Nova Rant About Symbolism
I think Cliche quotes are misused often because they are not iterated on
They just use it without any effort to reframe or use them in an interesting way, whether seriously or ironically, merely using them as a sort of, catch all "I recognize this saying!" to form familiarity, but that's really sort of it, and familiarity is kind of pointless if left on it's own without any connection. The point of a cliche like that is to help immerse the audience into the narrative
You kind of can't do that when you have an isolated saying. "The grass is always greener!" Means nothing if not further connected to the overall plot and narrative in some way other
Whilst the viewer carries parts of their experience with them when entering a fictional work, they are still intrinsically disconnected from those thoughts and ideas without you directly evoking them, and the way in which you evoke those ideas forms the narrative of the world. This is why symbolism is so important. Ultrakill for example takes place in hell (specifically the dantes inferno iteration). Whilst we have cultural associations we bring into Ultrakill based on our knowledge of hell in our world, we still interpret the hell of ultrakill as a different intrinsic thing whether consciously or not. However, Ultrakill does not need or try to connect it to be as close to our hell/dantes hell as possible, this is where the symbolism comes in. Ultrakills hell is used as a symbolic image to help connect ourselves to the story and build our immersion and provoke our thoughts about it's world so we can carry it's messages and themes to better ourselves as people/further our understanding of things. Which is overall the core point of art whether intended or not.
