Martin Shoemaker on Product Placement
Dean
From our thread on product placement in movies. --Dean
I wish I could side with you and John, Dean, because I think it's none of Nader's or the government's damn business.
But I do have to say that product placement is an insidious form of brainwashing. Or at least, it was for me. But only once.
Back in the 70s, Marvel introduced a new comic book hero: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. Luke was a man falsely convicted of murder; and to win credit toward an early release, he participated in an experimental biomedical program. But a vindictive prison guard turned up the settings on the experiment, and it overloaded, leaving Luke with incredible strength and a super-strong hide. He injured the guard in escaping from the experiment; and rather than face the wrath of the guards, he broke jail, and went out to prove his innocence. And to pay his bills, he advertised himself as a superhero for hire.
Now I happened to luck onto Luke's first issues; and I thought he was just the coolest character out there. I was too young to understand that he was black, and so he wasn't supposed to be a role model for little white kids like me. He was aimed at the black youth market, not me. I didn't know, and I didn't care. For a long time, Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel couldn't hold a candle to Luke Cage in my eyes. I wanted to be just like Luke.
And Luke lived right down the street from and often got food from the Orange Julius. Imagine my surprise when, later in life, I learned that that's an actual restaurant chain!
To this day, I can't pass by an Orange Julius without getting at least a drink. And every time I do, some little boy in the back of my head is envisioning himself as a big, mean-spirited black superhero with a heart of gold.
So sometimes, product placement really can tie a character and a product together in your head. Does that make it a matter for the government to intervene? Not a chance. But it explains why the companies do it.
Anyone remember that sketch from the Wayne's World movie?
Plus, as a bonus, my tactic provides opportunity to really annoy fellow movie-goers or TV-watchers if it's a particularly placement-heavy feature!
Hehe, like we say in the software industry, "it's a feature, not a bug!" Although I can see how, if you don't notice them like I do, they could be subliminally inserting suggestions in your brain. I think I've managed to harden myself against marketing tricks because they bug me so much. YMMV.
(wow, I do use first person singular pronouns quite heavily, don't I...)
I'm also amazed by the lack of outrage from people when they hear this sort of condescension - it's an automatic assumption of mental retardation on the part of the viewers if you consider us incapable of resisting the example of on-screen characters. I'm up for discussion on the topic of three-year-olds imitating violence seen on Tom and Jerry cartoons, but by the time that a human being has a monetary income and the wherewithal to use it to make purchases, they're generally past the 'ooh, shiny, me want!' phase.
That so much of public policy discussion is based on this sort of emotion-based nonsense is frankly scary. There's quite convincing evidence against the notion that immoral and/or violent behavior depicted in media actually causes people to copy what they see. Like the fact that violent crime has steadily declined since the 1970s, when violence became much more prevalent and graphic in both film and television. Or that ever since the mid-to-late eighties, when sexual promiscuity became acceptable in PG-13 movies and primetime television, teen pregnancy and STD rates have also declined.
Of course none of this matters, because it's only, uh, facts. Soccer moms yelling because they object to depravity is apparently sufficient grounds for policy. And Nader is supposed to be a progressive?
Every time I go out of the house, I see a fair amount of product placement for Toyota and Buick and Ford and Chrysler and whatever else drives by. I'm not somehow compelled to buy myself a Land Cruiser and a LaCrosse and a Mustang and a Sebring.
Is that really what motivates some socialists? The belief that human individuals have the cognitive power and faculty of will comparable to a gerbil, and therefore must be kept in safe cages, eating a fiber-rich diet and running the wheel to get the necessary cardio excercise?