India Uncut
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Saturday, January 06, 2007
The other India is what?
"The other India is the leash."
This is just one of many pieces of cringeworthy copywriting in an advertisement for a campaign called "India Poised." Check out the rest of the ad: it reads like a demonstration of how not to write. There are overdone adjectives ("pulsating, dynamic..."), tepid cliches ("time to fly"), schoolboyish imagery ("time's great precipice"), mixed metaphors (history as "a bad motorist" that is "turning a page") and clumsy constructions.
And really, what specific suggestion does the ad make? I get rather irritated by such generic feel-good-about-the-nation popcorn, and its simplistic suggestion that there are only two Indias is both silly and extremely condescending.
Anyway, do also check out the slickly-made commercial in which poor Amitabh Bachchan does a pretty good job of salvaging these lines. Here it is:
(You Tube link via Arjun Swarup.)
This is just one of many pieces of cringeworthy copywriting in an advertisement for a campaign called "India Poised." Check out the rest of the ad: it reads like a demonstration of how not to write. There are overdone adjectives ("pulsating, dynamic..."), tepid cliches ("time to fly"), schoolboyish imagery ("time's great precipice"), mixed metaphors (history as "a bad motorist" that is "turning a page") and clumsy constructions.
And really, what specific suggestion does the ad make? I get rather irritated by such generic feel-good-about-the-nation popcorn, and its simplistic suggestion that there are only two Indias is both silly and extremely condescending.
Anyway, do also check out the slickly-made commercial in which poor Amitabh Bachchan does a pretty good job of salvaging these lines. Here it is:
(You Tube link via Arjun Swarup.)
