The Gun Industry's Lucrative Relationship with Hollywood
features.hollywoodreporter.com
features.hollywoodreporter.com
I recall on a recent visit to India that movie posters there now seem to include shots of people looking stern and holding a gun -- previous visits (only a few years ago) tended to just have the stern looks, no gun. Presumably trying to compete for an audience that now likes a bit o' shooting.
Back in 2011-ish I saw a poster for an animated sci-fi movie, I think aimed at kids, but sadly can't remember the name of it. A picture of a vaguely humanoid-looking alien, over-sized head, holding a stylised laser blaster, with the tag line 'This is the smartest creature in the universe'. Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing. An Excession quotes is relevant:
"It could see that - by some criteria - a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgement implied. To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by its place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation of weapons was a kind of tragedy."
- Excession, by Iain M Banks
Megamind, perhaps? That was an animated comedy/superhero movie featuring a super-intelligent alien super villain, and is from the right timeframe (released late 2010).
Megamind is an excellent movie, but was overshadowed by Despicable Me, which came out a few months earlier, because they both had as their major theme the villain turning into the good guy.
> Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing.
If it was indeed Megamind, of course he has a blaster: he's a stereotypical alien super villain. The movie is a spoof/twist on the superhero/villain relationship, so starting with a stereotypical villain is quite reasonable.
Understood, and agreed, on plot of Megamind and requirement for stereotypical bad-guy-with-gun origin story, but I think my underlying point survives. Even if this was the movie / poster -- smartest entity in the universe shouldn't require a gun (or at least would be ashamed enough to not be waving it about).
The idea that powerful / influential (regardless of good/bad alignment) people as portrayed in our pop-culture need to be seen to be holding a gun is regrettable. If you haven't already, start taking a note of movie posters and the ratio of guns:no-guns -- obviously ignore the romcoms etc genres.
I think a strong case could be made that the impact of the Western genre from the 50's to the 70's (I was born in the 80's so am just guessing the decades from what I have seen) is still seen in the pop culture of today. Anti heroes who live and die by the gun are common in westerns.
http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page
It's every gun in every film ever.
Whether or not it's useful to know every film that ever used your favourite gun is up to you.
Check the early westerns and such and the guy will seize up and tip over, and that's it. These days they will take flight, either over a bar, table or out a window, from a standstill.
Never mind that they love going over the top with sound effects.
A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker, and a punch is near silent...
Also gunshots are loud enough to require hearing protection at a shooting range, and a punch is also audible, but just higher pitch.
What was your point in posting this?
As for point, its that Hollywood have given a ever flashier and exaggerated presentation of the effects of guns.
Agreed but there are also many exceptions to this especially in the military genre (Hacksaw Ridge being the latest example).
What? No. Guns are loud.
People in general including myself love violence on television and love guns in real life. I think Hollywood is merely appealing to people's taste to make profits for themselves.
Later, I realized that the reason for those commercials was to make IBM more or less synonymous with "computers" in my adolescent mind. They were playing a very long game... too long, as it turned out, but still not an altogether bad strategy. Maybe that's why the arms manufacturers do similar things.
If he were alive today, I'd ask him some other hard-to-answer questions, such as "Why are the Democrats still obsessing over gun control, when all it does is cost them one election after another?" I guess it's just another misguided long game.
I had to look up two of the three, even though I think I'm reasonably well-versed in guns. So if it is a long game, it's a really long one.
The military also has a stake in glamorizing weaponry and warfighting, and they definitely have a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood in that respect.
Because tens of thousands of Americans are being killed every year, including children being massacred? [1]
Incidentally, those crazy Democrats were only asking for a ban on assault weapons, which was in place from 1994 to 2004, and supported by Ronald Reagan. He also supported the Brady Bill.
Of course, that was before the Republicans descended to the point where their whackjob would-be president suggested that his supporters should shoot his opponent, and lied about having her jailed.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/gun-control-...
Respectfully, banning "assault" weapons isn't going to stop the vast majority of gun violence - ending the war on drugs, poverty/income inequality, and dealing with mental health would probably do a lot more without alienating millions of Americans who just like to hunt or make holes in paper.
Tens of thousands is a bit of a stretch as well. Suicide by firearm is not quite the same as violence against others.
True. However, it might well reduce the death rate, and that's better than nothing.
In America, you are far more likely to be killed by a toddler than by a terrorist. In a supposedly civilized country that is, frankly, insane.
> Tens of thousands is a bit of a stretch as well.
Average is 33,000 gun deaths per year of which 12,000 are homicides. A thousand a month. It's not good.
> alienating millions of Americans who just like to hunt or make holes in paper.
How many human lives are those actually worth? Is murdering wildlife something that anyone should applaud? Do people make holes in paper with assault rifles? What's the point in that?
Multiple studies [1] found no effect.
> In America, you are far more likely to be killed by a toddler than by a terrorist.
You can pick a day when a toddler killed someone but no terror attack happened. But if you look a longer timeframe, it's not even close. Especially if you include 3,000 people who were killed on 9/11.
Besides, you can make your chances of being shot by a toddler zero by not buying a gun, or by locking it up in a safe. Can't do that with terrorism.
> A thousand a month. It's not good.
No it's not. Most are gang related. Maybe it's time to look at war on drugs?
> How many human lives are those actually worth?
You need to also look at how many human lives are saved by guns. Do you think Petit family members [2] were glad they did not have a gun in the house?
> Is murdering wildlife something that anyone should applaud?
You can't murder wildlife. Murder is the unlawful killing of another human.
> Do people make holes in paper with assault rifles?
Yes, the army. Civilians in the US cannot buy assault rifles since 1986.
You probably meant assault weapons. Those are widely available outside of a couple of states with ridiculous laws like NY and CA.
The point of making holes in paper is to learn gun control. You want to control the gun so that you can make the holes where you want them when you want them, and not make holes where you don't.
I wish the police made more holes in paper [3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban#St...
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire,_Connecticut,_home_in...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Empire_State_Building_sho...
Basically you can 1) buy an old machine gun for a 200$ tax stamp under much more stringent regulations, 2) attempt to get a "Love Letter" (a letter given to you by a Chief Law Enforcement Officer (CLEO) to request guns for "testing"), or 3) build one for a CLEO as a Class 3 Manufacture with a provable intent to sell.
Certainly gun companies advertise directly to military as well, just as pharmaceutical companies are infamous for the extent they advertise to doctors. But there's some benefit to your product being a "household name", even if households aren't purchasing them.
And it goes beyond "well, military purchasers probably watch movies too", but the notion that such purchases end up in front of politicians, and eventually voters are in some fashion involved in how hot or cold desire for military spending is.
And it's not just movies. You see it in many major video games too. Take Mass Effect for example; You could play as the most loving, all-tolerating paragon character in that game but in the end there are baddies that you have to shoot, not love/tolerate.
For example, gun ranges usually have Desert Eagle for rent, but not S&W M&P. In real life Desert Eagle is pretty rare because it is completely impractical, while S&W M&P is popular with civilians, police, and competition shooters. But in video games the situation is reversed - gamers know Desert Eagle and ask for it when they come to the range.
Besides, there's a third possibility: that the Desert Eagle is simply a "cooler" weapon than the M&P, and hence chosen by gun ranges users and by film and video game producers for the same reason.
TV is 11 DE vs. 23 M&P, and video games 9 DE to 1 M&P.
So if you think that movies and TV shape demand, you would expect to see more demand for M&P at the ranges.
In reality the distribution of guns people ask for at the ranges is a lot closer to what's in video games than in movies/TV.
There are many "cool" guns, but if they're not in video games, nobody cares.
Running a compelling simulation of a shoot out only requires a handful of vectors in memory and a couple of vector operations per frame.
Running a compelling simulation of a social interaction is impossible given our current tech.