some clichés can be endured, others can’t

It’s hard to know the rule for when they work and when they don’t.

Just to give a personal example…

I love the Eiffel Tower, even though it’s an ultra-cliché. Yet I cannot stand Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker,” even though it’s as great as everything by Rodin, simply because I flinch with annoyance at the banality with which philosophy is always associated with that sculpture. I’m afraid the sculpture is ruined for me, and I can’t get it back.

Imagine that your absolute favorite piece of music became the jingle for an idiotic television commercial played hundreds of times over and over again, and you can see how the music might be ruined for you.

I was never a huge fan of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” but United Airlines more or less destroyed whatever remaining fondness I had for the song through overuse, and now I can’t hear it without thinking of O’Hare Airport and their twisted, sickening variations on it played in various parts of the terminals. (Or at least that was still the case in the 1990’s. I rarely pass through O’Hare anymore.)