Catch Phrases!
A Festivus for the rest of us! This phrase was invented by the father of one of the writer’s on Seinfeld as a way to have a secular celebration. Writer Dan O’Keefe wrote this into an episode of Sienfeld and it stuck. The 23rd of December is now officially the date to celebrate Festivus. The influence of the media and creative writers is truly without bounds.
For fun, let’s take a look at some commonly used catch phrases that have their origins in film and television.
“You’re gaslighting me.” is a phrase that means someone is making a person feel like they are going crazy. This term comes from the storyline of the film Gaslight (Director: George Cukor). In this film, a woman’s husband slowly manipulates her into making her believe that she is going insane. While she is alone in the evenings, she hears noises coming from a sealed attic and witnesses the gaslights of the house dimming. Night after night, she hears and sees these things. Her husband tells her it is just her imagination and little by little she starts to believe she is losing her mind.
“It’s a Sophie’s choice” is a phrase applies to a situation where a person is forced to choose one of two equally poor choices. It relates to the film Sophie’s Choice (Director: Alan Jay Pakula) in which a woman is told she can only take one of her two children with her to Auschwitz. She is forced to decide which child to leave behind to die in a gas chamber.
“Catch-22” is a situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. This term was coined by Joseph Heller who wrote the book Catch-22, a satire of war and the rules of the army. The film of the same name (Director: Mike Nichols) made the phrase even more popular.
“You’re toast!” means (hopefully figuratively) that something or someone is dead meat. This term actually comes from the original Ghostbusters film (Director: Ivan Reitman) in which the character Peter Venkman says, “This chick is toast.”
“The dark side” is a term that refers to the negative or bad side of something or someone. This was coined in the film Star Wars (Director: George Lucas) in which Jedi warriors are always wary of being pulled into the dark side of the force.
“The perfect storm” refers to an unusual combination of events or things that come together to create a terrible result. This comes from the film “The Perfect Storm” (Director: Wolfgang Petersen) which is about a shipping vessel that fights to survive a horrific storm.
“Google it!” is a term used to express that a person should use Google to look something up. This term was first used as a verb on one of my favorite series of all time “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Paparazzi refers to freelance photographers who will do anything to get photos of celebrities. This term comes from a character by the name of Paparazzo in the film La Dolce Vita (Director: Federico Fellini) who is a relentless photographer.
“It’s the Five-O” which means the cops are here. This term came out of the 1960s series Hawaii Five-O, which is about police officers in Hawaii.
“That jumped the shark.” expresses that something that was good has taken a bad turn and is now crap. This term refers to an episode of Happy Days where the character Fonzie literally jumps a shark on water skis in a desperate move by the writers of the show to keep the series going.
“Frak” is a replacement word for a four letter word starting with the same letter and was used on the television series Battlestar Galactica so the characters could curse in prime time. I use it all the time…