Karina on SpoutBlog

Under discussion:

War, Inc.  (2008)

Now that War, Inc has topped the specialty box office two weeks in a row, using the unfunny “incendiary political cartoon” (the poster’s words, not mine) as a stick with which to beat the “critics are irrelevant!” dead horse has become the new hotness.

“Despite the negative reviews, I found War Inc. innovative and subversively ironic,” Vicky Ward writes at Vanity Fair.com. Noting that Cusack was able to cull poster quotes from like-minded famous friends such as Arianna Huffington and Diablo Cody (the latter’s a new development, as she apparently hadn’t delivered her blurb as of the taping of this clip), Ward positions the success of the film as an instance of “the audience” rising up against the bullies of the critical establishment:

Yeah, I don’t know about that. I’m one of those critics who hates the film, of course (which proves Ward’s suggestion that “on the Web, voices sang a different tune” to be not quite accurate), but I do admire the way it has been marketed, and not because the film’s “potential audience” is doing the advertising––to equate a number of boldfaced names who were shown the film before its release specifically in exchange for kind words with organic word-of-mouth seems almost immoral.

One of my theories as to why the passels of War on Terror movies produced by Hollywood have failed, is because they’ve all been sold like Hollywood movies to typical Hollywood audiences. People who want to consume Hollywood films are generally looking for escapist fantasy (cough, cough); people who actually want to engage with the issues surrounding our current global situation are generally not looking for Hollywood films. By using that “political cartoon” tagline on the poster, and surrounding it by quotes from people who are generally associated with either alternative political culture or a field compatible to it, the distributors have positioned War, Inc not as a movie, but as an experience that needs to be taken in––the way one takes in a Naomi Klein book or a Keith Olbermann special comment––in order to be able to participate in a circular conversation that claims to be about dissent whilst purposefully excluding it. If there is any real audience-to-audience communication responsible for the film’s continued success, it’s got to be the choir preaching to the choir.

A story like Ward’s is its own work of marketing: it plays into that idea that War, Inc is an “alternative” product, approved by neither critics nor film festivals, and thus more attractive to a consumer who is openly distrustful of anything “official.” Because when it comes to subversion of the Hollywood system, Vanity Fair knows best…right?

Wow, I’m tired of talking about Sex and the City. How about you? I’m happy that millions of women found something on a movie screen that appealed to them, even if it’s not something that appeals to me, and I feel like that should be the end of the story. It won’t be, but personally I just want to put the period on this sentence and move on to the next manufactured hysteria. But first, two final thoughts:

1. On Hostility

Any hostility I have or have had in relation to Sex and the City the film or the brand comes from the idea that, just by virtue of chromosomal makeup, this is something that I’m supposed to be able to relate to, the film is an event that I’m not supposed to be able to resist, and the fact that I don’t and I can means that I’m basically not allowed to participate in Being A Girl for two weeks or however long this hysteria lasts. (I also think the show was smarter when it allowed characters like Miranda and Samantha to be cartoons without forcing them into moral strictures (keeping an unplanned baby, monogamy) that may be more “realistic” for the audience, but are totally untrue to the characters. But that’s another issue.)

That said, I think that the SatC backlash has become comically overblown, and that’s what I was trying to get at with this somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about the common shorthands critics have been using to dismiss the film. A lot of people took the post as though it was completely straight-faced––which is fine; I purposefully made it ambiguous––but I do want to take exception to a comment that the post produced, which read in part:

There, finally a sane woman speaks out! Phew… good to see there are STILL some alive and well

You’re right, people moan about these women as if they are so hot. But the truth is, that they’re just old, and pathetic. Shallow and materialistic oh and horny.

There are certain items on that list of 5 that I take more seriously than others. I am troubled by the idea that a brand that started out advocating female independence resolves itself with all four main characters improbably attached to dream men, in at least one instance to the detriment of the woman’s career; also, those allegations of racism are pretty eyebrow-raising, no? But I led the list off with the piece of critical shorthand that I found the most ridiculous: if there are so many legitimate problems with the film and its message, why are so many male critics hung up on the fact that they find its four lead actresses unfuckable? I wasn’t “speaking out”––I was regurgitating an argument that I find to be specious, if not noxious, and I hoped it was clear that the manner in which I regurgitated it was equivalent to critique.

2. On What it All Means

As I told Melissa Silverstein last week, if women hadn’t been willing to support this film, studios would be justified in thinking that it’s better business to produce summer blockbusters that, in old-school industry parlance, hit all four quadrants, rather than focus their time and money on films that appeal to roughly half of the potential audience. But after an almost $60 million weekend, the question now becomes, “Will SatC convince Hollywood (because “Hollywood” is a single entity) to make more films with women in mind?”

I think this is a much trickier issue. First of all, to imply that the women of America only figured out how to buy movie tickets when something pink and shiny was dangled in front of them is, in its own way, fairly sexist. The fact is, there are probably ten foreign and/or indie films released a year that would appeal to as many women as Sex and the City, but women don’t go see those movies en masse because a) not only is there no name recognition, but there’s no cultural phenomenon to get swept up in, and b) these films get teeny-tiny releases and a miniscule fraction of the marketing budget afforded to something like Sex and the City.

I totally agree with Anne Thompson that the success of this film leans heavily on both the strength of this particular brand, and New Line’s success in making the film seem like an unmissable event. Just as I think we have to be careful about crying “misogyny” in terms of the films negative reviews, I think it’s a mistake to have too much faith that a single huge opening will spark a massive change in how Hollywood views the female audience––or, for that matter, how the female audience will view any kind of cinematic product.

With that, consider me out of the business of giving Sex and the City attention. Unless something really insane happens, and I just have to respond.

• Sex and the City made almost $56 million over the weekend––almost twice what tracking would have indicated as late as Friday morning. Pamela McClintock says the debut “mystified Hollywood and shattered the decades-old thinking that females — particularly older ones –can’t fuel the sort of big opening often enjoyed by a male-driven event pic or family movie.” I’m mystified that Hollywood––or anyone––could believe that they could spend that much money promoting that beloved a brand and not see results.
• Transformers won the big award of the night at last night’s Attempt to Remind Children Who Mike Myers Is Three Weeks Before The Release of His New Movie MTV Movie Awards.
• Bryce Dallas Howard is in talks to replace Charlotte Gainsbourg in that new Terminator movie. Yes, Charlotte Gainsbourg was apparently going to play John Connor’s wife in that new Terminator movie. Good thing the daughters of men who were famous in the 70s are interchangable!