Marketing To Dumb Americans
Claudia Eller’s new L.A. Times piece about the marketing of “Up In The Air” reminds us that selling motion pictures to the American public today is about the fine art of communicating with the dumbest, most under-educated and most culturally insulated people in the history of western civilization. Not to mention the most heavily narcotized (i.e., via food, alcohol, prescription drugs, constant TV watching, frequent visits to malls). Why does Hollywood market intelligent movies like “Up in the Air” and “A Single Man” (whose marketing campaign has de-gayed it) so crassly? It’s a little like the Obama campaign: they figure they already have the smart folks wrapped up, so they’re going after everybody else.
