Hollywood Isn’t Leading Culture Anymore, It’s Selling It

It feels as if Hollywood used to tell us who we were. Now it tells us what to buy.

Movies shaped fashion, TV shaped conversations, and actors shaped the zeitgeist. But somewhere along the way the power shifted. Studios that once dictated how we saw the world now feel less like cultural engines and more like the new arm of the advertising industry. Hollywood just isn’t leading the zeitgeist anymore. It's following sponsorship contracts. It’s chasing brand deals. It's taking advantage of the industries downturn and we're all suffering for it.

The result? A film and TV landscape that increasingly feels like one long ad read.

Product Placement Has Always Existed But Not Like This. 

Tom Hanks transforming a found volleyball into his only companion while trapped on a deserted island. Marty McFly asking for a Pepsi Free at a diner as a reminder to the audience that he's in a different time, only to be told if he wants a Pepsi, he'd have to pay for it. Barbasol shaving cream can as the smuggling device to get the dinosaur embryos from Jurassic Park.

But what Nobody Wants This Season 2 did this year is a step too far. Instead of working hard to get buy in from the audience on the advertising in the show by writing it into the plot or the character arc's, Season 2 was a ten episode commercial for brands.

Here's a running list of some brands Nobody Wants This Season 2 got in the way of advertising: Dunkin Donuts, Airbnb, Estee Lauder, Jennifer Meyer, Seventh Generation, Spindrift and many more.

At one point Kristen Bell uses a skincare product that is a night serum in the middle of the day on top of her makeup. Don't have to be a girl's girl to understand how stupid that is. In another entire sequence, characters are presenting the Dunkin logo at every opportunity. Nobody Wants This.

It used to be that a product was naturally written into a story by the writer such as Eggo being Eleven's preferred snack in Stranger Things or Mr. Big dying of heart attack while riding a Peloton in And Just Like That. But now Paid Product Placement is becoming so prevalent that it's ruining any form of escape or exploration of art that films and tv uses to have. It's like people only do things because they get paid. And that's really sad.

This is literally a commercial insert shot with the hand using the product and all.	Look at the position of Justine Lupe's hand. Who eats a donut like that?*

And Theaters Aren't Helping: AMC's Pre-Show Problem

At the beginning of the summer, AMC announced that it would be increasing the amount of trailers to the film. "Please allow 25-30 extra minutes for trailers and additional content before the movie starts." That's what was said on every ticket confirmation page. I'm trying to watch a movie, not ads. So, I decided to do my own little test. From July 7th to August 11th, I saw eight films in theaters at AMC. The opening frame of the film didn't start until 29-32 minutes after showtime. Absolute insanity. I ended this experiment on August 11th when the CEO of AMC Theatres said they were going to trim the pre-show by a whole 4-5 minutes. Thanks, Adam!

What hasn't been as reported on is that AMC now has added a dedicated segment called the "Platinum Spot" for branded commercials to run before the last trailer or two. Now, we are bombarded by an ad from Amazon Prime, Indeed, or this Mayhem Action Hero ad. Bonus points to All State for shooting on a backlot in LA and the commercial having a movie theme but advertisements at the theater is still a failing grade from me. 

Look, I understand that trailers before the film are like advertisements. Trailers before the film used to be the only way for movie goers to see what new films were coming to theaters. But with every trailer being available online, we don't need a half hour block worth of them. And we definitely don't need a platinum advertising spot. I get it. Cutting a trailer spot is cutting revenue for movie theaters. So, if you need to cut something, lose one of the three AMC ads at the end of the trailer run. We don't need to see an ad for AMC while sitting in an AMC, let alone three of them!

Now Movie Stars Have Become Brands

I feel like I'm seeing movie stars in more commercials than in movies! It's wild to remember that not long ago, actors doing TV was considered a step down. Movie stars did not cross over. TV was for "working actors", not icons. Then the prestige TV boom happened and streaming rewired the hierarchy. Now every A-Lister is headlining their own limited series on any streaming service that will throw money at them. 

But the boundary is dissolving again with commercials. 

I can't say for sure unless I ask Chris Pratt, Jason Momoa, and Keke Palmer why they did a commercial for Monopoly Go. But it certainly feels like a reaction to the state of Hollywood right now. Less movies are being made. Less jobs to go around, even for those at the top. So they are taking work from the levels below them. And thus, the working actors that once made a career as co-stars and commercial actors are now left with nothing. It's hard to survive when the actor ecosystem his gone from working from the bottom up to the top down. 

As A-Listers transitioned themselves from stars to brands themselves, other brands saw an opportunity. Because if an actor is willing to shell their own tequila, gin, and non-alcoholic beer, why wouldn't they be willing to shell out for a mobile game company for the right price? 

Hollywood didn’t just lose its place in the zeitgeist. It sold it. Bit by bit, brand by brand, partnership by partnership until studios became just another revenue stream for advertisers. Warner Bros. Discovery is selling off its film library to Netflix, while Paramount is busy attempting a hostile takeover. A new paradigm is coming. We can’t return to the Hollywood that once led the culture and this current version, where studios chase acquisitions instead of ideas, will likely collapse. But something new will come. It'll grow from the writers who know that stories come before brands.

I leave you with this clip of David Lynch giving his thoughts on product placement.

*Shoutout this article from The Tab where I got the Nobody Wants This product placement screenshots. If you wanna see more egregious examples, help yourself.