On-screen clichés
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On-screen clichés are frequently used (and often hackneyed) narrative tropes, devices, plots, settings and characters that can be found in texts broadcast on television and in film. This article comprises a general list of such clichés, and most mentioned within this article can be and usually are applicable to both live-action and/or animated film and television. Although practically every show or film made will most likely use some clichéd elements occasionally, genres such as sitcoms, children's animated series, sci-fi drama, video games and blockbuster Hollywood action movies frequently provide a particularly rich source of clichés.
These clichés tend to be used in order to introduce particular characters, setting and genres in a quick, cheap and easy fashion - for example, it may be easier to establish a character as a scientist or doctor by putting him/her in a white labcoat, or to establish the action as taking place in Paris via a quick shot of the Eiffel Tower. Also, whilst perhaps not factually accurate or realistic, many clichés are used in order to further the plot, create tension and make the experience more enjoyable; for example, whilst hardly realistic, and certainly clichéd, it is more entertaining to imagine that radioactive toxic waste could turn a person into a superhero rather than killing them, and easier to use the American Crowd rather than script the responses of a more realistic crowd of people.
Many clichés thus continue to be used because they sustain the story and make it enjoyable - providing the audience is willing and able to suspend their disbelief. However, as more films and television shows have been and continue to be produced, overuse of these clichés leads to audience boredom, and therefore film and television producers now try to avoid obvious clichés where possible and attempt to give their characters, plots and stories more depth and complexity. Where clichés are still used, they are frequently used in an ironic manner, and either parodied or subverted, as frequently occurs in shows such as The Simpsons, Seinfeld and Monty Python.
See also
External links
- [The Big Fat List of TV Cliches]
- [Television Tropes & Idioms]
- [The Movie Clichés List]
- [Things you would never know without the movies] this list is reprinted on different websites - no original author known
- [Ebert's Movie Cliches]
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