Author Archives: Scott Bowles

The Cliche Machine


webpage They ask the impossible, and we pretend there’s an answer.

I was watching soccer this week when I came to this epiphany, right in the middle of a dim-witted sideline interview. The player had barely caught his breath before a reporter stepped in, microphone poised to spoil the moment.

“How did you find the confidence to take that last shot?”

“How did you dig deep and find the heart to push through?”

“Where did you find the inner strength to keep going?”

These aren’t real questions. They’re abstract riddles in the costume of journalism, designed more to kill air than to enlighten. We’ve accepted them as part of the postgame ritual, but the moment you really listen, you realize they’re impossible to answer.

An athlete doesn’t pause mid-run to ponder the depths of his confidence or deliver a TED Talk on resilience. He moves because movement is his only language. He runs because stopping isn’t an option.

Yet the microphone always appears, begging for a magic formula: “What was going through your head?” As if the player had time to draft a sonnet while hurdling defenders. The honest answer — nothing — sounds too plain, too true for broadcast TV.

These questions echo across every sport like a chant. You could shuffle them up and fling them at a hockey goalie, a sprinter, or a tennis player, and no one would blink. The rookie on the bench? “What gave you the mental toughness to stay ready?” The pitcher who just threw a shutout? “Where did you find the inner fire tonight?”

We crave the myth of the warrior poet. We want to believe these athletes dwell in a realm of unearthly focus, conjuring ancient spirits of grit. We ask them to explain it so we can taste a piece of that magic.

But sport lives in the present tense. The greats don’t think; they vanish into the act itself. The zone is an empty room, not a confessional booth.

Maybe we ask these questions because we’re afraid of silence. We can’t bear to let a moment breathe. We can’t let the stadium roar or the hush after a missed shot hang in the air. Instead, we force players to stitch together a story on the spot, to speak for a feeling that refuses to be pinned down.

And in doing so, we flatten them into cliché machines. The defender who made a season-saving tackle? Maybe he’s just relieved it’s over and wants to call his mom. The striker who scored in extra time? Maybe he just wants a burrito and a nap.

Imagine simpler, more human questions: “What’s the first thing you want to do now?” Or even better — “How did that happen?” and then shut up. Let them decide if they want to say more.

We keep begging for an explanation of courage when the answer already ran past us in cleats, dripping sweat. They live it. We watch it.

And that should be answer enough.

The Cult of Overpriced T-Shirts


American Apparel once promised salvation in a cotton T-shirt. Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel shows it was selling a fantasy stitched together with hubris and hormones.

The film doesn’t so much unfold as it crashes forward, propelled by confessions from former employees, vintage campaign shots, and the magnetic, maddening presence of Dov Charney. We watch him strut through office hallways half-dressed, spouting slogans about sexual liberation and free expression, as if he were both prophet and product.

The documentary understands that Charney is its tragic clown — a man too convinced of his own genius to notice the moral sinkhole widening beneath him.

What emerges is a portrait of a workplace that felt less like a company than a fever dream. Employees describe a place where lines blurred: between boss and lover, between art and exploitation, between progressive values and old-fashioned power grabs. They speak of late-night parties, of “creative meetings” that doubled as auditions for Charney’s private fantasies, and of the peculiar glow that surrounded anyone anointed as one of his favorites.

Director Sally Rose Griffiths wisely lets these voices do most of the talking. They are by turns shocked, regretful, nostalgic. You feel the pull that must have existed in those early days: the chance to be part of something daring and new, to embody an idea bigger than yourself.

It’s the same seduction that lured young artists to Andy Warhol’s Factory, though here the silkscreens have been replaced by bodysuits and sexually charged billboards.

Yet for all its fascinating material, the film doesn’t always push hard enough. It catalogues the sins and the slogans but hesitates at the threshold of real critique.

We’re given glimpses of Charney’s legal troubles and the ethical contradictions of “sweatshop-free” labor, but these remain shadows at the edge of the frame. The film seems content to watch the trainwreck rather than search the wreckage for answers.

There is an undeniable rhythm to the storytelling — quick cuts, pulsing music, a sense of movement even when nothing is being said outright. It mirrors the brand’s marketing genius: distract with skin, dazzle with slogans, move fast enough that no one has time to ask what it all means.

You sense the filmmakers wrestling with this tension, caught between documenting the spectacle and interrogating it.

Still, there is power in the accumulation of voices, in the slow revelation of how a brand that sold authenticity built itself on illusion. In the end, Trainwreck: The Cult of American Apparel feels like trying on a shirt that looked perfect on the mannequin, only to discover the seams itch and the fit is all wrong.

We leave the film not wiser, perhaps, but sobered — reminded that behind every shining brand stands a man with a mirror and a sales pitch.