For the majority of my adult life, I have lived in New Hampshire, so I am no stranger to the spectacle that is the first in the nation primary. With the changes in technology, however, this year seemed different. Like the past, there was an abundance of television advertising, and every day, as I checked the mailbox, I found dozens of mailers. This year, I also received an astonishing number of text messages. This was a little different from the past, but this trend started a few years back. What I found remarkable this year was the regular and consistent use of hyperbole by all candidates in all formats.
One day, I would receive text messages warning me that a certain candidate was coming to take my money. The next, a mailer informing me that another hates America, and so on. It was rare to see politicking that simply stated a policy position or tried to get one “up close, and personal” with a candidate. The overwhelming majority of the communications were designed to lead one to believe that their vote was not just an expression of preference, but that it would have dire consequences.
This sense of dire consequence reminds me of the movie A Few Good Men. Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, while being cross examined by Lieutenant Caffey, played by Tom Cruise, gets trapped in his own sense of hyperbole, as he tries to convey the idea that all danger is “grave danger.” In the scene, this begins the Colonel’s unraveling. The moviegoer comes to see that there is a wide range of danger, and that not all danger is “grave,” as Col. Jessup previously suggested.
While the bombardment of hyperbolic rhetoric in the primary season is aimed at voters, it is on full display for all. Our students passively and actively consume this rhetoric, many without the maturity to understand that hyperbole is a rhetorical device that is used to induce an emotional response. Despite the fact that we work to help our students become more savvy consumers of media, many are still developing their critical thinking skills, and are unable to accurately decode rhetorical devices.
The primary has come and gone, but the Presidential election is still to come. With that, it seems likely that the normalization of hyperbole will continue. It seems to me that adolescents in our modern world will continue to struggle with the normalization of hyperbole. This can have a number of negative impacts – including an increase in anxiety.
At The Beech Hill School, we will continue to make efforts to help our students consume all forms of media through our Skills program and within the curriculum, in general. However, there is little doubt that the rise and normalization of hyperbolic language is just another challenge for today’s adolescents.