about

Before the Romantics came and fomented this illusion, the Ancients thought that since everything had already been felt and said, any artistic expression was necessarily an imitation. Later, Rimbaud noted the inescapable presence of the Other in language, which prevents us from finding the elusive truth of the Self.

Today, the success of the cinema stems from people’s abandonment of the desire to be different, seeking instead the pleasure of shared expressions, finding community in the cliché.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. showed how television greatly contributed to forging a common national language. Milo, a character in Breakfast of Champions, welcomes another character with these words: “Kilgore Trout, This is your life!” The author comments that “Milo used a line from a television show which had been popular a few years back. Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both present and past.”

That same year (1973), the main character of The Mother and the Whore, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, explains: “To speak with the words of others … That’s what I’d like.”

What Vonnegut considered a mind-numbing mechanism driving the decline of American culture, becomes a sort of ideal, in the mouth of Jean Eustache’s film character, to be sought in self-effacement. This device featured regularly, in fact, in the films of the New Wave. Upon arriving in Alphaville, Lemmy Caution answers his interrogators with quotes from Bergson, Nietszche and Pascal. Godard was often criticized for trying to shield himself by using quotations in the place of true dialogue. His reply was always that one cannot really speak with an alphabet that belongs to everyone.

Movies, like songs, have always proffered pre-packaged phrases. In 1997, Alain Resnais’ film Same Old Song, celebrated the connection between the two major forms of popular expression of the 20^th century: the characters all draw from the same source to communicate their emotions. The question is whether they can feel anything other than what they find in that shallow pool. 

So-called cult films also produce lines that become fodder for conversations. This is perhaps precisely what defines the otherwise vague notion: a cult movie is notable not for its esthetic qualities but for its ability to contribute to a culture of mass reproduction. Lines that become cult might be witty (Woody Allen, Ben Hecht), but that is not what characterizes “cultness,” and markers of uniqueness can in fact prevent their elevation to cult status. A genuinely cult phrase stands out for its banality – dare we say, stupidity – which allows it to slip into everyday language. The same phenomenon explains the viral spread of memes.

The characters in Pierrot le Fou quote Rimbaud but are in turn destined to be quoted themselves. Should anyone today pronounce the words “J’sais pas quoi faire,” you can be sure someone will follow with “Qu’est-ce que j’peux faire,” in the same whining tone as Anna Karina.