The Null Device

With the recent Tom Hanks vehicle Cast Away, Hollywood have taken product placement into a new era. The film is so much a propagandistic showcase for FedEx's corporate values that the company's internal memoes have promoted it in glowing terms.
The film begins with a rather gratuitous tour of the company's Russian operation... The subplot, which has nothing to do with ensuing events and is dropped once Hanks returns to the company's Memphis hub, seems to be that, though Federal Express would rather employ workaholics than drunks, Russia remains open for business, and FedEx is leading the way... Along the way, we're treated to a loving, if incidental, telling of the company's first night in operation in 1973.

However, product placement has been big business in Hollywood for some time:

In 1982, the Rogers and Cowan Agency successfully placed an ad for Reese' Pieces in E.T., and Coca-Cola, which had just bought Columbia Pictures, began a frantic plugging of its products in the studio's films... Black & Decker paid twenty-thousand dollars to have Bruce Willis use their drill in a Die Hard movie, then sued for a hundred-and-fifty grand when the scene was cut. Similarly, Reebok won a ten-million dollar settlement from Trimark pictures when an entire Reebok ad, which was meant to run over the closing credits of Jerry MacGuire, was deleted.
But it's also true that it's becoming increasingly harder to make mid-and-big-budget films that advertisers might shy away from, or treat subjects marketing men consider outside the pale. On one level, film characters are deprived of the free-will audiences need to believe in if they are to believe they're watching a character and not a cartoon. On another, knowledge on the viewer's part that deception is part and parcel of the movie-going experience makes it hard to maintain the suspension of disbelief movies rely on: Hence, movies rely less on believable situations than eye-popping explosions, which cost money to make and market, which encourages more product placement, ad infinitum.

Perhaps in a few years there will be an Oscar for "Best Product Placement"...

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