Hey marketers, moviegoing is not activism
Reflecting on the disappointing turnout for the gay rom-com “Bros,” despite getting good reviews, the movie’s writer and star Billy Eichner noted that “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros. And that’s disappointing but it is what it is. Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo should go see BROS tonight!”
It made just $4.8 million its opening weekend last weekend, about half of what was projected. The marketing around the film has stressed its historic significance: When was the last time you saw a studio release a romcom about two guys falling in love? The subtext was clear. If you want to be on the right side of history, you’ll go see this movie.
But is this an effective way to promote a film?
We heard something similar in the run-up to “The Woman King,” about the women warriors of the West African kingdom of Dahomey, when star Viola Davis talked about the high stakes. “If it doesn’t make money, then what it means overall is that, Black women, dark-skinned Black women, can’t lead a global box office?”
So far, the film has done well, with $50 million in ticket sales since opening last month. Davis is right that when studio executives do branch out from the status quo and greenlight projects centering people who have typically been marginalized by Hollywood, those movies are held to an unreasonable standard if they don’t find an audience.
But going to the movies is not a form of activism.
It’s fine to support a project for any number of reasons. But that’s not activism.
Or, if you want to argue that it is, well, it’s been pretty ineffective. More opportunities in Hollywood are just that: More opportunities for people in Hollywood. That’s extremely worthwhile. But it doesn’t functionally improve the circumstances of anyone working outside Hollywood.
People have been saying some version of Eichner’s and Davis’ quotations for years now, and there have been legitimate hits during that time. And yet we’re locked in a cycle where studios keep moving the goal posts. It’s fair to wonder if any metric will satisfy executives that, yes, there is an audience for (fill in the blank).
If studios were honest about shedding biases, we would see far more movies from and starring Latinx people, considering they go to the movies at a greater pace than any other demographic.
That’s according to numbers as recent as 2021.
Who gets to topline big projects and whose stories get told — these things matter. And these choices ultimately shape how we think and talk about the world. But no one project should be expected to unilaterally create opportunities for other people going forward. It’s such a profoundly unfair and misguided takeaway. Davis said as much. It’s possible Hollywood’s creative class feels powerless to fight studio heads on this, but to turn around and put the onus on audiences — or to frame even legitimate critiques of a project as doing the dirty work of bigoted execs — feels like capitulation. And more importantly, it’s probably not the most persuasive way to convince large numbers of people to buy tickets.
It’s one thing when viewers latch onto the precarious mindset. It’s another when people who make TV and film do it because it’s buying into the lie that only a few of these projects can exist and there’s no room for error. This is so counterproductive for them.