was in two Forties movies, King’s Row and That Hagen Girl. An interesting coincidence about these two movies is that Ronald Reagan had a starring role in both of them. Makes you wonder about Nancy’s hold over him.
A more recent example was a neat twist on the concept in the laughably bad Flowers in the Attic, where the sane ones are kept locked in an attic by the "mad"women. Still, love to see that a classic premise remains in action.
I live in an area with lots of Amish - there are lots of phone booths around here and I see them in use often. But only when a buggy is tied up nearby.
Another one I just saw was in Sense and Sensibility. The hero or heroine believes their true love has married because of misguided gossip or a newspaper announcement. It turns out that the marriage was between the true love’s sibling and someone else, thus the lovers reunite. Happened to the heroine in Sense and Sensibility, the hero in Milbank. Boy, Milbank is just a load of Victorian cliches.
“Keep him on the line, we need at least 30 seconds to trace the call!”
“No, seriously- we ran out of gas!”
Both rendered obsolete by cellular phones. (The second one is the old cliche of being on a date and running out of gas. Now she’d say “Well why don’t you call somebody?”)
What about being carted away to the asylum by men who show up at your door? It’s in A Streetcar Named Desire and it’s got to be in a lot more stories I’m forgetting right now…
We had a thread about this a couple of years ago. Short answer – yes, there were definitely times that the Butler Did It, but I think they all followed the coining of the cliche.
There’s that classic romantic scene from 40’s movies where the guy (often a detective) lights two cigarettes and gives one to the dame. Don’t see that much anymore.
Not entirely true. King’s Row only had most of Reagan by the end.
I liked the evolution of the male cocky archetype in Star Trek.
You know, the guy with balls of steel, easily abandoning rules when they don’t suit him, quick with a gun, even quicker with an aircraft, and charming all the ladies to sleep with him with his slick lines?
In the first Star Trek, that guy is captain. Captain Kirk.
In Star Trek the Next generation, that guy is Riker, second in command.
In Star Trek Voyager, he’s a mere pilot and the backstory is that his cocky ways got him in jail back on Earth, and he must count himself lucky that female captain Janeway thougt she could tame him.
How about, “Ya wanna come up and see my etchings?” (I know that’s a pickup cliche but I’ve neve been sure where it came from – was there a time when bachelors kept collections of lithographs in their apartments? And why were they supposed to be so fascinating to single women?)
I’d also like to go back in time and do a study to find out just how common it was for women to faint back then. It must have happened more then than it does now in order for it to have become a believable plot point, but surely it can’t have been as common as it was portrayed in fiction.
