Originally published within "Under the Covers," from Signature Magazine, 7/2/21
If you’re reading this magazine in order, here’s a sneak peek at the lede of our cover story: “We know the buzzwords… Think outside the box. Blue-sky it. Bleeding edge. Disruption. Innovate.”
How my heart sang as I read those first few phrases. We were going to take on industry buzzwords, I thought — one of my favorite windmills. While I clearly have no prejudice against jargon (lede, anyone?), I loathe the meaningless drivel that passes for marketing language and would relish the opportunity to subject it to parody, visual or otherwise.
But not this issue. Far from dissecting buzzwords, we were, instead, working from a proverb whose origins are lost in the mists of time: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Which led me to the question: When does a proverb pass into the domain of cliché?
The concept of “invention” (or its more buzzy synonym, “innovation”) surely can’t be considered a cliché. However, the illustration of that concept in the form of a light bulb is absolutely, unquestionably clichéd. Seeds, too, probably. But why? Isn’t overuse of the expression the determining factor?
For someone whose writing is so weighted down with clichés (see above as my heart sang, I relished opportunity, and got lost in the mists of time), perhaps I should avoid the subject altogether. But hear me out as I see this through: Context is everything.
If it please the court, allow me to enter into evidence our Exhibit A: The Successories poster. You know these (though you may have temporarily forgotten). In the ’90s, Successories stores — with their inventory of inspirational posters, coffee mugs, award plaques and other office clutter — became a staple of suburban shopping malls. Successories posters followed a uniform template: a big, all caps word/ concept with an italicized phrase below and a loosely relevant nature photo above, incarcerated within a dark gray matte and a sleek black frame. A cottage industry of Successories parodies soon emerged, most of which pointed out the tendency of the original posters to traffic in meaningless clichés.
“Change,” for example, as a concept, cannot be considered a cliché. But paired with a mawkish photo of a tree by a waterfall, how could it be considered anything else? How about “Vision?” No problems there, right? But let’s marry that to the subhed “Go as far as you can see; you will then have the vision to go even further,” and see if your lunch stays down.
So with that word (“innovation”) and that shopworn proverb about necessity that enlivens it, my mind went right to the image you see above. Disclaimer: The renowned kitten-hanging-in-mid-air imagery predates Successories by decades, but there is no more iconic illustration of an aggressively motivational sentiment. In the spirit of a Successories parody, I introduced a second kitten who had innovated its way out of the enduring predicament of its companion.
“Meta” is one of those buzzwords I’d love to dangle from a pikestaff, but here we are: my send-up of a cliché was, itself, clichéd. We’ve already seen and enjoyed the Successories parody. This iteration added no new information. I suddenly found myself living out our title proverb.
What I hadn’t seen before was the illustration of that equation (Necessity + Time (Effort) = Invention) in real time. That is, I hadn’t seen someone in truly needy circumstances, innovating their way out of trouble with the clock ticking. I worked my way through several unfunny emergencies (house fire, approaching tornado, shark attack) before realizing what made them so unfunny: They’re not choices. It’s not funny to be thrown out of an airplane with no parachute. But it might be funny if you voluntarily jumped out with the intention of manufacturing your own parachute on the way down.
OK, it’s not hilarious, but this is a battle of inches (cliché away!). In a final grasp for laughs, I rendered the image with the knitting needles you see on the finished cover, and then made a second version in which the falling character used a sewing machine. Our team decided that, while the sewing machine made the image a little easier to understand, the action didn’t convey the desperation of the knitting needles and wasn’t, therefore, as funny.
Why is “funny” our yardstick? I’d love to explain, but, as meta would have it, I’m out of space. We’ll cover it in a future issue, right after the buzzwords story. Or you can send me an email; we’ll dialogue about it.
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