Twolvight and Gears of Mt. Mart

It all starts with beer. A commercial a few years ago capitalized on the growing trend of product placement. It was a swashbuckling film set with musketeers and damsels in huge dresses. The producer and director were talking, and one said that they would get free beer for placing references to the beer in their movie. The other was thunderstruck, and promptly began to place as many references to the beer as feasible. The capper at the end of the ad was a beer truck bursting through the wall.

I’m not sure when the first intentional product placement took place in a film. It’s become a running joke for some filmmakers (see: Bay, Michael). Critics bewail it as the insidious creep of commercialism into an art form, disregarding the fact that the movies advertise to generate revenue, spending millions of dollars to do so. And with the ever increasing cacophony of ads jostling for the consumer’s attention, the making of an effective ad has become something of an art form. The movie has become more commercial, and the commercial has become more like a mini-movie, with special effects, high production value, and celebrities. 

(A currently running ad features two actors who have starred in major movies. It’s even unclear what the ad is about, as the two just conduct warfare at various places around the globe. It felt like a movie trailer, my initial reaction, until the NBA star appeared at the end. Go figure.)

Two recent ads have shaken my hope for the future of this country, however. (Don’t you love it when they say things like that? “This week’s sign of the Apocalypse!”) The first features an ad for the movie Twilight: Breaking Wind…er Dawn (excuse me, Freudian slip). It is an ad for the movie which features the main characters driving. The reason why a movie about vampires and werewolves is advertised with scenes in a car? The ad is also one for Volvo. So selling the movie, a completely separate kind of product, has been melded with a car advertisement. Now, if the movie was something related to driving, like the recent film Drive, then it would at least make theoretical sense to combine the two. But Vampires and Werewolves driving Volvos? Goth goes suburban. (Though the glittering vibe of this permutation of vamps, coupled with a nauseating romance, does sort of fit.)

But the second is, perhaps, the more egregious and breathtaking/groundbreaking, if slightly more subtle. (It’s the subtlety, in fact, that I find interesting. More in a moment.) The movie is actually a combo as well, but less contradictory than the Twolvight ad. The newest iteration of the video game Gears of War is coming out, and it features two guys talking on the phone. One has just returned from Wal-Mart where he purchased the game at midnight. He calls his friend who is in a hotel room, and who tells the first guy that he the second guy flew to New York City to get the game one hour ahead of the second guy, therefore getting a head start on the game. Fine. Certainly not the most irrational premise to a commercial I’ve ever heard, someone spending hundreds of dollars to fly to NYC and rent a hotel room to have an hour’s advantage playing a video game that will be passé in seven months. But here’s the kicker: when we see the second guy in his hotel room, in the corner there is a Mt. Dew cube. It’s subtle but it’s there. 

And this is why I feel this is the more intentional and representative instance of product placement. Because while the mail thrust of the Gears of Mt. Mart commercial is to sell the game and the store you can buy it in (hence the combo), the fact that they inserted a third product (even if it is associated with people who spend thirteen hours straight playing video games) is the homage to slipping in a reference to BMW or Burger King in a Michael Bay movie or TV show (a la Arrested Development).
 
It's a commercial within a commercial.

Why is this such a big deal, you ask? The onslaught of consumerism marches on. I have the sensation that we will soon be unable to differentiate between a commercial and a show at all, if things progress as they seem to be doing. Don’t get me wrong: I’m more sympathetic with capitalism than the opposite ideology, but there’s a limit to good taste and creativity. A half hour show is barely twenty minutes of show anymore, or so it seems to me. I know for a certainty that an average hour long show is 42 minutes. That’s almost a third of the hour devoted to advertising! A Third! What if a third of the newspaper was the classifieds and sales brochures? Oh wait…

Does this make sense? I feel like I’m turning into one of those people who will eventually toss out their television and stop watching movies made after 1995. There are a lot of creative ideas and people out there, and I don’t think you have to compromise creativity to get people to consume your products. Neither do I think that the bottom line must color everything. To squeeze every last drop of profit out of something may make sense in a business sense, but the world isn’t a business, and people aren’t solely customers. At least, they didn’t used to be.