The Book Series With The Irresistible Name
December 21, 2011 14 Comments
So, as dictated by the U.S. Constitution, it’s time to remake, practically shot for shot, yet another gray/dreary Scandinavian hit movie in the English language only like a few years after it was just made (just as they did with Insomnia and Let The Right One In), and that means we’re going to start getting those The Girl With movies. Are you excited yet? Of course you are! Because she’s The Girl with something. She is short and has short black hair and does stuff with computers and oh my gosh it’s just all so inherently fascinating that I’d like to read a trilogy about her and then watch two trilogy movies about her, one in Swedish and the other in English. Should only take like 30 hours of my life all-in, tops. Totally worth it.
I came to this topic idly web-browsing and coming across this review of one of the dang books or another, which informed me that the original title of the first one was ‘Men Who Hate Women’. This brings me to my name theory.
What is my name theory? Simply, that something’s name played an outsized and unrecognized role in its popularity. Applied here, the answer to the critic’s impassioned pleas as to why did these books catch on so much becomes:
Because they were called “The Girl [with something/who did something]“. They would have never caught on if the first one had kepts its original title. Same exact plot/words, but no “The Girl With” in the title, and you do not have a hit.
The name theory applies elsewhere too. Why did ‘Sheryl Crow’ become a star? Don’t get me wrong, her voice and looks are, like, okay, but there’s a zillion people who sing just as well as her and don’t become stars. They aren’t named ‘Sheryl Crow’ though. People liked the idea of listening to music by someone named ‘Sheryl Crow’. They liked the idea of being the kind of person who listens to music by someone named ‘Sheryl Crow’
Or to name a more obvious comparable, how about ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Dan Brown’s highly stupid, warmed-over version of the ’80s-era Baigent/Leigh conspiracy theory is both bizarrely childish to read, and actually manages to be a 10x less interesting than the version that had been used for the computer game Gabriel Knight 3 four years earlier. So why did it catch on? Because it was called ‘The Da Vinci Code’, allowing readers to fancy it had something to do with Da Vinci and art/culture, making it cultural to read it.
If you’re writing a book or other creating endeavor, pay attention to what you call it. It really matters.
Bill Simmons, aka “The Sports Guy,” has that exact theory about Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.
By the numbers, Romo’s an average-to-decent NFL quarterback. By crunch-time performance, he’s mediocre-to-terrible. But “Tony Romo” just sounds like a great quarterback, and so people think he’s better than he is, just because “Tony Romo with another touchdown pass!” rolls off the tongue so sonorously.
This theory also applies to Browns QB Colt McCoy (how could he not be awesome with a name like that?) and in reverse with former 1st round bust Joey Harrington (had he called himself Joe or Joseph, he’d have been fine, but nobody wins in the NFL with a name like “Joey”).
Hard to argue with that logic, really — the only way a weak-armed schlub like McCoy ever made the NFL is because he started for a ludicrously loaded team at University of Texas… and a guy with a name like “Colt McCoy” has a football scholarship at UT waiting for him the minute he crowns in the delivery room.
That Romo theory makes total sense. On the flip side of it, it’s very difficult for me to conceive of someone named, say, ‘Philip Rivers’ (3rd best all-time QB rating, supposedly) as being any kind of good quarterback.
Does this help in baseball? I mean, clearly the name Ryan Braun is better than Matt Kemp, right? But “Ryan Braun” sounds like a gay name to me. Matt Kemp is not a bad name, but Bruno Kemp would be a lot better.
Remember, in the movie Love Story, the Ryan O’Neil character wanted to name his kid Bozo Barrett, because he was convinced that that name would guarantee the kid success in the NFL.
I dunno. But baseball is more famous for what Simmons calls “the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars” — guys who just have to be of one race based on their name, but turn out to be some other race (Reggie Cleveland, for instance, is somehow — astonishingly — white). This effect this has on their performance, though, is unclear — Joba Chamberlain (white) is ok, and Troy O’Leary (black) had a solid if unspectacular career, and Branson Arroyo (who should be some kind of weird yuppie/Dominican hybrid, but who wears cornrows) was up-and-down…
My major worry is what happens when all these kids with the androgynous names start hitting prime baseball-playing age. What will Dakota, Track, Trig, Scout, Sprout, Taylor, Tyler, Dallas, Morgan etc. do? I can’t see “Dakota Clemens,” “Aiden Mattingly” or “Logan Canseco” hitting the majors under any circumstances….
Dallas Braden
Morgan Ensberg
A couple of good players who I’ve had a hard time processing/accepting as good, perhaps for the very reason you cite. Although ‘Dallas’ as a name should be able to pass muster because there is a baseball precedent (Dallas Green) so it’s not entirely clear that’s the problem there….
Ryan Braun sounds like ‘brawn’, but the name overall is a bit nondescript. Perfectly good slugger name for a guy who’s, like, a DH on a crappy AL team. Sort of like Dave Kingman on the Oakland A’s…
‘Matt Kemp’ doesn’t sound like a guy who could possibly be as good a ballplayer as he’s been the past couple years. Maybe an NFL quarterback for, like, the Seattle Seahawks. But for baseball, ‘Matt Kemp’ is a utilityman or maybe a 6th inning reliever. Indeed, it’s occurring to me that on some subconscious level I tend to assume that Kemp’s monster season was a flash-in-the-pan (like, say, when Greg Vaughn hit 50+ homers), and that he will inevitably have a steep dropoff. Why? I think it’s because his name is ‘Matt Kemp’.
‘Bruno Kemp’ would be a boxer, or something. But I think we’re agreeing with each other in broad terms. Names are important!
For a long time I’d refused to watch The Sopranos because I really didn’t like the idea of seeing a show about opera singers (and sopranos of all things).
By the way I had a dream last night which won’t sound credible but I did in fact dream it: I was with Tony Soprano as well as with Turtle (from The Entourage). Tony decided Turtle had betrayed him/the-group/us and so Tony killed Turtle right in front of me. Just before he died, Turtle pulled out a lot of money, a big pile of notes from an ATM and gave it to the swiss girl Jason Bourne had escaped with. The theme continued: I asked Tony what Turtle had done. Tony refused to say. Finally and angrily saying “it doesn’t matter”, which I now realize was from The Bourne series too. Fucking scary dream. Poor Turtle.
Same here. I used to see people praising this HBO show ‘The Sopranos’ on the internet, and couldn’t envision it.
Entourage is a show I’ve never watched, and if I’m diagnosing its ‘name effect’ on me, I have to admit that the name ‘Entourage’ holds no appeal. Sounds too French and, therefore, girly/gay.
Yeah.. I wasn’t kidding about really believing The Sopranos is about a group of opera singers, their relationship to each other and their struggling to make a name for themselves. As for the entourage, I only heard about it once, and it meant nothing to me.
One night I couldn’t fall asleep and I flicked through channels and landed on it. I thought it’s “ok”. As in, not something I’d go out of my way to watch. But I couldn’t fall asleep the next night either and landed on the next episode. And voila, I was hooked.
No idea if you’ll like it though. Then again, the 1st time I saw the Sopranos, 10 minutes of it, I thought it’s vaguely original but not worth watching. Only after the 2nd time was I hooked.
The problem with the name Dallas Braden is not the Dallas. It’s the Braden.
My daughter has like seven friends named Braden; half of them are boys.
Which reminds me: Braden Looper!
You had to bring up Braden Looper, didn’t you?
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuu—–
(signed, every Mets fan)
Good post. I remember thinking The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was something bigger and cooler than it really was until I learned more about it.
Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work for Congressional bill acronyms…
Merry Christmas, Sonic Charmer.