FILM-US: You’ve Seen the Movie, Now Buy the Product

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Sep 1 1998 (IPS) - If you have any doubt that U.S. movies are becoming more like commercials, look no further than the current romantic film from Twentieth Century Fox, ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’.

Directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan and based on Terry McMillan’s novel of the same name, ‘Stella’ has already attracted attention from reviewers for its remarkable resemblance to tourist advertisements for Jamaica.

The story – about how Stella (played by Angela Bassett), a 40- year-old businesswoman, finds a 21-year-old lover (Taye Diggs) and happiness on a trip to Jamaica – is at times a convenient excuse to show shots of glittering beaches, bubbly tourists and sumptuous hotel suites.

Perhaps most revealingly, the film begins as Stella is watching a television advertisement for a summer holiday in Jamaica, and hallucinates that she is in the add, sipping on a drink and lolling on the beach.

That clever moment – showing how insidiously ads invade one’s consciousness – ironically is replicated in the film as a whole: Jamaica’s tourism bureau could do well to mimic the movie by proclaiming, ‘Come to Jamaica, Find Your Groove’.

The prominent Jamaica plugs – and repeated shots of American Airlines flights – in ‘Stella’ fit in well with the movie’s overall mix of melodrama (can an older woman and younger man find love?) and conspicuous consumption. It also serves as one of the more overt examples of how ads now permeate US movies – particularly as filmmakers cut costs by putting ‘product placements’ into movies to attract advertisers’ dollars.

Sometimes the placements are actually quite witty, and even a little subversive. In the recent comedy hit ‘There’s Something About Mary’ (another Twentieth Century Fox film, directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly), a sleazy detective played by Matt Dillon, orders a wine cooler, only to have the bartender give him a prominent U.S. beer label. “I asked for wine cooler,” Dillon complains, and turns the label away from the camera – defeating the purpose of the product placement.

Peter Weir’s ‘The Truman Show’ (yet another Fox film – now there’s a company anxious about product placements), which debuted in May, went even further. The story’s protagonist, Truman (Jim Carrey), is unaware that he is a character on a television show, and that everyone around him is an actor.

Naturally, Truman becomes perplexed when his wife (Laura Linney) continually boasts about the wonders of mountain-grown coffee or new kitchen appliances. While she is earning sponsorship dollars by displaying the (fake) brand names before the viewers’ eyes, Truman is simply trying to have a normal, ad-free conversation. “What the hell are you saying?” he finally bursts out after one product placement too many.

For all the subversive humour directed at such ads-within-a- movie, U.S. films today are packed to the gills with product placements, which in turn – especially during summertime – are duplicated by ads which feature the movies’ title characters.

Recent hits like ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Mulan’ are heavily advertised at McDonald’s restaurants, while blockbusters from previous summers were used to advertise Ray-Ban sunglasses (‘Men in Black’) and Apple computers (‘Independence Day’).

Meanwhile, soundtracks to movies – many of which boasts songs that don’t even appear in the films – are sold and become hits in their own right: several recent soundtracks, for ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Stella’ among others, are at the top of the current pop charts.

Movie executives call such cross-industry advertising “marketing synergy”, and have deployed it particularly in recent years to ensure that the expensive summer action films and comedies reap the largest financial returns possible.

That strategy may be having a few unwanted effects, including the cynicism about product placements reflected in ‘The Truman Show’ and ‘There’s Something About Mary’, both of which earned more than 100 million dollars this summer – more than several of the hyped-up, ad-laden action films that came out at the same time.

A different side-effect, suggested by the bland but likable ‘Stella’, is that the subliminal ads are quickly becoming more interesting than the films themselves.

Like parasites which threaten to overwhelm their hosts, such ads quickly become dominant: an hour after leaving ‘Stella’, viewers might not recall how Stella and her lover Winston resolved their differences, but they are certain to remember the loving shots of Jamaican beaches.