Comments on: Happy Ending Foundation / Lemony Snicket hoax: in poor taste?

By: Criss

Criss — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:36:25 +0000

I’m with you, Inkygirl. I’m all for clever ploys, but this was not it. Something was not right about it, something was mising. I also do not think it is “in the style of Lemony Snicket and their whole ad campaign.” I am (was?) a huge fan of the books and I ate up every little bit of their marketing campaign and promotional materials (as an elementary school teacher, I probably saw more of it than the average bear). There is a playful, teasing, joking tone in the books and their previous marketing that was not present here.

Perhaps the problem here is, as you mentioned, the fact that it involves censorship, which is no laughing matter. It’s too real to be funny, to be taken lightly. This came out the same week libraries celebrated banned books; book-burning, how real it was, and how real book-banning still is, at least in some people’s minds, was very much on our minds at that time. The joke was tasteless, and not funny.

Whoever was in charge of this should have known they had crossed the line when the BBC asked for an interview. If they were truly going for a joke, and nothing else, they should have known then their joke wasn’t working, the sarcasm was not coming through, and they should have ‘fessed up. Going on the BBC interview and implicating a public broadcasting corporation, which has clear laws about not advertising stuff like this, was a big mistake on their part. Sure, some people will argue that the BBC should have know better, they should have sent fact-checkers out, etc. But if the people running this HEF scam were professional and *ethical*, they should have drawn the line there, and told the BBC it was a hoax. They chose not to do this, which says a lot about them, and completely changes the way I feel about Lemony Snicket.

By: epicadventure

epicadventure — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:35:57 +0000

I don’t think it was tasteless at all. I think the site DID try to go over the top and be silly, and it’s OUR WORLD that is so extreme and ridiculous at times that we believe without hesitation that someone would do this.

It’s also PERFECTLY in the style of Lemony Snicket and their whole ad campaign– I think it’s genius. And kudos to all those people that got worked up– the topic is worth the energy,.

By: A random onlooker

A random onlooker — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:20:36 +0000

I don’t think it’s tasteless at all, I think it’s great satire.

If Swift wrote A Modest Proposal today, people’d be criticizing it as bad taste. Nuff said.

By: Erastes

Erastes — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:34:37 +0000

Brilliance. Utter brilliance. As someone who has been trying to smother the cries of “Romance must have a HEA” I find this just hilarious. And after all, very in tune with the books.

By: Grace

Grace — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:16:43 +0000

As the BBC lined up Micheal Morpugo for the rebuttal and had him defend sad endings, they’ve even gotten free advertising out of a respected children’s author… and a corporation who is bound by the Royal Charter not to advertise products.

By: Rosepixie

Rosepixie — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:39:45 +0000

I absolutely agree with you that this was a terribly tasteless marketing scheme. I can totally appreciate it’s brilliance, but I can’t really forgive it either. The fact that there are so many cases where things like this really do happen makes it a really bad idea to use it simply as a way to drum up publicity. The fact that the books in question didn’t need the publicity anyway just makes it worse. Thank you for writing this.