Most people reading this blog will associate Dark Angels with my book of that name and the courses I run with Stuart Delves and Jamie Jauncey.
www.dark-angels.org.uk They’ve established a fairly well-known name for themselves over the last five years, so it was quite a surprise to me when I bought some products in Lush this week and received a free gift as part of a promotion. The gift was a new facial scrub called Dark Angels.
Sarah McCartney, friend, 26 colleague and writer of all things Lush, denies any intentional plagiarism, and I accept that. We all borrow all the time, only some of the time by intention. Dark Angels, my book title, was itself inspired by reading Milton’s Paradise Lost so I offered Sarah and Lush my other book titles – the We, Me, Them & It personal care range and Invisible Grail vanishing cream.
It got me thinking about other literary borrowings. J Peterman (who write witty copy to sell their American clothes) make the Gatsby shirt, for example. I thought of other possibilities. Tender is the Night cream, perhaps? I’m sure F Scott Fitzgerald would smile over his heavenly whisky. As would his fellow American novelist John Steinbeck when he gazed down on the Grapes of Wrath which is “Monterey Peninsula’s Premier Weddings & Events Caterer”, where they also have an East of Eden banquet facility (probably a good place for a family feud). Mind you, Fitzgerald and Steinbeck have no grounds for complaint as they borrowed their titles from John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale and Julia Ward Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic.
So I thought back to Milton. I wondered (thinking to myself “surely not”) if his monumental epic poem about the eternal conflict between good and evil, based around the fall of man, could possibly have inspired a cosmetics range. Google is a wonderful thing (and a wonderful name) and in seconds it presented me with the Paradise Lost Colour Collection in the Adore Beauty Forum. Well…
I’m not religious but that seemed almost sacrilegious. Milton would not have been amused. And anyway I thought, surely the title of his poetic sequel Paradise Regained would be more appropriate. A further Google search yielded the now expected news, but with a wonderfully ironic twist. Because, it seems, Paradise Regained is a moisturiser that you can buy from – you guessed it, Lush.
Which brings me full circle for this blog but I’d love to hear about either products you know with literary names – or your suggestions for new products that borrow their names from books.
Photography by Jessie Simmons www.fullstopphotography.co.uk
If there isn’t a fireplace stockist called Grate Expectations I should be very surprised indeed. This has to be one for Twitter John: I suggest the hashtag #literaryproducts
Great blog John.
How about:
Brighton Rock – bath salts
Ash Wednesday – nicorettes
Crow – black hair dye
Genesis – rejuvenating cream
David Copperfield – Henna
Ulysees – people carrier
Perhaps Ulysees should be an optician
How about Lucius Apuleius’: “The Golden Ass” (170 AD) for a pair of pantyhose?
Also, the authors name is in my tongue (Danish) spelled: “Apulejus”, which I think would be a lovely, poetic, and quirky name for an old fashioned, freshly pressed un-filtered brand of ‘apple juice’. No?
On the contrary, Mark Constantine fully acknowledges that Lush plagiarised Dark Angels from Milton. The autodidact boss of Lush loves poetry, as well as being an international expert in bird song. (Sir, you underestimate him!) It was originally launched and appeared in the Lush Times as Hell’s Angels, but Lush received a letter from that group’s lawyer explaining that when Disney brought out a film called Hogs, the destruction by fire of their warehouse was mere coincidence. Taking no chances, we changed the name.
At the same time we were launching a moisturiser for older skin called Paradise Regained, also not a coincidence, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Also in the current range:
Inspired by films:
Vanilla in the Mist
Honey I Washed the Kids
Big Blue
My Fair Lady
Poetry:
Waving Not Drowning
Songs:
Strawberry Feels Forever
Fever
Black Magic
Shiny Happy People
Unfortunately, I can’t claim to have named any of them. The inventors get first dibs.
Trouble is Milton, as I wrote in Dark Angels, talked about “Satan’s angels as Apostate, lost, rebel, fallen and bad”. I don’t think he calls them ‘dark’ although they’ve lost their lustre – perhaps a glittery bath ballistic would do the trick. I was using dark angels as a way to describe human beings. So perhaps Mark was not actually plagiarising Milton….
Do your ellipses suggest that Mark is borrowing from you rather than Milton?
Pride comes before a Fall, John.
N
Paradise Lost has Satan as the very embodiment of pride. A powerful character simply because he’s so human.
And we writers continue to be living proof of that, plagiarising the hell out of each other.
If you’re going to plagiarise then it seems to me you need to make sure you’re stealing from the best. In this fickle pop-tart pop-culture 2 minute microwave world I’d steal from the NYT best sellers list.
Leverage the attention someone else has worked hard to get. If we have a look at this week’s list there are a few titles that lend themselves perfectly to the task at hand :
Botox Treatment – “The Secret”
Wrinkle Cream – “Time Traveller’s Wife”
Suburban Train Service – “Outliers”
Blankets or Ugg Boots – “Deep Heat”
Triple Fudge Ice Cream – “Extreme Measures”
Hand Cream – “Culture of Corruption”
Stockings – “Born to Run”
Push up Bra – “Act like a Lady, Think like a Man”
Hearing Aids – “The Last Lecture”
Travel Guides – “What to expect when you’re expecting”
Bank or Credit Card – “Spartan Gold”
Foundation Cream or Blush – “Strength in what Remains”
Lipstick – “In the President’s Secret Service” (you’d have to get Monica Lewinsky to endorse that range)