Polish the Turd: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:GoldPoo01.jpg|link=Solid Gold Poop|
{{quote|'''[[Roger Corman]]''': Stanley, you can't polish a turd.
'''[[Stanley Kubrick]]''': Sure you can. You just have to freeze it first.
|Apocryphal conversation in an editing studio}}
So you've got the job of producing, managing, or marketing something. It could be a consumer product, an album, a film, anything. But whatever it is, it's bad. The concept is fundamentally flawed, the execution is rushed and [[They Just Didn't Care|badly thought out]], and no one in their right mind would buy it on its own merits.
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So what do you do? You try your best to [[Worse Than It Sounds (Darth Wiki)|make it look better than it is]] and hope that it's effective enough to sell a few million copies.
Incidentally, the ''[[
There are numerous ways of doing this, many of which are Tropes on their own. And yes, all examples are [[Truth in Television]].
Note that the special effects industry uses a similar term, "turd polishing", in reference to [[Stylistic Suck|ensuring the high quality appearance of something that is
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Multimedia examples ==
* Find a better, more famous author to "collaborate". Make sure the famous author's name takes up most of the cover. The actual title of the book will be half as big. The name of the unknown hack who did all the work will be in really, really tiny letters at the bottom.▼
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** Or better yet, use a character created by a famous dead author, such as [http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51X0RJ9Y4PL._bL160_.jpg Lawrence Sanders.]▼
▲* Slap an exciting-looking cover on it. [[Covers Always Lie|Relevance to the actual product is optional.]] Make sure [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions]], [[BFG|big guns]], and [[Sexy Packaging|fanservice]] [[Michael Bay|are prominently featured]]. Reveal as little as possible about the actual plot.
▲* Claim that [[Stylistic Suck|the suck is stylistic]], [[Parody Retcon|even if it's not]].
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▲* Claim [[What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?|it's for kids]]. Especially useful for genre novels.
▲* [[Fan Service|Babes]]. Put a hot girl in front of a product and you've got a winner. For both sexes.
{{quote|'''Male:''' "Hey, if I buy that body spray, random women will want to have sex with me!"
'''Female:''' "Hey, if I buy that shampoo, I'll have a great body like hers!" }}
** Conversely
{{quote|'''Male:''' "He's wearing just a loincloth, [[Rated "M" for Manly|but he's killing lots of people]], so [[Armoured Closet Gay|I'm more straight for watching it]].
'''Female:''' "He's hot." }}
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** Use phrases like "up to" and "starting at". These are mathematically correct.
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== Advertising ==
* Commercials for shoddy children's toys will play up the fact that it's made of a "Space Age polymer". The Space Age, for those who forgot, started in the 60s. They're talking about ''plastic''.
== Art ==
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* '''[[True Art Is Incomprehensible|Interp]][[Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory|retation.]]'''
==Comic Books==
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▲* [[Wolverine Publicity|Have a popular superhero make a random appearance]], and put him on the cover.
▲* [[Covers Always Lie|Slap on a great-looking cover that has nothing to do with what actually takes place in the book]].
▲* [[Super Dickery|Wild exaggeration.]] Does Wolverine get in a shouting match with Cyclops? Well, then, that deserves nothing less than a claws-bared, optic blasts-firing, knock-down-drag-out fight on the cover, maybe with a nice phrase like "To the breaking point!" or "It's finally come to this!" scrawled across it.
== Film ==▼
* [[Never Trust a Trailer|Patch together a trailer that makes the film look much more interesting than it actually is.]] Toss in what few interesting moments the film actually has, some explosions, a gunfight or two, and plenty of [[Fan Service|eye candy]]. For padding, [[Missing Trailer Scene|add some scenes that didn't actually make it into the film]]. Once again, make sure never to reveal anything about the plot.
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** Bonus points if you do this one in January.
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** Parodied to a lesser extent in [[Hot Fuzz]], after Nicholas and Danny suffer through a dreadful production of [[Romeo and Juliet]], a journalist asks for Nicholas' opinion, to which he replies in the most emotionless and unenthusiastic voice ever "...highly enjoyable."
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* If an actor in your film has been caught up in a scandal, ends up in rehab or does anything else to screw the pooch in terms of his/her reputation or the attention s/he brings to the film, show him/her in the trailer as little as possible and cut him/her out of any promotional work.
* Celebrity appearance! [[Fan Service|Bonus points if she's naked.]]
== Food ==
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* A lot of ethnic-sounding names tend to do this. You can also do this yourself with your children, saying "florentine" instead of "with spinach".
==Literature==
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* Claim it's an [[Exact Words|"All New Epsiode!]] Even if the pilot aired the previous week.
* [[Loudness War|Turn it up until no one can hear how bad it is though the distortion.]]▼
* [[Auto-Tune]] it. For a subsequent live performance, lip-sync to the Auto-Tuned track.▼
* Pay radio companies on the sly to promote it.▼
* [[Wolverine Publicity|Get whoever is hot right now to do a verse/hook, or get whichever producer is hot right now to do the beat]] — [[Just Here for Godzilla|then hope people can stomach the rest of the song]].▼
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== Politics ==
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* Name your bill [[Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom|something really positive-sounding]], like "The Job Creation Act" or "The USA PATRIOT Act".
** Generally, politicians are very keen on creative euphemisms: the people who would agree with the unvarnished version will agree, and hopefully a lot of the people who would otherwise oppose it will either not think about or not look into what it actually means and just go along with the pleasant sound of it. For a conservative trying to not set off liberals, "cutting red tape" serves as a more pleasant-sounding euphemism for deregulation (or even privatisation). For a liberal trying not to set off conservatives, "cutting Pentagon (or equivalent) fat" serves as a more pleasant-sounding euphemism for slashing the defense budget.
== Pornography ==
* The porn inch. Used in any non-lesbian porn to describe [[Biggus Dickus|male anatomy]]. This is fairly obvious in cases like Jeff Gannon, who is nowhere near eight inches, unless he's seven feet tall.
== Sports ==
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== Theatre ==
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== Video Games ==
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** Advertise the game using stunning cinematics and say absolutely nothing about the game itself.
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== Web Comics ==
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* Discussed in ''[[Critical Miss (webcomic)|Critical Miss]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20160813123521/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/14652-Grey-s-Guide-to-Writing there's always someone] deluded about nature of the thing they produce enough to blame "not enough polishing" no matter what.
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' provides a nested [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/687.html example]:
{{quote|- Just a second, Will. I'm refactoring some of my code.
- What does that mean?
- It means I'm rewriting it the way it should have been written in the first place, but it sounds cooler. }}
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has commander of Integrity (spaceship of Prangers' Bangers) show great skill at getting out of troubles [//www.schlockmercenary.com/2005-06-13]:
{{quote|'''Banger Officer''': Nice spin, Commander
'''Banger Cmdr''': Remind me to tell you about the time I got a ''service star'' instead of a ''court martial''. }}
== Web Original ==
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== Western Animation ==
* [[Beavis and
== Real Life ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Show Business]]
[[Category:The Shades of Fact]]
[[Category:
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