THE NAKED CITY: HYPERBOLIC OR JUST PLAIN HYPE!

THE NAKED CITY: HYPERBOLIC OR JUST PLAIN HYPE!

When two contestants decided to leave Channel Nine’s long running reality show ‘The Block’ after only two days on the set, the station promos screamed “Australia – The TV Shock of The Year Is Here!”. It was typical of the network’s outlandish claims in pushing a range of programs from the moronic ‘Beauty & The Geek’ to their flagship ’60 Minutes’. You sense a certain tongue in cheek licence on the part of the promo producers but the overall impression is one of hyperbole out of control.

Nine is by no means the only offender here, all the commercial stations are guilty of promoting their tacky reality shows and tabloid style current affairs with a similar vocabulary of shameless hyperbole. We are constantly told: “it’s the show that all Australia is talking about”, when in truth there could be less than a million viewers watching as the audience for free to view television continues to dwindle.

The original description of ‘hyperbole’ is that it involves exaggerated statements or outrageous claims generally not meant to be taken literally. These days we are more familiar with its shortened version, i.e. ‘hype’ – and in the world of advertising and promotion, that is nothing new. Promoters of products, entertainment and even religion have been employing hype to sell their goods and attractions for hundreds of years.

In the 1800s, American showman and businessman P.T. Barnum made a considerable fortune out of promoting a series of hoaxes and human curiosities, leading to the formation of his circus empire, not surprisingly labelled ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’. Amongst his most notorious sideshow ‘exhibits’ was an Afro-American woman Joice Heth, whom he claimed was 161 years old and was once the slave mammy of George Washington.

When Joice died, at an estimated age of 79, he even organized a public autopsy for 1500 spectators in New York, charging each of them 50 cents. When the surgeon declared she was at least half the advertised age, Barnum claimed that a body had been substituted and the real Joice Heth was on tour in Europe.

Such is the nature of hype that it often hides deception and dishonesty, all in the name of making a quick buck. With the growth of movies and television in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the entertainment industry became home to a flagrant use of hyperbole. Exploitation and B grade movie posters and advertisements regularly made the most sensational claims, luring patrons to theatres with world such as “shocking, amazing and incredible”.

Some years ago, there was an obsession amongst a number of music journalists and TV hosts to anoint the so called ‘biggest’ band in the world. In the fickle world of pop music, the title seemed to change hands around every twelve months depending on both record sales and the journalists’ own obsessions.

One year it was U2 followed not long after by Radiohead and then the band once described by Alan McGhee in The Guardian as “music to wet your bed to”, namely Coldplay. If you could fill Wembley Stadium and got a thumbs up in the NME, you were a contender for the ‘biggest band in the world’ – well at least the Western World, maybe not Africa, Asia and most of South America. You would hate to think how much that description has inflated the egos and sense of self-importance of some of the bands awarded that dubious honour. Thank God, Bono is such a humble individual.

The problem for modern day hyperbole or just plain hype, is that it is now so widespread and vacuous that the words employed no longer carry any real weight. With endless click bait on mass media, Tik Tok ad nauseam and the access to all manner of disturbing material on the internet, it’s hard to be really shocked these days – let alone when two contestants turn their back on a dreary reality show.

Perhaps we are now at the point where a new ‘hyper-hyperbole’ will need to be employed before anybody really takes notice. If somebody does break contract and scarper from a shitty reality show, the TV promo will scream “Australia – get ready for the most heinous, dastardly, stupefying and abominable act of the century”.  Just the kind of trigger you need to switch off the TV and read a good book!

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