Hollywood Marketing = Fraud

Hollywood pisses me off in many ways. One of those was just done by former Spider-Man “star” Andrew Garfield. Garfield just gave an interview which makes him a lying hypocrite... and he’s hardly alone. Here’s what he said.

Garfield was the lead actor in the last two Spider-Man films, in 2012 and 2014. He has now handed off the role to Tom Holland, whoever that is. In so doing, Garfield gave an interview in which he basically ripped the films while claiming that he struggled mightily to make the films better. Saideth Garfield:

“[The mass-market aspects of making the Spider-Man films was] a bummer, especially for the group of us trying to infuse it with soul, trying to make it unique, something that was worth the price of entry.”

“The pressure to get it right, to please everyone... you end up pleasing no one, or everyone just a little bit. Like, ‘Eh, that was good.’ [The films are] mass-marketed, like, ‘We want 50-year-old white men to love it, gay teenagers to love it, bigot homophobes in Middle America to love it, 11-year-old girls to love it.’ That’s canning Coke.”

“I can’t live that way [with profit taking a toll on creativity]; it sounds like a prison, to be honest, living within those expectations.”

Ok, let’s take this crap apart. First, the idea that creative and profitable are mutually exclusive is false. That's elitist thinking which seeks to affirm its own self-identified superiority by downplaying anything enjoyed by "the masses." It is pure pretentiousness.

Secondly, his choice of words in describing Middle America as “bigoted homophobes” is offensive and asinine. Notice, that like other elitists he paints with an extremely broad brush, i.e. he stereotypes, and he disrespects differences of opinion. This is the equivalent of someone saying “those Hollywood queers,” yet he doesn't see this because he is blinded by his own self-righteousness. Basically, because he thinks that he's morally right, he views name calling and stereotyping as accept from himself.

Even more fundamentally, this shows you his view of the public. Like so many other losers who flee to a place like Hollywood to get away from the rest of us, his view of flyover country is anything but flattering. And we know this is his view because even though he suggests that this was something that is just part of marketing, the truth is that no one in marketing is going to say “We need to make a film that appeals to bigoted homophobes.” In fact, I have to wonder where this came from at all other than being a gratuitous shot at the American public? You know that no one associated with the film said this or implied it. You know there's nothing in the film that isn't entirely pro-gay either. So where would Garfield get this idea that somehow the film was made to appeal to homophobes? Well, there are two possibilities. First, he's lying so he can sound sensational. Given the left's obsession with being victims, this is very possible. Alternatively, as we know this thought was never explicitly or implicitly stated or acted upon by anyone Garfield met, he may just view all of American culture as so wrapped in homophobia that he will see any appeal to Americans (other than his enlightened friends of course) as automatically being an appeal to hompophobia. Either point make me think someone should stuff something large and sharp up his *ss.

Anyways, those aren't even what bothers me about this quote. What really bothers me is the bait and switch in which Hollywood routinely engages. When these guys make a film, they will tell you the exact opposites of the film's flaws. If a film is seen as stupid, they call it the most clever film ever. If it's seen as lost in CGI, they talk about how they focused on the story. If it's seen as betraying fans, then Garfield will tell you that he's a true fan and he'll swear that he worked hard to create something special that will appeal to fans. And that is exactly what he did... all throughout 2012 and 2014. Only now that the checks have stopped, does he admit the true. In fact, he's doing more than admitting the truth. He's basically tearing down the film and the fans he lured to see the film so that he can change his image.

This is fraud. This is a company telling you the opposite of whatever bad press they have received. You cars fall apart? Claim they are super reliable. Your appliances break fast? Call them some of the longest lasting. Half your food is spoiled? Talk about having some of the highest quality inspection practices in the industry. That's Garfield here.

And let me make a key distinction to help explain my point. Crap films happen. That's not the problem. And sometimes, people genuinely like the crap films they made. It's more than fair to have that opinion. Where the problem lies is in the sales pitch were Garfield ran around, as he was happily collecting a huge check, telling everyone things that he now claims were never true. He ran around telling everyone how hard they worked to make this film one for fans and how proud he was of it. That is a specific endorsement with specific meaning. His smug attacks now on the film are an admission that he lied the whole time he gave that sales pitch.

And Garfield is not alone in this. Everyone who worked for Peter Jackson swore that they were huge fans of the LOTR books and that they treated the LOTR books as sacrosanct and followed them nearly to the letter... even as they tossed the books aside for the most part. Nicole Kidman told audiences that she would never participate in anything anti-Catholic and that the anti-Catholic and pro-atheist Golden Compass was in no way anti-Catholic... even as the writer was telling atheist audiences the opposite. And so on. There seems to be a strain of "marketing" in Hollywood that is essentially fraud: find the thing that upsets the critics and swear the film is the opposite even though it isn't. That's fraud, not marketing. At the very least, it's hypocritical for a guy like Garfield or Kidman to tell people something about their films which they later disclaim.

Thoughts?