Snakes on a Marketing Binge
Interesting article in Salon that i'd thought i'd pass along to you SoaP fans:
Many think that "Snakes on a Plane" is a phenomenon because its title is immeasurably stupid. This is untrue. Keeping with the analogy about the two sons, the autistic son has a clearer, if more unromantic, grasp on the essence of the movie than the first. This clarity is at the root of the phenomenon. People are fascinated with the idea of the film precisely because of the title's lack of artifice. This is because all the really bad movies have really good titles. The correlation is so strong that most media-savvy moviegoers can judge the quality of a movie by the slickness of its title alone. "ConAir." "Species." "Anaconda." Across the aisle, film buffs lovingly embrace the awkward linguistic gropings of the art-house title. "Born Into Brothels." "An Inconvenient Truth." "Breakfast on Pluto."
The underlying assumption here is that if a movie is an underwritten, overproduced turd kept afloat by an evil and powerful network of producers and distribution studios, the title has probably been expertly cleaned and perfumed to a degree greater than or equal to the shittiness of the film itself. A good title is the smooth gelatin capsule within which the feces will be swallowed. Conversely, the assumption about the art-house film title is that it was revealed by the Muse and banged out on an old typewriter by a frenzied author clutching a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. Thus when people see a super-slick title, they are understandably wary. Like Indiana Jones' Holy Grail, good things almost never come in good packages.
You may need to watch a short ad, but without sound, mine was about 5 seconds of ain't-no-thang.
Many think that "Snakes on a Plane" is a phenomenon because its title is immeasurably stupid. This is untrue. Keeping with the analogy about the two sons, the autistic son has a clearer, if more unromantic, grasp on the essence of the movie than the first. This clarity is at the root of the phenomenon. People are fascinated with the idea of the film precisely because of the title's lack of artifice. This is because all the really bad movies have really good titles. The correlation is so strong that most media-savvy moviegoers can judge the quality of a movie by the slickness of its title alone. "ConAir." "Species." "Anaconda." Across the aisle, film buffs lovingly embrace the awkward linguistic gropings of the art-house title. "Born Into Brothels." "An Inconvenient Truth." "Breakfast on Pluto."
The underlying assumption here is that if a movie is an underwritten, overproduced turd kept afloat by an evil and powerful network of producers and distribution studios, the title has probably been expertly cleaned and perfumed to a degree greater than or equal to the shittiness of the film itself. A good title is the smooth gelatin capsule within which the feces will be swallowed. Conversely, the assumption about the art-house film title is that it was revealed by the Muse and banged out on an old typewriter by a frenzied author clutching a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other. Thus when people see a super-slick title, they are understandably wary. Like Indiana Jones' Holy Grail, good things almost never come in good packages.
You may need to watch a short ad, but without sound, mine was about 5 seconds of ain't-no-thang.