I haven't seen it yet (I will), but I have to say I was completely turned off by the marketing campaign. And it's no wonder that Fox made the announcement in the trades today that it will lose $10Million on TBOAN.
IMO, they didn't market "the movie". They marketed "Black Lives Matter".
And I'm sorry, but that immediately turns off pretty much 100% of the white, Asian & Hispanic audience. They were basically told THIS FILM ISN'T FOR YOU, IT'S FOR BLACK PEOPLE.
That might not be fair, but it's true.
If you didn't see the TV ads, 1/2 of the ad are clips from the film the other 1/2 were present day clips of Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
This not only alienated a certain group of people from seeing the film, it was also insulting.
I'll explain.
The reason the film garnered for much attention at the festival was because the film's theme and message were relatable to issues going on in today's culture. It's quite obvious.
So anyone with a brain could draw the comparisons themselves. They didn't and don't need the ad to say, "Hey, dumb people, this isn't just a film that is about history, it's still relevant now!"
That is insulting that Fox cared so little for the intelligence of their audience that they felt they needed to do that. I don't remember 12 Years A Slave marketing the film like that.
So to me, someone who was eager to see the film, suddenly thinks, "Well, it's not for me and either the central message of the film is murky and I needed to be told it relates to events happening today or the film will be pretentious and try to remind me every chance it gets to tell me it's message is relatable to today."
I do not recall the advertisements (if I have seen them at all), but if true (and I am not doubting you, but just noting that I have not analyzed them for myself), I concur with your comments. My guess is that the marketing people imagined that they could better tap into a niche demographic this way, but you do risk alienating others and coming across as overly propagandistic.
For the record, having just viewed
The Birth of a Nation, I would definitely see it before it departs theaters (today is the last day in many markets). The film is not "great" or even "very good" in my opinion, but it adds to the canon of movies about slavery and helps deepen one's understanding of, and pseudo-experience with (through the powers of cinema), slavery—its normative conventions and why the institution constituted such an affront to humanity, what it did to the soul. The movie is not another
12 Years a Slave (in my opinion the best film of 2013 and and an all-time classic, up there with
Schindler's List) or
Django Unchained (arguably the best film of 2012), and I actually feel that
Free State of Jones from earlier this year was better, but
The Birth of a Nation helps add a layer of understanding that is not exactly the same as that presented in the other movies (although there are all kinds of overlaps, obviously).
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Sweet_and_Lowdown77
8 years ago
Like I said, I do plan on seeing it. I won't let bad marketing stop me.
My post was simply making an observation. 12 Years a Slave, Amistad, The Color Purple, etc., never had problems crossing over and appealing to folks of all races , colors & creeds.
When I saw the ads for TBOAN, I was really thrown. I would've thought that perhaps the film spanned two different time periods, one in the past, one in present day. It made it look like it was all fighting and violence. It marketed, IMO, to the "angry black American", which clearly was not the right approach.
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joekiddlouischama
8 years ago
The approach is a bad one, I whole-heartedly agree. As you indicated, history can carry a wide appeal—so attract the widest possible audience, and then let viewers figure out the contemporary relevance on their own or maybe in interviews with the filmmakers. But in the advertising, allow the material to stand on its own.
If one were making a film about, say, the Mexican-American War, one would not want to integrate clips of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq into the commercials (let alone Donald Trump and his rhetoric), even if one could draw parallels about deceptive and jingoistic, or xenophobic, propaganda.
What I would be curious to learn is who made the advertising decisions in this case: white folks or black folks? Stupidity is colorblind, but ethnicity here could be significant in understanding why it happened. If the marketing people were white, they may have condescendingly felt the need to pander to blacks and felt that fellow whites would be disinterested regardless. If the marketing people were black, they may have jadedly felt that this material would never "cross over" to the mass white audience.
What potentially makes The Birth of a Nation different from, say, 12 Years a Slave is that it reflects not just the horrors of slavery, but slave retribution against white people—and an actual historical episode, not a fictional revolt as in Django Unchained. Thus the marketers may have been more dubious about their chances of tapping the white audience, but that does not mean that you dismiss the possibility. Instead, you become better and more creative in how you go about your job. White Virginians of that era liked to believe that they presided over the "mildest" form of slavery, and that belief implicitly comes across in a couple of the film's white characters. So if trying to find "points of entry" for contemporary white viewers, you use that ironic element—there are many ways to go.
I will also note that connecting Nat Turner to "Black Lives Matter" does a disservice to the contemporary movement and plays into the stereotypes and fears that some whites currently hold. Whatever one makes of Turner—mass murderer, righteous black Jesus, whatever—"Black Lives Matter" is about exercising First Amendment rights to call attention to racial inequities and abuses in policing and the need to reform methods and practices. But some reactionaries and bigots (absurdly) fear that "Black Lives Matter" means elevating blacks over whites, and connecting the movement to Nat Turner feeds those fears. As you noted, the better approach would be to allow the historical subject matter to stand on its own and trust viewers to find parallels and analogies where they see fit.
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