What an extraordinary title for the new Bond film: ‘Quantum of Solace.’
How do highly paid publicity people manage to come up with titles like this? Don’t they have focus groups and try outs and all sorts of things to ensure that they don’t get a repeat of ‘You’re never alone with a Strand?’
Although, I suppose that the Strand advert, though a disaster for the cigarettes that it was advertising, continues to exist as one of the most famous how-not-to-do-it pieces of advertising history. The name of Strand is still spoken of even if the brand itself faded into the smoke. Or, indeed, lack of it in the case of that particular cigarette!
Is ‘quantum’ like ‘nano’: a word which evokes elements of the scientific even if most people (including me) don’t necessarily know its precise definition? With ‘quantum’ even the particle physicists don’t really know what they are talking about. Hardly suprising when they talk of things in one place and then in another but cannot explain how they got there except by the phrase ‘quantum jump’ where the journey is apparently not the sort where you have to travel the boring bits between destinations. Where indeed normal physics does not apply! I think I know that liquid helium flows upwards when it is at a certain temperature: but even in this case when the substance is apparently defying gravity you can still see where it is going!
‘Quantum’ has a sort of magic that evokes all sorts of responses without the necessary tedium of having to know what it means. The sort of catalytic scientific word beloved of advertisers to add academic cachet to a description of toothpaste to reassure the user that the white coated boys in the backroom have been slaving over their test tubes and Bunsen burners to bring you the full force of the white hot heat of the technological revolution.
My old Sinclair computer was called the QL – which stood for Quantum Leap – was indeed a jump ahead of the commercial opposition all those years ago. It was black and sleek and had tenchological ideas above its station. Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget the quaintly absurd invention of the ‘micro drive’! Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget those lost hours as the machine ignored increasingly desperate typed command; or hours of work simply disappeared as the key board froze. Ah, happy days!
The most recent use in the commercial world of the word ‘quantum’ is in association with Gillette shavers where the addition of an extra blade in the shaving head seems to merit the addition of this overblown scientific appellation.
The advert is even more interesting in that it has two white coated extras apparently adding some sort of glowing material to what looks like a particle accelerator! I suppose you have to admire their ‘thinking through’ of the visual implications of their choice of word, but the reality is boringly prosaic.
So, at least I can partially understand the choice of the first word in the title of a film in a series of films which relies unashamedly on the (literally) explosive nature of cutting edge technology (who can forget the laser beam cutting its way through metal on its inexorable way to Sean Connery’s crotch?
But ‘solace’? A wonderful word but how many people know its meaning? To me ‘Quantum of Solace’ sounds like those mysterious titles from British colonial history: The Begums of Oudah or the Ankor of Watt – I may be confusing history, geography and literature here; didn’t Edward Lear write about something similar? But I hope you get my point.
It turns out that ‘Quantum of Solace’ is actually an obscure short story by the Man himself, Fleming. Since the makers of Bond films show shown themselves perfectly capable of ‘expanding’ Fleming’s original conception to unrecognizable proportions, the fact that they still seem to need that touch of authenticity to link to the stories is rather touching!
I suppose that ‘Quantum of Solace’ still has a way to go until it catches up with the idiotic ‘Night Of The Day Of The Dawn Of The Son Of The Bride Of The Return Of The Revenge Of The Terror Of The Attack Of The Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 3’ (2005)!
How do highly paid publicity people manage to come up with titles like this? Don’t they have focus groups and try outs and all sorts of things to ensure that they don’t get a repeat of ‘You’re never alone with a Strand?’
Although, I suppose that the Strand advert, though a disaster for the cigarettes that it was advertising, continues to exist as one of the most famous how-not-to-do-it pieces of advertising history. The name of Strand is still spoken of even if the brand itself faded into the smoke. Or, indeed, lack of it in the case of that particular cigarette!
Is ‘quantum’ like ‘nano’: a word which evokes elements of the scientific even if most people (including me) don’t necessarily know its precise definition? With ‘quantum’ even the particle physicists don’t really know what they are talking about. Hardly suprising when they talk of things in one place and then in another but cannot explain how they got there except by the phrase ‘quantum jump’ where the journey is apparently not the sort where you have to travel the boring bits between destinations. Where indeed normal physics does not apply! I think I know that liquid helium flows upwards when it is at a certain temperature: but even in this case when the substance is apparently defying gravity you can still see where it is going!
‘Quantum’ has a sort of magic that evokes all sorts of responses without the necessary tedium of having to know what it means. The sort of catalytic scientific word beloved of advertisers to add academic cachet to a description of toothpaste to reassure the user that the white coated boys in the backroom have been slaving over their test tubes and Bunsen burners to bring you the full force of the white hot heat of the technological revolution.
My old Sinclair computer was called the QL – which stood for Quantum Leap – was indeed a jump ahead of the commercial opposition all those years ago. It was black and sleek and had tenchological ideas above its station. Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget the quaintly absurd invention of the ‘micro drive’! Who, among those who owned one, can ever forget those lost hours as the machine ignored increasingly desperate typed command; or hours of work simply disappeared as the key board froze. Ah, happy days!
The most recent use in the commercial world of the word ‘quantum’ is in association with Gillette shavers where the addition of an extra blade in the shaving head seems to merit the addition of this overblown scientific appellation.
The advert is even more interesting in that it has two white coated extras apparently adding some sort of glowing material to what looks like a particle accelerator! I suppose you have to admire their ‘thinking through’ of the visual implications of their choice of word, but the reality is boringly prosaic.
So, at least I can partially understand the choice of the first word in the title of a film in a series of films which relies unashamedly on the (literally) explosive nature of cutting edge technology (who can forget the laser beam cutting its way through metal on its inexorable way to Sean Connery’s crotch?
But ‘solace’? A wonderful word but how many people know its meaning? To me ‘Quantum of Solace’ sounds like those mysterious titles from British colonial history: The Begums of Oudah or the Ankor of Watt – I may be confusing history, geography and literature here; didn’t Edward Lear write about something similar? But I hope you get my point.
It turns out that ‘Quantum of Solace’ is actually an obscure short story by the Man himself, Fleming. Since the makers of Bond films show shown themselves perfectly capable of ‘expanding’ Fleming’s original conception to unrecognizable proportions, the fact that they still seem to need that touch of authenticity to link to the stories is rather touching!
I suppose that ‘Quantum of Solace’ still has a way to go until it catches up with the idiotic ‘Night Of The Day Of The Dawn Of The Son Of The Bride Of The Return Of The Revenge Of The Terror Of The Attack Of The Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 3’ (2005)!
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