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Back in my theatre days, I worked with a Romanian director who used similar
tricks to get political material past the censors. If there was something
that she absolutely wanted in a play, and she knew that it would be censored
for political reasons, she would put a naked woman in the scene. The censor
would have a fit, she'd fight tooth and nail to keep the naked woman, only
giving in after a long and bitter battle... and the censor, pleased with his
victory, would never notice the naughty political content.
I loved working with this woman. :D
on 12/23/00 7:57 AM, Dick Margulis at margulis -at- fiam -dot- net wrote:
> I still use a variant of this on projects for certain internal
> customers; and I direct my subordinates to do the same thing, to their
> great dismay.
>
> Early in the twentieth century, J. Walter Thompson--the person, not the
> company--was reviewing an ad layout that featured a kitten playing with
> a ball of string. He instructed the art director to put a large pink bow
> on the kitten's head. The artist threw a tantrum (some things never
> change) complaining that this would ruin the composition, distract the
> reader, and make a perfectly charming scene trite and treacly, instead.
> When he was quite done venting, Thompson is said to have told him, "Yes.
> You're right. The client will see that, too, and insist that the bow be
> removed. He'll feel he has made an invaluable contribution to the
> advertisement, and then he will approve it. Without the bow, he'll
> reject the design and we'll have to start all over."
>
> So when my illustrator gives me that you-don't-really-want-me-to-do-THAT
> look, I just tell her it's a big pink bow, and she immediately accedes.
> I do the same with the pieces I write, sometimes including whole
> paragraphs that are three steps more outrageous than the ones I am
> actually interested in preserving.
>
> It all comes down to knowing your audience, right?
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