Faux Advertising: Products and Billboards Within Films.
by Oliver Spicer
frame from The Truman Show, 1998, Paramount Pictures.
If there are two reasons for every choice in filmmaking, enforced by the critics who require meaning, then the first is narrative - the second is aesthetics - and the zeroth is money.
And one such source of funding that has remained constant during the structural shifts in cinema history is product placement, where a company contributes to the budget for their product to be subtly featured on-screen or interwoven in the story.
Museum exhibits of this interesting service by studios could be curated, complete with all the TMs and Cs that could be etched on a small placard and a giftshop indistinguishable from a modern supermarket.
However, the engagement would be too little to sell commemorable t-shirts as the arc of advertisements in films suffers from the common problem of having the same story as many aspects of film: France started it, Hollywood perfected it - what is more to be discussed?
Instead, a dissection of the attitudes within such films that feature product placement or the act of marketing will yield a more insightful look into advertising within films - even leading to some surprising positives about the film industry’s oldest method of funding besides the nickel.
An initial position commonly held by films and the public is that product placement breaks away from the aesthetic or narrative motivations previously mentioned, ripping the audiences’ immersion from the actual content of the film.
In one of many iconic scenes, “not bow to any sponsor”
before a sequence of him taking a slice from a Pizza Hut box, sipping on Pepsi, and snacking on Doritos. A break in the regular cinematic film form supports this irony, with the perfectly lit products in centre frame with the logo facing forwards and Myers addressing the camera with a synthetic grin reminiscent of commercials.
Tonally similar are moments from The “It’s a Grater, Dicer, Peeler All in One!”
for a plastic packaged kitchen gadget.
Humour in these scenes is created from the absurd interjection of the artificial in a world that is meant to represent reality. Yet with this hyperbole, it is hard to see the scenes as a strong critique of product placements due to the removal of subtly - where the subliminal aspect is a major part of the charm of product placement. In fact, the music store scenes of Wayne’s World feature harder to spot placements of guitar and cymbal manufacturers Fender and Zildjian.
In opposition, the Truman Show’s products are entirely fictional such as the mentioned Swiss army potato peeler. This creates a comedic aspect in itself due to their mundane pointlessness. As a whole, the film is however a comment on the ethics of the reality television form that filled every cathode tube in the 90s making it hard to identify a particular criticism for products and marketing other than its artificial basis.
Films that carry a much more violent opposition against advertisements often question the whole aspect of marketing as a whole.
One instance is
Sunglasses obtained by the muscle-man protagonist are discovered to have the power of decoding billboards and other forms of media into their few-word aims in a bold black-on-white font - aims set out by an alien population to control the human race.
Some of the hidden messages are commands to conform, such as a billboard for a new computer system replaced by the simple message of ‘OBEY’. Whilst other question societal or economic structures such as an image of a woman lying in a bikini on a beach replaced by ‘MARRY AND REPRODUCE’ or dollar bills carrying the message ‘THIS IS YOUR GOD’.
The POV shots from the view behind the sunglasses present a bleak reality due to using black and white stills that can be associated with the objectivity of newspapers coupled with wide shots that are utilised to display the overwhelming number of messages displayed, the viewer drifting their eye from one simplified instruction to the next like they themselves are being programmed bit by bit.
Many theorists and critics have read the film as containing Marxist messages: a ruling class that indoctrinates the population through hidden instructions to conform to hegemonic standards. Yet, Carpenter himself has stated that the film is actually a criticism of Reagan-era America as a whole - which is easier to explain with a film that features as many WWE-style fight sequences and aliens being shot as this one.
Less than one year into his presidency, Reagan relaxed Federal Trade Commission regulations on advertising. One example includes removing restrictions on advertising to children where “ after deregulation passed, the top ten best selling toys all had their own television shows, including Transformers, GI Joe, and Carebears.“
[1] which lead to successful franchises and an acceptance of a relationship between products and film. It is this landscape of advertising that stemmed from the laissez-faire economic policies of Reagan that are criticised in They Live and not simply marketing itself.
A similar sinister depiction of advertisement is also present in the first time-travel scene of
Like many other predictions in future-peering sci-fi, it was based on the use of advertisements at the time. Universal broke records with its marketing budget for
Shock in this form, manipulation of the human senses, created one of the first multiplex blockbusters in Jaws as it would for later breakthrough horror films such as the virality of
Again, it is played in Back to the Future Part II for laughs but links with the final gripe worth mentioning that audiences have are that the product placements on-screen are interwoven with emotional beats to try and form associations with the brands. Of course, Reese's Pieces represent liberty from the government - they have a hard shell and a soft core.
Yet, an incomplete view is formed from analysis of scenes that critique advertisements and products - even when placing them into perspective with the context of the time or their comedic tone. Even though the pros of product placement may be harder to think of at first, the subtle relation between the real world and the construction of films through products is unearthed.
Verisimilitude, the appearance of a fake world being real, is one surprising benefit of product placements. Immersing the spectator falls under the narrative justification for filmmaking decisions mentioned in the opening, it is both very important to entice emotion from the spectator and extremely fragile.
One such example of the breakdown of verisimilitude is when the packaging or product design of a prop is slightly off. There is an uncanny-valley-esk impact to it, where there is something unsayable with the choice of colour or typeface. Roles such as set dressers and prop designers cannot be overstated, but they can never truly match the millions and hours of work placed into each detail of packaging design.
It is noteworthy that this argument is the polar opposite of the ridicule in Wayne’s World or The Truman Show for ads breaking immersion. But as long as the product is not dressed up with too much flattery, the presence of a real world product will help instead of hinder verisimilitude.
If it is true from the Italian Neorealists that cinema should represent the real world, the commercial aspect of livingcannot be ignored. After all, the father from
Another point is that inter-film product placement can also produce interesting parallels or contrasts with the main narrative. Blade Runner(Ridley Scott, 1982) shows us this with a single wide shot of dystopian LA - Declan’s flying car whooshes past a glowing red billboard that first flashes the word ‘Enjoy’ and then the CocaCola logo.
The feeling generated would hardly work with any other brand that doesn’t have the sinister recognisability of CocaCola. But there is also certainly a sense of irony to the shot with the brand’s marketing campaigns around individualism from people smiling with bottles in their beginnings, to ‘Share a Coke’ that printed first names on their packaging, and in 2023 where the phrase “You can only be who you are” ended their summer ads. This individualism contrasts heavily with a film centred on the fragility of self-identity, creating questions about the commercialisation of identity in a film that is intended to be ever-questioned.
Normalisation of products on-screen is also not entirely negative, with directors inventing fictitious companies as narrative devices. This includes filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, with the packaging of Mendl’s Patisserie, or the three companies of
It is also wrong to villainise the advertisement or marketing when cinema is in debt to both.
Animation is a particular genre that due to its cost per frame was developed through the mode of advertisements, such as Arthur Melbourne Cooper's
Many Directors also started in commercials such as Ridley Scott, David Fincher, and Jonathan Glazer - which is said to promote the unique skill of creating a memorable image in the spectators mind.
As previously mentioned for Jaws, The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity: cinema culture has benefitted from advertising in the forms of trailers and posters. Niche genres wouldn’t be produced at all unless their audience could be found through ads, and teengage rooms wouldn’t look the same without the film poster.
To criticise advertisements is also to criticise the act of embedding meaning into visuals, which can be seen as the goal of filmmakers when the commercial domain is switched to political, social, or philosophical.
Perphaps then the narrative and aethetic motivations of cinema are not as far from the monetary as previously thought. Whether ficticious or real, critical or supportive: the inclusion of products and advertisements inside of films have not only raised a few quid, but also raised otherwise overlooked areas of the frame to new meaning.
by Oliver Spicer, March 2024
Bibliography
[1]: Anna Lappe, ‘What Ronald Reagan Has to Do with Dora on Your Popsicle Package’, Earth Island Journal.
[2]: Neil Smith, 'Shark Tale that Changed Hollywood', BBC News.
