The Golden Compass Preshow
Before watching The Golden Compass, I got to sit through lots of ads and trailers.
Citizen Soldier
The National Guard has a new and appallingly bad recruiting campaign, featuring a (commissioned?) “song” and “music video” by allegedly “popular” alternative rock band, 3 Doors Down.
The video, which is over four minutes long, cuts between shots of the band performing on a blasted heath under a tenebrous sky (complete with bad, fake anamorphic lens flare), shots of National Guard soldiers helping recovery efforts in a disaster area of uncertain origin and locality (complete with obnoxious narrow shutter effect, a.k.a. the Saving Private Ryan Effect), and shots of American and British soldiers in a revolutionary war reenactment, mostly in slow motion. All overlayed with floaty text saying weird stuff like “I fired the shot that started a nation.”
You can watch it here. And if you are an American taxpayer, you should. The National Guard spent an awful lot of your money on it.
I see what they’re doing. They think they can appeal to the young kids by using the popular music. But did they have to do it quite so cheesily? And last time I was an angsty teenager, authoritarian adults trying to “speak my language” was a major turn-off.
That, and “alternative rock” just sucks.
The Spiderwick Chronicles
This is apparently also an adaptation of a popular young adult novel series. I haven’t read this one, and from the looks of it, I won’t be.
Inkheart
Yet another novel adaptation. They’re all starting to look exactly the same. The premise in this one is that Brendan Fraser has a special power — every story he reads aloud comes to life. Somehow, he brings a maniacal, power-hungry, world-dominating villain to life. Why, oh why did you do that, Brendan? Dumbass. Could be an interesting vehicle for other issues, but the premise is just a bit too fantastic for me.
Semi-Pro
Dear Will Ferrell,
Enough with the sports comedies, already. They suck, and you aren’t funny.
Love, Qwertz.
Speed Racer
The cartoon was one of the first Japanese animé to be imported to the U.S. The dialog was cheesy and stilted because the translations were clunky. But there’s no excuse for the cheesy, stilted dialog in this trailer.
There were other things, but nothing memorable. I’m depressed that there’s so little out there forward to which to be looking.
In good humor, I can say that I have long wondered exactly what “cheesy” means. You have used the term several times. Would you define the idea it names?
“Cheesy,” in the sense of being inferior, second-rate, cheap, or nasty, is attested from 1896, according to my OED. In the context of film production, the inferiority is manifest in overuse of clichéd conventions, sloppy production values, hiding production mistakes with inexpensive digital effects, and a generally ham-handed approach to editing.
“Cheesy” in other contexts may to refer to something that is showy, but vapid, or something ostentatiously outdated.
In all senses, it is distinct from simple inferiority or cheapness by being an attempt to reproduce high quality without understanding its source.
Occasionally, it might be used to refer to anything and everything from the 1970s, but I think this is not a very accurate usage at all.
“Classy” is the appropriate antonym, and class is the result of knowing what makes high quality and applying it.
Both are slang terms, both originating in the 1890s.
Working from your comments, but in my own words:
“Cheesy” identifies a product that is inferior to the best on the market *because* its maker tried to create his product imitatively, that is, by reproducing obvious features of superior products–but without understanding the principles underlying the features.
More briefly: Cheesiness is creation by superficial imitation, not by essentialization.
An example might be an architect who designs a building with a lot of sharp angles and new materials, in imitation of Frank Lloyd Wright, but without understanding the principles, such as form and function, that Wright followed.
Thank you.
And thank you both for providing a good working definition for the term, which is often used so vaguely it can mean nothing more than “not good”!
Some things I consider cheesy, off the top of my head:
The magazine Architectural Record’s featured buildings, aesthetically speaking
Family Guy
Microsoft Windows, again aesthetically
The Gap
Sonic (as opposed to Mario)
Toyota (esthetically)
Most popular music
Mozart
Mostly aesthetic things come to my mind.