It’s Giving Fetch

In 2024, I rated ‘Gouge Your Eye Out’ as my favourite blog of the year. It is poignant, speaking about the effect of content on our psyche and how we have to be cautious about how the media seeps into our lives. In the same spirit, we are taking a deeper dive into how film and TV affect our outlooks, outfits and outrage and outpours.

Like we surround ourselves with friends and adopt their vocabulary, we reiterate the lines of screen characters. What can start out as a funny joke can actually change the way we operate. I was saying “it’s giving” and “you ate that” as a joke. Why is it a part of my vocab now? What was I saying before? Before something was “giving”, what was it doing? At least with these, I can trace this back to doomscrolling on TikTok, but film and TV have been around longer and have set the standard for media changing language.

Here are some examples of neologisms from movies or series:

• Catfish

Meaning: Someone pretending to be someone else online to deceive others, usually in dating.

Came from: The Catfish documentary (2010).

• Bye, Felicia

Meaning: Dismissing someone unimportant or annoying.

Came from: The movie, Friday (1995).

• Gaslighting

Meaning: Manipulating someone into questioning their own memory, perception, or sanity.

Came from: The play Gas Light (1938) and films Gaslight (1940 UK version, 1944 US version).

• Regifting

Meaning: Giving someone a gift that you were originally given.

Came from: Seinfeld (1995, “The Label Maker” episode).

• Toast (as in, if you do that, you’re toast)

Meaning: Doomed or defeated.

Came from: Ghostbusters (1984).

• Bucket list

Meaning: A list of things to do before you die. (“Before you kick the bucket.”)

Came from: Popularised by The Bucket List movie (2007).

• A Pick Me

Meaning: A person (typically a girl) who acts a particular way to get attention, mostly for male validation

Came from: The show ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, when the protagonist, Meredith, says to a man: “Pick me, choose me, love me.”

• MILF

Meaning: Acronym for “Mother I’d Like to F***”; refers to an attractive older woman.

Came from: Popularised by American Pie (1999).

• Paparazzi

Meaning: Aggressive photographers who chase celebrities.

Came from: The character “Paparazzo” from the film La Dolce Vita (1960).

• Debbie Downer

Meaning: Someone who constantly brings the mood down.

Came from: A Saturday Night Live sketch (2004).

• The Ick

Meaning: A sudden feeling of being turned off by someone you liked.

Came from: The show, ‘Ally McBeal’ in 1999 and became popular on Love Island and TikTok around the late 2010s.

The adoption of mindsets and words is a reflection of the way we engage with culture and media. Media is writing our dialogue. When a word makes it into the dictionary, it means we’ve reached a consensus that it has transcended the screen and become part of real-world language, lasting through generations. in both language and definition, and a lot of these have made it in. Guys, “D’oh” is in the Oxford English Dictionary. “D’oh” as in Homer Simpson and his pink doughnut. 

D’oh: An exclamation used to convey a sense of self-reproach or frustration, often following a foolish or accidental mistake.

This can be a good thing! Content scans society and uses its platform to popularise and coin to help give definition to an ever changing world. But sometimes, we have to make sure that we are actively choosing words to use, not having them thrust upon us. Content is so sneaky, it weaves its ways into our engagement with reality.

But, film and TV popularise not only the way we express ourselves to one another, but the way we see one another. Old tropes still linger, influencing our perceptions based on appearance In ‘You’ve just got that look!’, I spoke about how actresses don’t wear glasses, and a big reason is because the superstar popular girl doesn’t wear glasses. Do you know who does? Of course you do, we all do! It’s the edgy, mousy girl with a sharp tongue who wears dungarees and is cool with that one teacher because she’s the top student in that class. Then suddenly the glasses come off in a makeover and you realise that her eyes are so…pure. Go to that blog to read more about it, but I’m addressing it again quickly because it bleeds into the stereotypes of:

• Glasses Girl
• The Terrorist = Middle Eastern or Muslim
• The Sassy Friend = Black/Gay
• Spicy Latina

Film and TV have a photographic basis, they look so real makes it easy for us to feel like what we’re watching is a kind of reality. Because of that, popular films can push certain ideas about the status quo and we want to produce that in real life. That’s why a lot of us screen lovers may be living in delulu land or have entrenched views about the way things are. Originally, stereotype meant a solid metal plate used in printing to create identical copies of a page. Today, it refers to a fixed, oversimplified idea about a group of people that gets repeated without much thought. Assuming that race, sexual orientation or aesthetic determines a certain personality or trait because you saw it on a TV show limits people, but it’s what can happen when a glamourised screen reality is hailed more than the true physical. Sure, the stereotype comes from somewhere, but can we really set them in stone? Oversimplified thoughts can set unrealistic expectations, create casting bias or even create fear-based policies. Maybe these preconceptions even stop us from getting to know people genuinely, with curiosity, because we already feel like we know them. Thank God that these tropes are being widely subverted across screen content, but, like the vocabulary, the damage has been done. ‘Glee’ has already been released.

We don’t tend to just watch characters. Now we speak like them, act like them, and think like them. The screen has jumped off the wall and it’s in our heads, our slang, our instincts and ultimately, our evolution. This can be a great thing when we intentionally choose what we accept and reject, because the screen can give us some great gems to adopt in the outside world. However, a mind that is too passive is open to brain rot and collecting trendy words and stereotypes like Infinity Stones. D’oh.

Maybe the question now isn’t how it’s changing us, but what we want it to change us into. How do we want our language to sound? Do we speak like the people on TV shows because we want to have the main character attention in real life? To conform? To fill a gap in our vocab? Maybe we’re not even clocking how we speak or think about one another. This sounds a bit like a ‘Black Mirror’ episode but this isn’t meant to scare, Screenscope doesn’t do that. This blog is just to inform and help us reflect. 

The screen isn’t just a screen anymore. 

Selah.