Give Me My Movies Back!

As film has developed form the silent black and white films from the days of Charlie Chaplin. To the Golden area of the fifties. Film was always for one thing, to entertain the audience members as best the creator could.

Not really the same is it?

To properly entertain and communicate a message a film must be considered an art form. The director must be in touch with their imagination and creativity for artistic expression. To take the purpose of film as an art form and use it for any other means is exploitative, where creativity cannot flourish. Taking way from the true essence turning it into something that it is not, something for making profit and controlling people perspectives.

Today the nature of film is being exploited for its power over the masses. Take for example product placement. Every time you see a Coke can or an actor wearing some kind of clothing isn’t because the director thought it would enhance the purpose of the film but rather to try and sell the product. Making the film distracting and lacking real purpose.

When one asks what is the point of product placement in movies the answer is simply to make money and rarely to enhance the quality of the film, one example could be Blade Runner.

The Coke advertisement is used by the director as a from of mise en scene. To communicate the corporate control of a dystopian future.

The placement of products is however understandable given there incredible effect on product sales.

Take for example the scene form Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth are blatantly plugging Doritos Adidas and other popular products. Seen ironically the creators made the scene comical but the sarcasm alone should scream how ridiculous such product placement is in films even when done sarcastically it just derails the film.

When I first say Wayne's World and this scene can on it took me a second to even understand what was happening. By the time I finally did see, OK, they are trying to make some kind of joke the scene was over and i had forgot on what was even happening in the story. My mind had to jump back and forth between irrelevant content and the film itself. So much changing made the movie difficult to watch and took away from the meaning of the film.