What exactly makes something cheesy?

If it's stereotypical, overly obvious or overly used it'll be cheesy. Someone summoning "magical armour" would be cheesy, but it'd be a step less cheesy if he used his will to warp the powers of the earth to sheathe his body against lesser attacks. They're one and the same, but introducing limitations and attempting to find a new way to describe what's going on.

Cheesy is a matter of tone in my opinion. It is not what is done but rather how it is portrayed. Its like a good parody can take something serious and turn it into comedy...

I agree, it's all in the tone and description. If a writer is able to write about something in a fresh, interesting way, it might be days later before I realize, "Oh my gosh, he totally used a hadouken!"

A hardened soldier pulling a dirty-looking sword from the ground in the middle of a battlefield and it's business-as-asual- a teenager who's never been in a fight before pulling a sword from a boulder in a peaceful little village in the middle of nowhere and there's suddenly fireworks going off in the readers' heads. Tone and context are more important than the act itself. Ten great authors can all write the same story, with the same events, in the same order, and the tenth won't be any more "cheesy" than the first in my opinion. The way that something is portrayed far outweighs whether it's "been done before" or not (but that's just my view on it).

To put it another way, Zelda redefined "pulling the sword from the stone", rather than being seen as a blatant King Arthur ripoff (which it was, in all honestly, but did the audience care?).

I'd say it comes from a lack of imagination, but isn't always bad. There are plenty of cheesy thing I enjoy, like Arnie films, and I suppose a lot of Stephen King's writing could be called cheesy although I still read them on occasion (they make good bed time stories)

Subjective opinion.

I like a bit of cheese every now and again anyway

Oh, I love MST3K.


I think there are different levels of cheese. Sometimes they're intentional, and sometimes they were sadly all too serious (That abomination of a Dungeons and Dragons movie springs to mind. I still develop a homicidal tic when I think about it.).

As an example, I will offer an unfortunate anecdote from my own work.
*sigh* I always feared the day I would have to resurrect the cheese golem story.
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4502449&postcount=1

I echo the same sentiments as some of the previous posts...

I wouldn't worry too much about an idea being cheesy. Most books recycle ideas, few offer originals ones. Although, in scifi/fantasy, I have seen more original ideas than most other genres. That scifi/fantasy doesn't try to portray reality probably frees up those authors to be more imaginative.

It's more a matter of how you write out the idea, rather than the idea itself. If you can take an old idea and write about it in a refreshing, creative ways, avoiding cliches, you can probably turn cheese into non-cheese.

I don't know if I can ever call an idea "cheesy", personally. For me it's all about tone, and what makes the moment "cheesy" isn't the actions done, but the style in which they are done. If it resembles bad 80s movie lines/scenes, it's cheesy. For instance, a disaster or threat appears. The camera dolleys in on protagonist who utters slowly, "Oh... my... God."

You just don't have scenes like that in books or movies these days. The act in which a hero stares down impending danger is not cheesy, it's what he does next that determines the cheese.

For me, determining the cheesiness or non-cheesiness of something is a matter of suspension of disbelief. If you take a cliched idea and do it in a way that makes me believe it, it won't be cheesy.

However, if you do it in a way that makes me think you are not even aware that it is cliche and I lose my suspension of disbelief, then it is probably entering cheesy territory.

Cheese is in the eye of the beholder.

I find something cheesy if, instead of eliciting the desired response, like 'awww, how sweeet' or 'gosh, that's romantic', it makes me shudder. Movies do this a lot, especially ones aimed at kids.

I think the magical armour would be cheesy if there were simply no basis for it in the story. If the person summoning it hadn't had to learn or sacrifice in some way to be able to do it, if there were no cost, and if it appeared all shiny and complete in the middle of a dirty, nasty fight. But I'm not sure. It might equally be because she's surrounded by some kind of halo while it's happening, or some woman is looking adoringly at him, or....

"What we need is the Magical Armour of Goshienkel!"

"Quick, what's that over there?"

"It's the Magical Armour of Goshienkel! And it's just my size!"

Isn't there a female comic book character who has armor that can just appear when she needs it? My mind's gone blank. I think they might have made a short-lived TV series out of it, too. Gah. It's right on the tip of my tongue. I think I actually had a couple issues.

ETA: Witchblade?

Yeah, in Witchblade I think it was like an alien technology in the shape of a little red sphere that was embedded in her hand or something? Ronin Warriors, Power Rangers, VR Troopers, Sailor Moon, etc... all have sort of an 'armor transformation' aspect to them as well, the power coming from very different sources, and that said all of them felt different from one another (except VR Troopers which was an obvious Power Rangers ripoff).

They had shields in Dune, didn't they? Sort of like forcefields.

DJMaxwell said:

Yeah, in Witchblade I think it was like an alien technology in the shape of a little red sphere that was embedded in her hand or something?

Click to expand...

Well, I've only seen the anime of Witchblade, but it was bracelet on her arm.

For me, cheesiness is related to how contrived something is. I think of it as seeing the strings. If what is happening feels natural, it's not cheesy. But if I can sense the author manipulating events behind the scenes, going, "This part is supposed to make you cry! And this is where the reader should gasp in terror! And now the hero must confess his love in the most dramatic way possible!" it becomes hard to take vents seriously.

But...I don't find the magic armor idea cheesy. Maybe I can't be trusted to offer an opinion.

The director rolling out the warmed-over glitz and glamour without much thought.

To start with, you need to separate Cheesy from Cliched. They are different. Cliche refers to things that are overused. Anything from a plot to a metaphor can become cliche. Cheesy refers more to quality. When something is cheesy, you don't believe it. Rather than supposedly serious dialog making things somber, it elicits a laugh. Cheesy is the reverse of a joke that bombs. It is something intended to bomb that turns into a joke. Mel Brooks uses cheese to great advantage to be funny. So did Monty Python. But that reaction to something the creator intended to be serious is Cheese.

Things can also become cheesy over time. Something that was big stuff 50 years ago can seem cheesy when viewed today, not because it is something overused and cliche, but because it is outdated. It also isn't always humorous. Sometimes it is just plain annoying. Cliches can be annoying as well, but differently. Cliches still effectively get the point across. Cheesy things miss the mark.