The Correctness Guide to Practical English Language Usage: Chapter 17: Metaphoric and Especially Simile Construction in the Age of Terror
Dearest Correctness Reader (Marc):
We here at The Correctness have noticed a disconcerting trend in metaphor and simile construction in recent years. We aim here to set the record straight- and you’ll note we just used both a targeting metaphor as well as a police record / trial metaphor (as well as some kind of embedded meta-metaphor about straightness and correctness being associated, but we digress). We do this not because you care, but because we are bored and single again, and we have just had an important birthday and have accomplished virtually nothing of any relevance or lasting significance with our lives (We, of course, are using the “royal we” here, because we are referring to TBinns and Admin_Rock.).
- Blank is the new blank.
This little fellow is falling into disuse, but his impact is ongoing. Beginning with fashion, and given our collective understanding of the ubiquitous and practical nature of black clothing, declaring anything to be “the new black”, was, for a brief period, a moderately useful social shorthand for describing practical, and timeless fashion trends. Keeping in mind that no replacement for black would be as long lasting or useful as black, and also keeping in mind the instability of fashion, this phrase is ready for retirement.
Even if taupe IS the new black, your taupe yoga pants are not formal wear, and your black suit from 1974 is hardly even the old black. I know some of our female readers (role call: Bueller… Bueller…) might point out that the “blank is the new black” actually referred originally to the practicality of the little black dress, which, if you ask me, is only practical if you are female or can pull off drag (which we -and I again use the royal we here, Admin-Rock and TBinns- only look okay in, at best).
Sadly, this careworn fragment of linguistic fabric has been frayed into new and more unprecedented unravelment (TM) in recent years. Eschewing the building block of the original metaphor (BLACK THINGS), dozens of utterly meaningless recipes have emerged in forms like the following:
“Chevy is the new Ford” (How so? Metaphor wasted, requires explanation.)
“Chardonnay is the new Sauvignon Blanc” (I guess…)
and even worse are examples which imply a comparison:
“Tyra is the new Chevy Sauvignon Blanc of Oprah” (Awful)
Tyra is not the new Oprah, and even if she were, why the fuck do you care about the old Oprah so much? She remains a terrible interviewer.
2. Blank is the Blank of Blank
Okay: This simile has received a hideous shit-kicking from you, the mouth-breathing, drooling chimpfuckers of the western world (Not you Marc, I mean Admin_Rock and TBinns). Let me show you an example of how this is supposed to work:
“RobbieRobTown is the Tiger Woods of Comedy Blogs”. That’s supposed to mean I’m really good at jokes n’ such (sign in below to comment), or possibly that I have a lot of mistresses because of my philandering which has been afforded to me by my immense wealth. Either way, we have to select an individual or subject which is commonly known.
Commonly known, and for something specific. Commonly known, and for something specific. Commonly known, and for something specific. If our collective understanding of your commonly known subject doesn’t lead us immediately to understand why you chose to draw the comparison in the first place, there is no point in speaking in this fashion. I cannot emphasize this enough. What we (I) are beginning to hear is this kind of nonsense:
“Janet is the Justin Beiber of the Radiology department”.
What does that mean? Does Janet have a shrieking teenage fan-base? Does she sell out the lab when she does karaoke? Does she have a team of choreographers, bizarre and ill-advised politics, an inexplicable twitter feed, or a second, terrifying, Lovecraftain sub-penis*? Useless.
Worse still is comparing two people, using a third concept or person.
“Paris HIlton is the Lindsay Lohan of Margaret Thatchers”
“Tiger Woods is the 50 Shades of Grey of Janet in Radiology”
And we’re hearing a lot of the “one person, two concepts” clusterfuck:
“Emma Stone is the McDonald’s “Orange Drink” of klezmer music”.
It doesn’t stop there. Threatened and jittery, metaphorers sensing disaster occasionally compare two similar things, or two similar concepts essentially drawing no comparison at all:
“Tyra is the Oprah of TV Talkshows” is brutal, because Oprah is the Oprah of TV talkshows. “Fuzzy Zoeller is the Tiger Woods of golf” is disastrous- while I’m vaguely confident Fuzzy Zoeller is a golfer, it is fundamentally inarguable that when it comes to golf, by merit of being named “Tiger Woods”, Tiger Woods is the Tiger Woods of Golf.
Sometimes people try to pull up just before impact by saying “Fuzzy Zoeller is the Shakespeare of Golf To Tiger Wood’s Oprah of TV talkshows.”.
We here at the Correctness (where we are the diplodocus of organ donor card filing systems) want to encourage you the think carefully about your metaphors from now on. If you start trying to compare Nathan Fillion to something, and you find yourself unable to locate an acceptable comparative model, why not simply make a sincere statement? “Nathan Fillion is the uh, he’s the Han Solo of, uh, Nathan Fillion was really good in Firefly, is all, and Castle is pretty good too.”
Problem solved. You’re welcome.
*The sub-penis is a tiny secondary organ located below the primary penis.
