Not-So-Hidden Themes
Submitted by Alejandro Adams on Sun, 02/08/2009 - 1:12pm.
Doing 4x6 test prints of a 27x40 poster image. Looks like we'll have a nice full-size Canary poster to put on the poster wall at Cinequest.
SPOILER ALERT
One of the focal points of Canary is the way in which the public image of a corporation interacts with the reality of said corporation's practical behavior, and the Canary poster is intended to interact with the events of the film in an analogous way. The poster and tri-fold brochures will not be "promotional materials" in the traditional sense--they highlight and interrogate our notions of advertising and expectation vis-a-vis a movie we're sitting down to watch for the first time (early in the film, a PR outfit mocks the image of the little girl opening a gift, setting this theme in motion). The poster fails to represent the film just as the investigative news crew in the film fail to "figure it all out." There is no direct relationship between PR and practice; no direct relationship between a film and its poster; and there is no direct relationship between the two disparate "halves" of Canary. "The news crew plotline doesn't really work" = "The poster doesn't represent the film." These are not criticisms; they are themes. At the end of the film, the news crew plotline doesn't "culminate" but instead fragments, the producer having been fired and the executives in a conference room brawl, working at cross-purposes, revealing the inability of "information" to provide "meaning." While the Canary half of the film remains sensual and mysterious throughout, the news crew half finally implodes into incoherence. This will be experienced, I'm sure, as a reckless and jarring invocation of a tried-and-true formula which audiences have come to depend on. Maybe what we're really seeing in that final conference room scene is a few passionate audience members discussing the film itself--blink and you'll miss the TV screen in the background, displaying an image from the film we're watching. How meta!
Is this epistemological masturbation? Well, my talking about it certainly seems to be. I'm confident that the film itself is organic and provocative where its metaphors are concerned, rather than pretentious or condescending.
In an interview several years ago, Ali Allie said, "With film you are selling the mystery of an initial experience. You're selling something that the buyer doesn't know. They pay money because of the vision and image of what they think the film is, not what it really is. They don't get what it really is until after the money is paid. That's why the marketing materials are so important. You're distributing the image of the film, not the film itself."
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| canary-poster-test.jpg | 65.29 KB |
»
- Alejandro Adams's blog
- Login or register to post comments
A Ticket to Ride
What comes to mind is an incident of a JetBlue air flight that had to make an emergency landing a few years ago here in Los Angeles when the nose caught fire. Since there were TVs surgically embedded in the back of each seat, the passengers on the plane watched their own landing on TV from inside the plane in real time. This audience paid to be transported to the world of safe sitcoms and mainstream news for an expected amount of time, but the “show” they got was a movie of their own near-death experience and dramatic rescue. And not only that, but they got the critics’ takes as well, as TV “experts” discussed the odds of their survival as the audience texted their last words to loved ones.
In this case, JetBlue completely failed to accurately represent in their marketing materials, or on the title of the flight itself, what the “ride” was going to be about. One passenger remarked that it would have been better not to have the TVs elucidating the situation because of the increased panic they caused. Perhaps JetBlue should have pulled the plug; or if they had really been on the ball they could have shown a promotional video in place of “reality”. Canary Industries (having obviously learned from past situations like the one described above) is very on the ball. They know their audience doesn’t want to know the details and they’d rather look the other way. So, it does seem fitting that the poster for the film be diversionary.
After all, the audience doesn’t really want to see a film of it's own death, which is what "this film" is, a harbinger of a very real business of death (marketed as life). It's a double whammy of an uncomfortable subject told uncomfortably. And with comfortable marketing perhaps! Make that a triple. Most of the audience will wonder why they got on board. And the critics will still have all their organs whether or not the film lives or dies. For a little while longer anyway.