That scene in Casablanca — you know the one we mean — is such a journalist’s cliche that we were not shocked, so to speak, when a search of the Nexis news database for the words “shocked, shocked” returned a stern warning from the Nexis gods: “Your search has been interrupted because it probably will retrieve more than 1,000 documents.” The herd instinct explains reporters’ overuse of an allusion to a movie scene when a simple “how cynical!” or “how hypocritical!” would do the trick. But how to explain ludicrous over- explaining of this same cliche?
In a choice specimen of the genre, the Washington Post Book World last week offered this feast for the cinematically starved: “In the movie classic ‘Casablanca’ the worldly police captain played by Claude Rains tells saloon keeper Humphrey Bogart that he is ‘shocked, shocked’ to find gambling in this casino.”
Crains Detroit Business wins the booby prize with this passage: “This righteous indignation reminds us of one of the best scenes in ‘Casablanca,’ the Bogart-Bergman classic. To impress his Nazi guests, the French police commander, played by Claude Rains, allows that he is ‘shocked, shocked’ to discover that gambling occurs on the premises of Rick’s famous cafe. A cafe worker then presents Rains with his own winnings from the gaming table, and Rains quickly stuffs them into his pocket.”
Gentlemen, the purpose of an allusion, after all, is for the reader to get the point with merely a slight nod in the direction of the original source.
