9.07.2024

talk it up

Blurbs and other forms of rodomontade...

"No industry [film industry] did more to destroy the meaning of words. The follies are too familiar to need laboring here—how the story of a couple of cowboys quarreling over a girl became an epic, the tale of a small-time 'hoofer' a deathless saga. Colossal, terrific, stupendous—these words became the small change of film advertising. A reservation was put on a whole series of other adjectives like throbbing, rending, tingling, pulsating, pounding, sizzling, scorching, stark, elemental, volcanic, and searing. No story was ever taken from life—it was ripped or torn from the mighty canvas of humanity."

—E.S. Turner, The Shocking History of Advertising! (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1953)

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