Anghus Houvouras on how the media has marketed the 12 Years a Slave poster ‘controversy’…
It’s one of those stories that generates passion and indignation. The entire debate steeped in knee-jerk reactions and emotional outbursts. The story is designed to make you think a great injustice has been perpetrated. But when you start to examine the story closer, you realize that it’s not really a controversy, it’s a nontroversy.
The phrase nontroversy has been used for years in politics, when trumped up scandals and accusations are a tactic frequently employed. A kind of pointless, non-story engineered to generate pageviews and stir heated conversations using the oldest tricks in the book.
Steve McQueen’s new film 12 Years a Slave is premiering in Italy where distributors opted for a poster campaign focusing on some of the A-List talent that populates the supporting cast. Notably Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender. The poster still features star Chiwetel Ejiofor on the lower third, but the prominent famous actors adorning the vast majority of the canvas apparently has some people up in arms. The New York Daily News coverage of the story was a hilarious cacophony of overreaction and political correctness.
“Trying to defuse a global uproar over the unapproved posters that focused on white cast members Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt — while the film’s lead, Chiwetel Ejiofor is segregated to a corner — BIM Distribuzione apologized to the public and pulled all the offending materials.”
Look at those word choices: “trying to defuse a global uproar”. Then, they actually used the word ‘segregated’ to describe how Ejiofor was cropped into the poster. Serious. Again, these words and sentences are designed to make you think that something truly terrible has happened, when in fact it hasn’t.
The truth is, there’s no controversy here. Last time I checked, both Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender are in the movie. I would understand the anger if they started throwing up people onto the poster that weren’t in the film. If they photoshopped Tom Cruise onto the poster, I might understand the indignation. But using your famous supporting cast to sell a film in a market unfamiliar or less familiar with your lead actors isn’t a hate crime. It’s just a business decision. The job of any marketing campaign is to put asses in seats. If we’re being intellectually honest here, Fassbender and Pitt are more likely to sell tickets. This is hardly the first time an international distributor has reworked the marketing materials to focus on the most marketable aspects of a production.
Race is such a sore subject. It feels like reactions like the NY Daily News are written from a place where we just assume everyone will be offended. After a week of discussing the topic with film fans and fellow film writers, it seems that very few people are that shocked or offended by the marketing. Other than some of the disparaging comments from those associated with the production, no one really seems to care.
Would anyone have been offended about Pitt and Fassbender being used for he posters if the film had been a thriller or a period romance and not a movie about the brutality of slavery? Are distributors required to only feature the primary cast on a poster if the film deals with issues of racial sensitivity? The idea that distributors in foreign markets are ideologically mandated to market the film in a specific way is not only presumptuous, but idiotic. Like I said, the goal of marketing is to get people to see the movie, and 12 Years a Slave is a fantastic movie that deserves to be seen. Some films are a harder sell than others. I would think the team behind 12 Years a Slave would want whatever marketing campaign helps build an audience for the film. But this is one of those racially sensitive issues which immediately shelves logic and common sense because everyone is so afraid of offending anyone. Progress isn’t made by tip-toeing around these topics. We only learn by talking through these uncomfortable issues.
I loved 12 Years a Slave. It was my favorite movie this year by a wide margin. And I am capable of understanding the raw feelings (and perhaps bruised egos) from seeing the stars of the film reduced in overseas marketing in favor of big name, instantly recognizable supporting actors. You can call it thoughtless or insensitive, but the truth is it was a business decision designed to get the most tickets sold. And the assertions from Variety, The New York Daily News, or The Daily Mail that this is some kind of ‘race row’ is the kind of bile spewing muck raking that the media has become far too comfortable with.
This poster ‘nontroversy’ is just another non-story that is being pumped up to get a reaction from readers, using the most manipulative and button pushing techniques they have in their employ. I’m more offended by the word choices in these articles than the act itself. This is the faintest of outrage being marketed to a specific portion of the public who often seems to be looking for something to be offended by. If you’re offended by this story, you’re part of the problem. You’re contributing to the pointless outrage that has become a cornerstone of the internet. I’m willing to entertain opinions to the contrary, but if you have wasted one brain cell getting heated about this, then perhaps you need to familiarize yourself with some of the real atrocities happening in this world.
It’s show business, party people. Movies are both artistic pursuits and money making enterprises. No matter how much we love and respect the artistic portion, the goal at the end of the day is to generate a profit. Sometimes that means marketing the film with the most recognizable assets. That just a universal truth, and hardly anything worth getting worked up over.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.
Originally published January 4, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
