The Death of the Blurb

Perhaps you recall several well-publicized scandals over the last several years involving blurbs -- those punchy, laudatory little quotes you see on book jackets and movie posters.

You know the sort of thing:
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"The best of this year, or any year!" - The Sandusky Times Calendar
"The author sets a new standard for horror!" - Bestselling Author Joseph Bloodbath
"I couldn't put it down!" - Winona Ryder

It has traditionally been the practice of publishers to solicit blurbs from popular authors to help promote lesser-known writers. (Easier to do when the popular author is published by the same house -- an accepted "you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours" policy, though sometimes embarrassing when it becomes obvious that the blurb writer never actually read the book...) Similarly, movie promoters would use positive reviews -- or, more to the point, short excerpts from positive reviews -- on movie posters to catch the eye of those wavering as to where to spend their cinemagoing dollar. (Ten dollars, is more like it now!) The bigger the name of the blurbist -- Stephen King, The New York Times -- the bigger the presumed effect. It may be argued that prominent critics exist as much to provide quotebites as to advise moviegoers.

This works fine for blockbusters, but what of the lesser works? Promoters sometimes have had to go further afield to get admiring text to quote; where the Los Angeles Times might be critical, perhaps the folks in the hinterlands might be more lenient. So the quoted text on the posters kept getting bigger and bolder and the attribution line smaller and fainter:

Knock-your-socks-off action! - Podunk Marketer's Gazette

This practice reached a ridiculous low point with the most highly-publicized of the above-mentioned scandals, the David Manning/Sony fiasco, with a studio-constructed "reviewer" creating blurbs for their films. And those few viewers/readers who actually paid attention to the sources of blurbs lost their remaining innocence.

So blurbs have been questionable for some time, even before the Internet opened up a much wider selection of possibilities. But just when you think you have seen the bottom, you find out the ooze is deeper still...

I was at Hastings the other day, perusing the shelves while they dug through my box of trade items, and an indie horror movie caught my eye, "Urchin". One of the blurbs mentioned that it was shot guerrilla-style in the subways and sewers of New York, the other cover blurb praised it highly. Got my attention. Then I noticed the attribution line on each of the blurbs:

- IMDB Review


Just that. Nothing more. My jaw dropped.

Now, I am fond of the Internet Movie Database as a resource. I use it almost daily, as a first stop for release info and cast/crew details. And I have myself contributed information to it, including reviews. But the reviews are user-provided. We're not even talking Film Threat or AintItCoolNews here -- we are talking average folks. Anybody can post a review on IMDb. Many do, including the director of the film and his friends -- the first few reviews are often so laudatory, so high and glowing in their praise, that it is embarrassingly clear that it is the filmmaker in alias or an associate of the filmmaker who is providing these early reviews. (This effect is so obvious that it has become a standing joke among regular users of the site.) (This effect can also be clearly seen on Amazon.com -- read the first two reviews of any small-press book and you will get a press release and something from a friend rather than objective reviews.)

Don't get me wrong -- I have a certain degree of respect for the "average" reviewer. It is in fact part of the reason I frequent the IMDb: to get a taste of the zeitgeist surrounding a film. The average movie enthusiast can have insights every bit as valuable as the most-circulated reviewer.

But using an anonymous and easily constructed source such as "IMDb Review" as the attribution for a quote is so patently absurd that my jaw is still hanging open at the sheer import of what it says about how our view of "respected opinion" has changed.

RIP, sweet blurb. Your time has passed.
We shall never see your like again.