Clichés and the Complex Art of Characterization
The concept of cliches is intriguing, isn’t it? These overused expressions often carry a sense of tiresome predictability. For instance, when a character dramatically declares, “I shall love you… until death do us part!”—we can’t help but roll our eyes. It’s as if we’ve heard it a thousand times before. Yet, there’s a twist: what if it’s not immediately obvious that it’s a cliche? In such cases, perhaps we should reconsider.
Of course, what’s glaringly apparent to some may remain elusive to others. It’s a matter of perspective.
Now, let’s delve into the fascinating world of fictional portrayals of Winston Churchill. As I’ve immersed myself in various deconstructionism of actors like Robert Hardy, Richard Burton, Timothy Spall, Albert Finney, Brian Cox, Simon Russell Beale, and Gary Oldman—I’ve noticed a recurring pattern. Churchill, that iconic figure of history, is often rendered as a gruff, irascible old soul. His crusty exterior conceals a heart un-waveringly committed to goodness and nobility. He fearlessly confronts the shabby and mean, standing tall against adversity. Unlike his adversaries, he remains remarkably free from prejudice and vindictiveness.
So, while cliches may cling to Churchill’s portrayal, there’s an underlying complexity depth that transcends the hackneyed. Perhaps therein lies the true art of characterization: to breathe life into the familiar, infusing it with nuance and authenticity.
Sweden
- Not all women look like this:
Most women looks like this (and also remember that foreign-born is accounting for 14% of the total population, so most likely there are all kinds of skin and hair colors)
- All men are not stay-at-home. Yes, we have paternal leave when having a child, but women are taking the biggest part of maternal leave for taking care of a baby.
- Although we have a beautiful nature here…
A lot of people live in houses and environments like this:
- We celebrate Midsummer like this:
Well… it’s a tradition but mostly it’s rainy, the children refuse to dance along and all the grown-ups want to go home to the barbeque and have a “snaps”.
Indian living in the USA
- Not all of us have that funny Indian accent depicted in movies. Also, we don’t look as shabby as depicted in the entertainment industry. No, not even Raj. Raj (Kunal Nayyar) is married to a very hot lady, who is a supermodel.
- The entire India doesn’t look like its depiction in Slumdog Millionaire. We do have slums in India, of course, but thinking that entire India looks like this is just plain wrong.
- Sorry, but Indians are not playing “Holi” (festival of colors) all the time. It is one festival out of the many other hundreds of festivals. Not all Indians celebrate it. We don’t even get a holiday on Holi in the Southern part of India.
- Again it might be disappointing, but almost none of us have pet elephants. And very few of us have cows in our homes. More often than not, we, the urbanizes, live in apartment buildings, and last I checked, we were not allowed to keep cows in our homes.
- Not all parents force their children to get “arranged marriages” (movies often show that two “friends” fix that their children who are right now 2 and 4 years old would get married when they get older).
- India is not always as colorful as depicted in the movies. That’s Rajasthan mostly. And processed imagery and videos. Regular autos-rickshaws are black, not multicolored.
- Indian girls/ladies are not always dressed as conservatively. The party scene in cosmopolitan cities (like Mumbai, and Delhi) is almost on par with, if not better than, the western party scene.
- We are not eating “curries” for all of our meals. And we also don’t eat “Naan bread” all day every day. It would make you very constipated if you tried eating Naan every day of your life.
American Cliches
Most American movies are written and produced by wealthier, trendier people who live in major cities. Thus, many of them are set in major cities. If all you knew of America was what you saw in movies, you may think things like:
Most young, single adult Americans live in nice apartments or condos in trendy areas of major cities and have “fun” jobs like museum curators or tour bus company owner/operators.
Very few young, single people live in places like that and have jobs like that. Most young, single people can’t afford that lifestyle, and work “regular” jobs which they may enjoy, but aren’t really “fun.”
While there are some major cities in the United States, and a lot of people live in them, the majority of people do not.* For the average American, a scene like this is something they will only experience while watching it on a screen themselves:
Taking public transportation from your condo or apartment, then walking down a crowded city sidewalk on your way to your job in a high-rise office building? That’s the exception, not the rule for most Americans. For most of us, it’s leaving our single-family home and driving our car to our job in a building that’s two or three stories tall, max. And you park your car in the parking lot next to the building.
Chicago cliche
I live in Chicago, which has a good public transit system, but I only know two people who use it to get to work. Everyone else just takes it on special occasions, like when they want to take their kids downtown to act like tourists for a day. That’s also one thing my out-of-town guests always want to do when they visit me in Chicago, too: ride the subway. Why? Because it’s so rare here… it’s something that most Americans only experience in movies.
A lot of people are commenting that the majority of Americans do live in “urban” areas. “urban areas” and “trendy parts of major cities” are two different things. According to the Census, an “urban area” is any town with a over 50,000 population. That includes tens of thousands of places most people would just call small towns.
Mexico
There are many cliches about Mexico in American films. Hell, there are many cliches about Mexico in Mexican movies. But I will focus on the first only, and only when they try to depict Mexico as a country, not when they depict Mexicans in the USA, and damn, that’s a whole other story.
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MEXICO IS IN SEPIA TONE
That is so f-ing obnoxious and just plain dumb. Just look at movies like Spectre and Sicario 2, those are perfect examples of Mexico always being a dusty, hot, sepia tone in most American movies, but also…
2. MEXICO IS A GIANT, UNDERDEVELOPED DESERT
To put a simple example, I live in the capital of a middle-northeast state (San Luis Potosí), 5 hours northeast of Mexico City, even though my city is relatively small it has one of the largest public parks in the world (bigger than the Central Park in NYC), a massive, dense forest in the middle of the city with two artificial lakes, near this park you’ll find 100+ meters tall modern buildings and hundreds of colonial buildings downtown, and a few kilometers away, one of the biggest industrial zones in the country. 3–4 hours East of the state capital you’ll find the Huasteca, a massive rain forest full of smaller cities and towns, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, and breathtaking natural and human-induced wonders, such as the Edward James castle of Xilitla. North of the state capital you can find the Altiplano, highlands, desserts, and mountains. I’m not even gonna talk about other states, but simply, Mexico is so much more than the dry wastelands you tend to show.
3. EVERYONE IS EITHER A BUCHON (NARCO WITH A COWBOY HAT) OR A CHOLO
I’ll try to be upfront, that’s just that racist cartoon of a mustache man with a sombrero and poncho, sleeping next to a cactus, with extra steps.
Imagine that every single depiction of Americans was either a redneck or a gangsta, with no space in between, no nuance, no nothing. Sure, sometimes you throw in the mix the crazy rich guy who screams obnoxiously, or the spineless government office worker, but come on.
4. ONLY TIJUANA, JUAREZ, MEXICO CITY, SONORA AND JALISCO EXIST
Every single time a Mexican guy shows up and his hometown is mentioned, is only one of those. (Just like only NYC, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago exist in the U.S.A.)
5. IT ALWAYS IS DIA DE MUERTOS
November 1st to November 2nd, how on earth every single major event in Mexico happens in the span of those two days all the time? Does James Bond travel to Mexico? It must be in Dia de Muertos. Does Superman appear in Mexico? You bet is Dia de Muertos. Does a Mexican character appear in Suicide Squad? He’s Dia de Muertos walking. Pixar wants to make a movie about Mexico. Guess what, is all about Dia de Muertos (Coco is great though).
6. DIA DE MUERTOS IS MEXICAN HALLOWEEN
Just Just don’t. Yeah, makeup is (kind of) a part of that day, but is not that big of a deal. Dia de Muertos is much more solemn. Don’t get me wrong, is a celebration, it’s joyful, here in Mexico we have that weird relationship with the dead, but it is no party in the sense you celebrate Halloween
7. IT’S ALWAYS MARIACHI, TEQUILA AND FIESTA
No. Here’s a shocker, but we live normal lives, Mariachi is mostly for special occasions, even though its popularity has fallen with the younger generations. Most people drink plain old beer, whiskey, or mescal.
8. EVERYONE HAS A VIRGIN DE GUADALUPE (MOTHER MARY) OR A SANTA MUERTE TATTOOED OR ON THEIR PICK-UP
Also, no. Most people are catholic, sure, and many people wear it on their selves, but it’s not that big of a deal for the longest part. Santa Muerte? That’s more of a taboo.
9. IT’S ALL ABOUT LUCHA LIBRE
Ah, yes our most sacred cultural event, watching middle-aged men with dad bods fake fighting, just like Japan is all about Sumo, and America is all about school shootings. Lucha Libre is NOT that popular anymore. It probably never really was as popular as some believe to begin with. Sure it’s popular with some segments of the people, but most of us couldn’t care less about it.
10. THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION WAS HEROIC AND EVERYONE LOVED ZAPATA AND PANCHO VILLA
Official history, the one written in textbooks and taught in the public education system, portrays the bloody Civil War as a positive thing. That’s because all the major political parties were born in some way or other, during that time, or at least, they draw from that romanticized distorted story. In truth, Mexico would be far better in terms of geopolitical and socio-economical issues without it. A correct summary of the Mexican “revolution” would be Porfirio Diaz was a dictator (not gonna deny that) who despite all his flaws, was firmly and steadily paving the way for Mexico to become a relevant power, but Francisco I. Madero was told by some ghosts that he should be president, so he started an armed conflict, Porfirio Diaz knew it would destroy the country so he quit and left for France, and for 14 years everyone back-stabbed everyone, destroying cities, killing millions, and making Mexico’s economy going back 50 years to the past and dependent of the U.S.A.
Netherlands And Dutch Person
As a Dutch person when I finally get to see the Netherlands in a film it’s usually Amsterdam. There are some amazing cities here with great history that are usually completely ignored. When I do see something other than Amsterdam it’s mostly some small town where they live in the past like in the picture below. We don’t have animals just walk around freely. The only thing that they get right is the bikes because we do have a lot of them around.
Another thing is that they make it look like Dutch people all do drugs or at least smoke weed. Most people I know tried some of it once but didn’t like it and never touched it again the people who I know that do the most drugs are the international students and the tourists. Most Dutch people are still mostly stuck with drinking.
When it comes to our language they almost only get it right when they get a Dutch-speaking person to talk. Otherwise, the g is over-pronounced or they are just not speaking Dutch.
The Netherlands is more than just Amsterdam or drugs and prostitutes there’s a lot of other stuff here that you get to see when you go outside of Amsterdam or just the city center where you can see some of the Dutch culture.
Turkish Cliches
In Turkish TV Shows and/or movies, most people wear shoes and fancy clothes in their homes. Turkish people prefer slippers instead of shoes in their homes. In the Turkish series, we can see mostly houses rather than apartments. In big cities in Turkey (such as Izmir, Istanbul, and Ankara) most of the people (except upper-class people) live in the apartments. Only rich people live in houses, these houses are mostly villas. However, we mostly see houses in the Turkish series, and of course, with richness.
Paris In Movies
A film must carry out a plot, the scenery is rarely a complete part of it.
If it is so, the film will not be a documentary about a real Paris but a fiction where the city is staged according to a purpose and not to be particularly highlighted. Generally, you are shown a fantasy Paris with excessive bias, either too good to be true or a real cutthroat.
The films of the Noelle Vague showed a popular Paris, small apartments without comfort, narrow streets, and sinister surroundings; the American films of the same time showed a postcard Paris, filthy but grandiose. When I watch these films with nostalgia, I can not find anything of the neighborhood moods. Apart from Saint-Germain des Prés, the Champs-Elysées, or Montmartre, the many quartiers of Paris are not represented in films and if they are, it’s caricatures like Les Halles in Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce.
Paris is full of diversity, there are two Chinatown (in XIIIth and Xix th arrondissements), multiple African communities (Xviii-th), trendy areas in the north and east Paris, usually places like old factories or warehouses, and sometimes an abandoned hospital or tower about to be destroyed and temporarily occupied by artists. Nothing of the sort appears in movies…
Canada Movie Cliches
Everything likes to paint Canada as one big snowdrift 360 days a year – to the point where every American on the Quora platform has asked, at one time or another, how we deal with the snow all the time from birth to death
This is where I live right now:
See any snow?
Are those leisure lovers wearing parkas as they zoom around in their boat? Nope… so sit back and down some quality Canadian brews while you learn about Canada’s vast and diverse climates!
Sun ,wind, Normal weather, Rain and Cold are something constantly missing in the movies about canada.