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Copy: Embellishing
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Words,
Words, Words
While waiting for my novels to be published, I spent 20 years in the advertising business running my own agency in Washington D.C. I was the chief copywriter as well, bending language to seduce, cajole and persuade people to buy whatever my clients were selling.
Since my life revolves around words and their meaning, I have become hyper sensitive to language, a lot more sensitive than I was in my salad days. Perhaps it is the result of a guilt trip for all those superlatives and "creative" punch lines I wrote to bludgeon people to buy the wares my clients were selling regardless of merit.
Although I'm a prodigious reader of newspapers and books (when I'm not writing) I have to confess that I'm just beginning to learn how to truly understand the real meaning of words, and the power they convey through writing and speech.
I do not mean to denigrate my novel writing where my own meaning is precise and the intention of my words carefully crafted. My awareness is acute when I am living in the trance-like dream state of the imagination. Unfortunately, I have not given the same attention to the parallel world of so-called real life. Until now. Better late than never.
But what it has done for my understanding is to develop a level of silent protest for almost everything that is written or spoken by people with an axe to grind in the popular culture. This goes for paid celebrity product endorsers, people flacking their latest tomes and most talking heads on the news channels, especially politicians and so-called "experts." Does maturity make cynics of us all?
When it comes to advertising copy, which dominates our culture, I can now see through the manipulation process with laser transparency. Why anyone believes this hubris boggles the mind and speaks badly of our education process. I'm talking print. We'll leave television for another time.
To illustrate, I'll cite the most brazen, blatant and shameless acts of word seduction…movie advertising, a cornucopia of hollow self-serving superlatives, used so often that even though they have lost their meaning as words they continue to punch out their shameless message of snake oil persuasion as if they were trying to further de-educate us.
Recently a scandal was unearthed where some overeager movie flacks created their own fictitious raves…as if it mattered.
Most of these movie blurbs seem mostly interchangeable, and the so-called critics who manufacture this drivel have found a sure fire way to keep their names in the public domain. This is not to say that most blurbs used by the movie machine, designed to flatter and cajole, don't work. Apparently they do work, at least during the first weekend of release. If the movie is a stinker and word of mouth doesn't kick in, no amount of bull will bring in a customer.
Before you begin to understand the process, study the sources. Some newspapers don't allow their "critics" to attend movie junkets, a fun time arranged to polish the egos of the attendees by having the stars deign to talk with them with gushing enthusiasm as if each writer has just completed the first draft of "War and Peace." The trade-off is hardly subtle. "I'll show you a good time. You write me a good blurb."
Some of the more snooty newspapers don't allow their critics on junkets. They receive their stroking in other ways far more subtle.
Let us explore this jungle of language bending superlatives.
By far the most interesting quotes are from some sources who aver the following, ad infintum. In the interests of self-protection and further embarrassing the source, I will keep the attribution anonymous.
"My favorite film so far this
year!" This by the way was in December when the year was almost over.
"Unlike any other movie you will see this
year." Really?
Oddly the same people seem to be gushing over the same thought.
"The best movie of 2003."
One critic opines.
"One of the best adult comedies ever." Ever?
And how many ways to describe funny in a single ad.
"Achingly
funny", "Unreasonably funny,"
"Sinfully funny," "Enormously
funny" And, of course "One of the funniest movies of the
year."
One of my favorites used ad nauseum is
"It doesn't get any better than this." Good God, it doesn't? What then can we look forward to?
One of the most over-used words in this gabble is
"riveting," so overused that it seemed to provide enough rivets to hold together a battleship.
Other favorites are
"Amazing," "Stunning,"
"Extraordinary," "Unforgettable,"
"Brilliant," "Gripping,"
"Spellbinding," "Engrossing,"
"Affecting," "Powerful"
and "Moving."
Most of these superlatives have little relationship to the truth of the offering, but they could be career builders for the critics whose names are featured in the ads.
All right it is a bit of snake oil selling, most of it a pack of baloney, but, after all, a movie seat with a butt to fill is a perishable item. A buttless seat at a performance can never be recovered.
What bothers me is the abuse of language, the overuse of words whose meaning is lost through imprecision and exaggeration. It debases the language and creates a certain virus in the word chain, a virus, for example that has recreated the word
"awesome," from the word "awe" (which means an emotion of mingled reverence, dread and fear) to a careless throwaway compliment of almost anything, however pedestrian and undeserving.
Okay, so I'm a scrooge. And why take on the poor movie industry with so many other enterprises are guilty of the same transgressions. It is probably, not even the most flagrant. Take the investment industry for example. Those of us who believed all that hogwash in the nineties paid for that barrage of upbeat baloney with their treasure.
With a movie you pay in wasted time. On second thought it is probably a lot more valuable than treasure.
Far from Dead
For those who thought
e-books were dead, the latest statistics from the people that track these things is that retail e-book sales have surpassed the
one million mark for the first time in history in the first three quarters of the year. This has happened despite the fact that Gemstar and Barnes and Noble have both terminated e-book operations. And the news from Sony is they will launch their digital paper e-book reader shortly in Japan. And there are other technology breakthroughs coming to make e-books more user friendly. It
will happen folks. Stay tuned.
A
Self-Serving Note
And, of course, watch for
Children of the Roses to be published in April along with a reprint of the original
The War of the
Roses.
To answer the burning question, asked repetitively over the nearly a quarter of a century life of that book:
"Is it autobiographical?"
Answer: "No, no a thousand times over."
However…who is to say that imagination isn't real life.
Power
of the Press
For those of you who have not read
The
Henderson Equation, its a perfect companion piece for this newsletter. It deals with media
manipulation...how a powerful newspaper brought down a President and is now gearing up to help elect their own choice. History does repeat.
***
The
Henderson Equation
The power of the press to manipulate and persuade comes under the microscope in this tense exploration of the media.
Staring
into the vast city room, as it subsided now
from the last flurry of deadlines, Nick Gold
savored a moment of comparative tranquility.
Deskmen and reporters, lifting weary eyes from
copy paper, might have assessed his mood as
one of self-imposed hypnosis, a kind of
daydreaming. News aides turned their eyes away
self-consciously, as though fearing their own
curious gazes would be an intrusion on the
executive editor.
But while Nick’s open eyes
gazed into the cavernous room, the ninety-one
clearly visible desks and typewriters, the
clusters of nerve centers through which
information had passed from brain to
typewriter, from paper pile to paper pile,
paragraph by paragraph, through each penciled
checkpoint, the image was not registering. The
mechanism of his mind was simply idling,
lulled by the comforting vibrations of the big
presses as they inked the awesome discharge of
a Washington day, the distilled essence of a
thousand minds.
Cordovan
brogues planted at either side of his
typewriter table, hands clasped as a cradle
for his peppered head, tie loose but still
plumb in its buttoned-downed place, Nick kept
at bay any irritant wisp of thought that might
intrude on his self-imposed tranquility.
His adrenaline would not recharge
him until the completed street edition, the
freshly inked “practice” sheet, was
slapped smartly on his desk by one of the news
aides.
The slap of the Chronicle falling
on his Lucite desk top, like a slap on the
butt, jarred him out of his stupor. His long
legs unhitched from over the typewriter and
curled under the desk as he opened the first
section, smudging the ink with his fingers. He
covered the headlines with a single glance, as
his short-fused temper was immediately ignited
by a single word. He pressed a buzzer and
waited for the gruff mumble of Prescott, the
copy editor.
“Remove balk, Harry, as in
‘Russians Balk,’ lower right, beneath the
crease.”
"Nit-picking. Balk is
exactly right.”
"It’s an old baseball
term, Harry. Not precise.”
"How about bark?” Nick
could detect the professional irritation. Copy
editors traditionally overreacted to their own
myth. They fought over words like male lions
over their mates. Nick’s temper fuse
sputtered. Tread lightly, he told himself.
Don’t take it out on Harry.
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