What is the relationship between the specifically «unique» and the «repeatable» in our experiences in reality and fiction (including new impressions as well)? What is the relationship between potential experience, fantasy and cultural expressions?

Since science prefers to identify the general in existence (untouched by human hands and free of false clichés) and we, as human beings, prefer to be uniquely original and special, it seems as though the general is somehow a precondition for the unique. Perhaps this also requires clichés and habitual thinking.

«Clichés» and «stereotypes» are primarily terms for printing tools used in mass production. As such, they are closely related to words such as «recycle» and «repetition.» What we usually characterize as clichés, however, are worn-out and exhausted words and sayings. Expressions and thoughts without novelty or originality. Clichés are also (because they are mass-produced and general), in our minds, closely related to the idea of something false or «concealed.» In addition to the word’s original meaning, we have come to understand that clichés are unchangeable. Static. When they are «used up,» they can be seen through and thrown away.

But what is a cliché? Is language a cliché in itself since it is a kind of «template,» in a sense, that we use over and over again? Are we thus trapped in language (as some newer linguistic theories claim), separated from the original and genuine? Or does it provide us with greater possibilities, a wealth of associations?

Previously, clichés were often perceived as «concealing» something, and/or at least «worn out.» Now clichés are fashionable, something we can play with. Recent aesthetics (at least in film, which is my domain) show a reverence for, and play with bared «clichés.» As viewers, we have a sort of double/ironic relationship to these clichés. We live in them and «see through them» at the same time. What, then, are we left with if we are actually able to manage the trick of maintaining an «ironic distance» to all clichés? Is there anything really there, under or «outside»???

Perhaps we collectively suffer from faulty wiring (to borrow a cliché) in the way that we distinguish between the false and the genuine. Do we merely recognize our own feelings in texts from popular culture or do these texts actually take part in shaping our experiences, forms of understanding and emotional recognition? And: is a feeling, for example, less genuine because it has been formed by hundreds of clichés (about love, for example) and can be summarized in ridiculous pop lyrics? Feelings are not only inner impressions, original and real. Feelings always exist relative to someone or something. Is it only negative that feelings, for example, are formed by culture’s clichés and associations? Are raw instincts the ideal, the real?

Our uniqueness as human beings lies in our ability to abstract. And human thought has the fundamental ability to systematize, to reflect on reality in general terms. Cultural attitudes and values are part of the package. Some (most, probably) human classifications and generalizations are nice to have. Without them, as psychologist Jerome Bruner has said, we would most likely have been «lost in a murk of chaotic experience, and probably wouldn’t [have] survived as a species in any case.» That we as humans have created them, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are «true» or «false.» They simply are.

We wish to see depth as a kind of spring, a source that supplies the surface with water rich in nutrients. The spring is the original, the surface is that which «flows upward» from it. Perhaps this metaphor has us looking in the wrong place? For, where does spring water come from? Above? As rainwater that seeps into the depths and contributes to its filling?

I am not suggesting that one must see through clichés to reach the «real.» (Theories about real femininity, for example, also have a mystical ability to change invisibly from an «is» to a «should»: Women are so inclined by nature. You better behave accordingly as soon as possible). What I want, on the contrary, are new clichés and associations. New possibilities to move in directions that are neither «real» nor «clichés.» Yet...Even though I was equipped with an enormous ability to fantasize, I’m not able to make myself from scratch.

The word «cliché» stems from the German «klitch,» which means a clay-like mass. And mass is needed in order for something to be given form. Maybe clichés are the mass that culture gives us in order for us to develop our own form and originality?