Michael Hann 

Warning: review quotes can be very misleading

We see quotes from critics plastered all over adverts, posters and book jackets. But is their use always what it seems?
  
  

Critic's quote for Rock of Ages
Out of context: Michael Hann's words being used to lure customers to see Rock of Ages at London's Shaftesbury Theatre. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

The novelist Anthony Horowitz should not really have been surprised when some choice lines from an interview he conducted with Jeffrey Archer a year ago popped up, decontextualised, on the back of Archer's latest novel The Sins of the Father, which wasn't the book Horowitz had been talking about in the first place. The misleading quotation, after all, is a practice as old as writing itself. Nevertheless, Horowitz said: "It's a sad end to a 35-year career to find myself plastered over Archer's backside, so to speak."

I had my own experience of this last year, walking with my kids past the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, where Rock of Ages is playing. "Look!" screamed my daughter. "There's your name! That's the coolest thing ever!" And there, on one of the boards outside the theatre, was the quote: "'Rock'n'roll debauchery' – Michael Hann, the Guardian". Well, that's not all I said. The relevant paragraph of my one-star review read: "It's a very peculiar show indeed, with an unvarying and unpleasant tone of careless sexualisation. Rock'n'roll debauchery is presented as the pure and innocent way of dreamers."

I didn't really mind. In fact, I rather admired the resourcefulness on display. I contacted the theatre and the PR for the show, hoping to gain some insight into the art of quote harvesting, but each referred me to the other. I called the Advertising Standards Authority to ask if it received many complaints about the practice, but it turns out theatre hoardings – like book jackets – aren't actually ads and don't fall under its purview.

So the only way to avoid being quoted misleadingly, so far as I can tell, is to make sure your opinion of any piece of art is completely unequivocal. That's why, from now on, I am refining my reviewing into one-word summations of what I see or hear: "Great", "OK" and "Crap". And, yes, I know which one of those you might choose to use for your own billboard about this piece.

 

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