The
Dangers of Hype
Has marketing succeeded in
sabotaging
its product in more ways than one?
Submitted by Jill Mattarochia
7/14/99
Picture this. Your local movie theater, January 31st,
1997. The lines have stretched around the block since last Tuesday, and for
what? A movie that made its first appearance just about twenty years ago, after the
critics and press predicted it to be the biggest flop of its kind. A comic book
movie, they said. No character development. Strictly for children. It is
laughable to realize that I am talking about George Lucas's masterpiece, Star Wars,
(Episode IV, A New Hope). This time around, every magazine ran articles singing
praises of what was now being referred to as the only myth of this era, a classic story of
good and evil, a true epic adventure that touches and moves the subconscious of every
nation. The rerelease was a celebration to savor the announcement that Lucas is
planning to release installments I, II and III of his enthralling saga, the first of which
will come into theaters in the year 2000. As episodes V and IV were re-released in
succession, we later learned that Episode I's date had been upped to summer, 1999.
It was too much to wish for. Die hard fans were beside themselves with giddyness,
and the average movie-goer likewise agreed, this will be a day long remembered.
Now.... Picture this. Your local summer movie hot sheet, June 18th, 1999. It
is exactly one month since Star Wars, Episode I, The Phantom Menace made its first
appearance to the general public in movie theaters across the United States and Canada,
and what has happened? The opening weekend of Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me
has surpassed Phantom's numbers for the weekend, devastating loyal fans everywhere who
were eagerly waiting for the treasured prequel to reclaim Star Wars' rightful spot at
number one from James Cameron's Titanic, which surpassed it last year. How could
this have taken place? Was not every movie theater in the country readying itself
for months for the onslaught it was going to get when Phantom arrived? Were not fans
everywhere climbing back into line again and again and again? How could Mike Myers,
a Saturday Night Live veteran who's greatest achievement, pre-Austin, was Wayne's World, a
spin-off of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures, surpass our only living legend?
Society, no matter how rooted in mythos, transcendentalism, and the basic concept of good
and evil subconsciously, is having a hard time these days distinguishing between right and
wrong. We understand wrong when it is obvious, like a massacre at a high school in
Littleton, Colorado, and we say, 'Oh, we need to do something about the youth of America
and the way they deal with their anger.' But how do we respond to a mythic adventure
about an innocent little boy who will eventually take his own dark turn down the path of
the evil to the ultimate 'wrongness,' and become Darth Vader? Shaggadelic! Time
magazine ran its summer movie review, and suggested in the first paragraph, that this
year, we can have our brains cyrogenically frozen at the doors to our movie theaters.
As a loyal, even occasionally obsessive, lover of the movies, it makes my spirit sink to
read things like that. How can the same public, which acclaimed Star Wars to be a
modern myth when it was rereleased let us not forget, make movies like Austin Powers rich
after condemning the first Star Wars to be a mere comic book brought to life in
1977? Something doesn't quite fit together right there. But I know what my
opposition will say, especially because I identified myself at the top of this paragraph
as an occasionally obsessive movie lover. They'll say I'm an artsy-shmartsy film
snob who thinks she knows better than everybody else, and doesn't understand that movies
are there simply for fun. They're half right. I don't understand that movies
are there simply for fun. I understand that movies are there, and are fun because
they take us out of ourselves. Yes, sometimes that is laughing ourselves to death as
Myers does a 36 point turn in a golf cart in a narrow hallway. Or maybe sometimes
it's the thrill of fear when Norman Bates rips the shower curtain aside, dressed as his
dead mother. But what about that escape that puts us on another level so
effortlessly, giving us the belly laughs, the heartwarming emotion, bittersweet tears, and
a rumble in the pit of our stomachs from a blatant display of pure evil? Those
emotions are pure and unstoppable when you watch a good movie, and even the so-called
fluff pieces count, because they usually trigger most of the laughter. It's over dosing on
them that gets us into trouble, because life is not fluff, and no matter what any realist
says, art imitates life imitates art is the -real- thing.
But I digress. A lot of what I have to say is personal. So let's look at
business. More specifically, for the movies, advertising. The hype that has
taken place since the announcement of the creation of Episode I, and the rereleases of the
previously viewed installments, has not nearly been enough to quell its fans. It
has, however, succeeded in sabotaging its product in more ways than one. First of
all, how can anything live up to such gargantuan expectations? It may be -the- story
of the way of the world in a way fun setting, but it still is just a story. No one
story limited to a two-hour visual splendor expected to surpass all others' versions of
what a visual splendor is to be, can possibly live up to the praise it received before it
ever was revealed to the world. Not only that, but because it was so big, the rest
of Hollywood shirt-tailed around it. Most namedly, again, Austin Powers, The Spy Who
Shagged Me. Austin's movie theater trailer preview opened with nothing but white
words on a black screen, reading, "If you see one movie this summer, see Star
Wars. If you see two movies this summer...." It then went on to advertise
itself. It'd be pretty naive to think that little association with the longest
awaited film ever did nothing to spark its attendence numbers, no matter how popular it is
on its own. It was the perfect marketing technique for a movie that shamelessly screams,
hey, laugh at me! Whether it is realized or not, probably a large number of people
who wandered aimlessly into Austin Powers only did so because they were lagging from what
the hype turned into an at least semi-anticlimactic event on May 19th. Also, of
course, Austin received excellent reviews, while critics tore into Phantom. Half the
reviews I read did nothing but tell me that the critics who wrote them had never read a
book by Joseph Campbell in their lives. They criticized transcendental elements in
the film that have been in every myth since the beginning of time, even the Bible! I
really don't blink my eyes when writers like that only cough up two and a half stars for
the only heroes and principles we've seen on film since pre-Vietnam.
So all of you who will next be lining up around the block to see Parker and Stone's movie
version of South Park, well, that's you in a nutshell. (No no, -this- is you in a
nutshell!) Help help, before the whole world is one big nutshell!