STEVEN POOLE
One of the finest examples of corporate euphemism in cinema comes in Jurassic World (2015): “Ladies and gentlemen, due to a containment anomaly, all guests must take shelter immediately”. “Containment anomaly”, of course, is PR speak for “the dinosaurs have escaped”, just as Elon Musk’s talk of a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” was an ironic acknowledgment that one of his rockets had blown up. The word ‘anomaly’ itself comes from the ancient Greek for “against natural law”, so – and I’m sure the screenwriters intended this nuance too – the whole of Jurassic Park was an anomaly from the beginning.