November 21, 2006

"Shallow, flatulent, obsessive, incontinent, hypertensive, hostile, older than 100, paranoid, pasty..."

"... plaid-festooned, sinister-looking, advantage-taking, amphetamine-fueled..." There's a certain style to the personal ads in The London Review of Books:
“An advertising campaign focusing exclusively on the disgust people feel for your product strikes a lot of people as perverse,” [said Kate Fox, a cultural anthropologist and author of “Watching the English."] But when Britons exaggerate their faults, she said, they are really telegraphing their attributes. “It does speak of a certain arrogance, that you have the confidence and the sense of humor to say these things,” she said.

1 comment:

Ron said...

You should see the English birds I pull with that ad! Fortunately, I don't have to act much...