On ABC radio the day before yesterday I heard a report about the decommissioning of Sydney's monorail. It's been annoying me ever since. The thing that annoyed me was not the story; it was the fact that the ABC radio reporter referred to the monorail as 'iconic'.
Here is a picture of the monorail:
I know that English is a wonderfully flexible language. I understand that one of its great advantages is that it evolves and, as it does so, the meanings of its words will often change. In this context, it is increasingly obvious that 'iconic' is beginning to move toward meaning 'emblematic'.
Even so, even if I accept that 'iconic' is now interchangeable with 'emblematic', (which I don't entirely), describing the Sydney monorail as 'iconic' still makes no sense.
The Opera House might qualify to be called 'iconic', in its new 'emblematic' meaning. The Harbour Bridge might also make the grade. The ugly metal bar that curves through the CBD, slicing across the facades of attractive buildings, obscuring the views from their windows, could never be even faintly in the running. It's just ugly and badly conceived.
On the other hand, we're living in a world where you can have
fifty iconic beers before breakfast, where you can
watch the most iconic music videos of the past twenty-five years, where you can cook
iconic recipes and make
iconic journeys. Perhaps everything's iconic now. Perhaps even I am. Yes, that's it, I am iconic - I'm iconic for being wrong.
Iconic seems to be the new 'classic' (Classic Cola, Classic Trek etc.) In its modern usage, the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge are certainly iconic, but how many people outside Australia are aware that Sydney had a monorail? It was news to me.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, and now you've missed it. Mind you, I think, while it was impossible not to be aware of it if you were in a street it ran through, few people actually used it or welcomed it.
DeleteIf the the use of iconic is groundless, would that make it acthonic? Eventually the people who use "iconic" so liberally will get tired of it and find another word to misuse. Emblematic had about a 15-year run, say 1990 to 2005, and seems to be retired.
ReplyDeleteYou're right re getting tired of it. I'm going to look up acthonic; as usual you are more knowledgeable than me.
DeleteI always have been something of a proponent of [or for?] the monorail in Sydney on the grounds of its novelty and tourist value, crassness aside, and now, I realise, because I saw it come into existence and is somehow bound up with my associations with Sydney over time. I think it was being able to see those buildings from places they shouldn't be viewed [from the monorail] in a voyeuristic way that also pleased me.
ReplyDeleteThen I was told that structurally it was on its last legs, or magnets perhaps, and that the cost of getting it safely operational were prohibitive, which gave me a reason to let it go mentally, but you have put the final nail in its [rather awkward] coffin by mentioning its butchering of the cityscape when viewed from the angle it is meant to be – the ground – and not through second floor back windows.
Now the scales have fallen off my eyes and the monorail in its coffin laid to rest [yes, this is really bad, but it's Sunday you know right?] and I have closure.
You're an icon, Zed.
You're a mega icon, Den
DeleteIn a determined, "I'm going to miss your point here" I will declare the Wuppertal Monorail as iconic...but I did read about the Sydney one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bJC896bZgw
ReplyDeleteIn my state of permanent geographic dyslexia, I will now have to go and look up Wuppertal and its monorail, but thank you for your determination. It made me laugh.
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