Think Hollywood Is Unpatriotic? You’re Right

As you probably know, Sony Pictures was hacked, allegedly by someone in North Korea, and a lot of data has leaked into the public domain, at least some of it via Gawker. Among the documents that have become public are Sony marketing materials in Power Point form that show how the studio intended to promote various movies.

This one is for “Captain Phillips,” a relatively rare hit for the studio. The film is to be promoted as an “intelligent, suspenseful thriller.” It has “intense action” to appeal to “young males,” and “emotional depth” to appeal to “women.” Are these marketers sophisticated, or what?

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But then we have: “Avoid American themes.” That might not be easy, since Captain Phillips is an American and the villains are Somali pirates, but Sony was determined to give it a go.

Next we have “White House Down,” a movie I confess I had never heard of. Here the marketing campaign was designed to “avoid American-centrism,” even though the movie evidently was about…the White House:

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It’s not exactly “The Sands of Iwo Jima.” So, yeah, whatever you thought about Hollywood is true. In Sony’s defense, some would say that Hollywood doesn’t hate America, it’s just that most ticket sales are overseas, so the less said about the U.S. the better. The latter point is true, but not much of a defense. Virtually all Hollywood executives are liberals, so avoiding any hint of patriotism comes easily to them. But still, you don’t often see it as nakedly on display as in these marketing materials.

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