December 14, 2012 Miketz

Coming To A Theater Near You

"Seven years of famine…" (41:27)

As a young boy I remember sitting glued to the screen of the Golders Green Ionic, waiting to see the trailer of the next Steve Reeves epic. Steve would battle some unlikely plastic reptile with the shadow of the ice-cream lady falling all over him. Her torch usually managed to wash-out most of the picture until you could barely tell the difference between the lizard and Steve.

How things have changed.

On a recent trip to the States I was subjected to about an hour of broadcast television. I was amazed at how much time was taken up ‘trailing’ coming attractions. The identical trailer for some up-coming program was repeated ad nauseam.

We are rapidly reaching the Brave New World where trailers become so frequent and pervasive that there will be no time for the features themselves.

This will be the perfect paradigm for the dream-box which has always been long on promises and short on delivery.

At the root of this mania, however, is some solid reasoning. You can’t get people to listen to you unless you can first grab their attention.

The most important part of a record is the first twenty seconds. By that point the listener has already decided whether he wants to listen further or not.

It’s the same in a business interview. Much stress is placed on the way you look because firstimpressions are, as they say, lasting impressions.

In this week’s Torah portion there’s an interesting anomaly. When Yosef interprets Pharaoh’s dream, he starts off by telling him about the seven years of famine. Chronologically, the seven years of plenty came first. Why didn’t Yosef start by talking about them?

In a country as prosperous as Egypt talking about seven years of plenty would have been about as interesting as watching wallpaper. Yosef deliberately started speaking about the famine because he knew that this was a ‘trailer’ that would certainly make Pharaoh sit up and take notice.