Proving that Keanu Reeves has below-average intelligence is about as challenging as proving that water is wet, but when I read the following sentence, I must not allow it to pass without public comment:
“Hey man, don’t put that tin man down! That was iconoclastic!”
He’s protesting MTV’s blogger taking a crack at Gort, from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Keanu is starring in a remake of the original 1951 movie.
Oh, and the original is also one of the finest science fiction movies ever made, about a man from space and his big robot guardian who tell the people of earth that they better start making nice with each other or the collective of alien races who sent him will destroy all of humanity.
What Keanu meant to say was that the tin man is “iconic,” which is not the same word as “iconoclastic.” The latter word actually means the opposite of what Keanu was trying to say. He said “iconoclastic” because smart people use that word, and if people are going to think he’s smart, then he needs to start using words that smart people use. So what if he doesn’t know what it means? He’s smarter than you!
Related to this are people who say “penultimate” when they mean “ultimate,” people who say “apropos” when they mean “appropriate,” and people who use the word “societal” instead of saying “social.”
You can add people who use a lot of “quotation marks,” to that list, too.
Keanu is correct. The word “iconoclastic” means literally “image breaker” so when he says the film is iconoclastic, he is taking a deep track to understanding not only the film itself but the era – the 1950s – when the first alien movies almost universally portrayed aliens as horrific monsters bent on destroying the earth or mankind. The Day The Earth Stood Still remains a classic because it BROKE that mold. And the remake is going to rock.
Posted by SarahBaker on September 11th, 2008.