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Related
At some point when a film or book becomes considered a
phenomenon, its life within the market, i.e. how much cash it
makes, attracts attention.
Thus, everyone from Business Week, to the Guardian, to, well TVNZ
has reported that Avatar the James Cameron greenie shoot-em-up has
taken more than a billion dollars worldwide. This
is a legitimate news decision. Attach a billion of anything to a
public figure, a film or an object and most news junkies will sit
up and take notice.
In fact the film is looking like it may out-earn another James
Cameron movie that everyone remembers, but no one can recall more
than a single scene from, Titanic. That chunk of celluloid
harvested $US1.84 billion.
That Avatar's making a billion dollars was reported so widely, and
with such... gusto is the only word for it, reminded me of a
comment by Mark Greif, an editor at
n +1 a clever
and pugnacious New York literary magazine.
Films are not necessarily valued for their worth as films any more,
Greif said, but - I'm paraphrasing here - as ATMs. He's right, and
it's a fascinating note in how we assess the worth of cultural
products. Their earnings becomes part of their story.
When reporting on much lesser films, it's now become almost
standard to note that they topped weekend x, by earning y millions
of dollars at the box office. You see the same reflex occurring
with mega franchises such as the Twilight series by Stephanie
Meyer, which is Harry Potter for tween girls.
It's likely that these reports, which are essentially measures of
popularity, will provoke increased lines at cinemas and bookstores.
Which - let's face it - is not unhelpful to their continued
viability.
In the US, Avatar which is loosely about colonisation, and largely
about awesome visuals, has goaded intelligent people to wonder what
its message is.
My friend Ann Marlowe is a counter-insurgency expert who regularly
lectures the US military. She wrote a piece at the end of last year
calling
Avatar possibly the most neo-con (or right wing
conservative) movie ever made.
Possibly another message of Avatar is that people like to be
entertained, and that they'll pay handsomely for the privilege. If
they can't get it, they'll steal it. The movie has also surpassed a
milestone that neither James Cameron, not the executives at
Twentieth Century Fox will greet cheerfully: it's the world's most
pirated film.
A personal disclaimer. Of the one billion dollar cash cornucopia
that it has collected worldwide, I have contributed a paltry
ninety or so dollars. I shouted my Dad and brother-in-law Wesley in
to the 2-D version in Tauranga the other week, then just a few days
ago, crept back with Wes to the 3-D iteration in Mount Maunganui,
um, purely for research purposes.
The reason I did this was because the person who handed me our 2-D
tickets, for which I'd paid about $40, freely volunteered her
opinion that the film we were about to see was only about 40% as
good as the 3-D iteration, which by the way, had just sold
out.
I wonder, was this also part of the marketing strategy?
Read more of
Tim Wilson's blogs here
World News Video
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