
The Gun Industry's Lucrative Relationship with Hollywood - endswapper
http://features.hollywoodreporter.com/the-gun-industrys-lucrative-relationship-with-hollywood/
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Jedd
I'm pretty sure guns have featured large in movie posters long before 9/11 ...
and I don't recall there being a big change in that ratio, at least for USA-
originating films, around that time. (I'm in AU - but much of our pop-culture
comes out of the US.)

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

~~~
tzs
> 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'.

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.

~~~
Jedd
Possibly. I did try to hunt down the name a couple of years later for a ranty
blogpost about the prevalence guns in movie posters (as it happens). I looked
at the posters for Megamind, but none matched well with my memory of the image
or the tagline.

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.

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Paul_S
If you've never seen this:

[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page](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.

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gozur88
The article doesn't really support its thesis - that there's a symbiotic
relationship between the gun industry and Hollywood. Clearly gun manufacturers
benefit from product placement, but it's not at all clear Hollywood benefits
from the gun _industry_ except as a place to buy props.

~~~
zasz
I like your point, but Hollywood would be making a lot less money if it took
out guns and stuck to people punching each other.

~~~
digi_owl
Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old
west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish.

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...

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slededit
Foley artists have been exaggerating sounds since the '20s (soon I'll have to
qualify that with 1920s...). Guns are not the sole source of exaggeration in
Hollywood.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_\(filmmaking\))

~~~
digi_owl
I agree, but it is quite often the most outrageous. And they get away with it
because so few of the current viewers have had to fire a gun, let along at
another human being.

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tn13
Makes no sense to me. Vast numbers of Hollywood stars who build their careers
as violent people on screen (Jason Bourne e.g.) are anti-gun people in real
life. I don't think Gun companies are putting any pennies into movies.

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.

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pps43
Why would gun industry ask film industry to do product placement for M134
Miniguns, M240 machine guns, or Thompson submachine guns when they can't sell
full auto guns to civilians since 1986?

~~~
CamperBob2
I asked my dad a similar question, growing up in the 1970s-1980s era. "Why is
IBM running TV commercials for mainframe computers on _The Dukes of Hazzard_?
Don't those cost millions of dollars? Do they think we're going to buy one?"
He muttered something about how the commercials might encourage people to buy
IBM stock.

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.

~~~
pps43
Quick, which company makes M134, M240, or Thompson SMG?

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.

~~~
CamperBob2
I guess a cynical view (and probably that espoused by the article, which I
haven't yet read) is that they're trying to normalize the presence of weaponry
in popular fiction as well as in everyday social discourse. If you're in the
gun business, you don't want the only people talking about guns to be your
critics.

The military also has a stake in glamorizing weaponry and warfighting, and
they definitely have a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood in that respect.

~~~
mzw_mzw
That'd be like trying to "normalize" the presence of shirts, or automobiles.
Guns have been ubiquitous in popular fiction of all kinds for decades, if not
centuries, since they're such a useful device for drama or just entertaining
fights. Don't forget how Dr. Watson always had his trusty pistol at hand
whenever Holmes needed him.

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vtange
This article presents one of those ironies about human society: how as much as
we promote working things out without violence, we have that inner craving to
just see the good guys to blow the baddies away. It's almost like fast food,
in fact.

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.

~~~
pps43
I would say that video games affect people's choices more than TV or movies.

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.

~~~
icebraining
There are many, many films and TV shows starring the Desert Eagle, though:
[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle](http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle)

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.

~~~
pps43
That's partly because M&P hasn't been around that long. Among recent movies
(released after 2005 when M&P was created), imfdb lists 10 with DE and 16 with
M&P.

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.

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gravypod
I don't see how someone would be able to benifit from getting firearms into
movies since I'd say more then 90% of the people consuming this medium can
barely tell a P226 from a Makarov or even tell the difference from a SIG MPX
from an AR15. Don't you need the Brand-Recognition for this sort of
advertising? Is this not how this form of normalization works?

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walshemj
Didn't work very well for the bren 10 did it - sonny's side arm in Miami Vice

