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The Movies Made Me Do It

I have to laugh every time I snap out of a trance-like hypnotic state and find myself on the showroom floor of the Audi Dealer drooling on their $130K R8 Spyder, don’t you?  Because one minute I’m sitting there watching Iron Man 2 and the next thing I know?  Audi Dealer.  Finally modern psychology has coined a phrase to identify the root of this particular health affliction:  Advertising

Advertising.  A word which comes from the Greek-Gaelic-Swedish roots:

“Adel” meaning ‘liquid’ or ‘filth’

“Verter” meaning ‘to turn’, and

“Taiser” from which we obviously get our word ‘Taser’, which is a small gun-like weapon that shoots electronic darts meant to shock the bejeebies out of someone and turn your muscles to jelly

So loosely translated, “Advertiser” is ‘liquid filth turned muscle jelly shock’.  That is, if I’ve conjugated my Gaelic correctly.  Also, it was a serious crime up until about 1892…a punishment known as ‘Death by Bjork’.  Again, loose, very loose translations here.

Yet, as Noah Cross so adeptly put it in “Chinatown”:

Politicians, Old Buildings, and [Prostitutes] all get respectable if they last long enough.

Is it the same for Advertising?  It has definitely evolved through the years into an even more insidious and effective beast, a.k.a,  The Product Placement…

Exhibit A:

It’s almost amusing these debates about whether sex or violence will effect viewers.  Because while the Left and the Right argues on, while the Conservs and the Libbers go at it, while the Pubs and the Dems and the Whigs slug it out….Madison Avenue is off to the side funneling millions and millions into Hollywood because they KNOW and have PROVEN RESULTS that on-screen stuff effects viewers…er…I mean consumers.  They change the name, but it’s the same people.

What do you think?  Does Art imitate Life?  Or Does Life imitate Art?

I’ve observed that Art imitates Life and then Art influences Life.

Consider this.  In the film “It Happened One Night” in 1934, Clark Gable, in what was then considered a racy scene with Claudette Colbert, took his shirt off to reveal a bare chest. America gasped: Where is his undershirt?

In AMC’s “The Hollywood Fashion Machine,” host Jacqueline Bisset recalls the impact of that disrobing: “The underwear industry was literally paralyzed.”

Geoffrey Beene adds: “When Gable, in that famous scene, took off his shirt and he had no undershirt on, he suddenly made all sorts of men realize, ‘Why do I have to wear an undershirt if Clark Gable doesn’t wear an undershirt?’ ”

Freed from the unneeded garment that bound them, American men found one-shirt-at-a-time happiness.

The result?  1934 T-shirt Sales = DOWN!

However, in 1951 we were introduced to the seminal T-shirt film: Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”. Marlon Brando’s brutish portrayal of the lovelorn Stanley Kowalski riveted a nation as Brando’s buff pecs and abs were revealed in graphic relief by a thin, stretched tee.

According to Guggenheim Magazine’s Deborah Drier, the overall image created “a sexualized brutality … a dangerous … incoherent sort of manhood.”

1951 T-Shirt Sales = UP!

Movies have effected more than just the undergarment industry.  In 1987, Fatal Attraction did for heterosexual men what AIDS could not…it scared them and made them think twice about the potentially dire consequences of extramarital and casual sex (highdefdigest.com).

Art influences life.

Cracked.com has a list of the 10 Most Shameless Product Placements in Movie History.

Sitting at #10 is E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982) who loved those M&Ms, right?  Uh-uh.  Nope.  M&M turned Spielberg down so he went to Reese’s Pieces to offer them a promotional partnership deal.  And even though I’m sitting here eating Peanut M&Ms as I type…deep down, I really know that Reese’s Pieces are God’s candy.

At #7 we have Transformers.  Michael Bay went to every major auto manufacturer to see who would offer the biggest payday.  He landed GM after they offered a $3M contract.

#5 was You’ve Got Mail which was one gigantic AOL commercial by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

And #1 was Fireproof!  For real?!?  Actualy, no, I totally made that one up.  Fireproof didn’t even make their list.  And I didn’t recognize the movies at #2 or #1.  But Fireproof definitely took a page from this Product Placement handbook didn’t they?  Fireproof did for “The Love Dare” what Castaway did for FedEx.  Except for the airplane crash and the part where all the FedEx packages got ruined…all but Wilson, that is.

According to Wikipedia.org, in 2007, spending on advertising was estimated at more than $150 billion in the U.S. and $385 billion worldwide.

Back to Iron Man 2, that film notched up 56 brands (including a covered up Apple notebook) matching this year’s earlier product placement heavyweight, Valentine’s Day.  That was up from Iron Man (2008) which packed in an impressive 42 brands, says BrandChannel.com.

It’s very surprising then that this phenomenon hasn’t hit the Christian Film Market, yet.  With the exception of Fireproof and all the Billy Graham movies which were basically ads for his Crusades…we got nothin.  I’m not complaining, mind you.  I’m not asking to see Jonathon Sperry chugging down a Red Bull.  Or Kirk Cameron to come riding up in a Lotus Elise and then check the time on his Omega Seamaster Watch in Left Behind V.  Letters to God would have been a whole different movie if it had been brought to us by Hallmark.  And I’m only too happy that Mel Gibson’s portrayal of The Christ didn’t include him chillin’ in some Birkenstocks.  Or worse.  Uggs.

Let’s not rush into it.  It will get here.  One day it will come knocking.

It’ll be all, ‘Knock Knock’ and we’ll be all ‘Who’s there?’ and it’ll be all, ‘Advertising!’ and we’ll have to let them in the door.

Either that or risk getting Bjorked.

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