In his book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich notes that one of the key tasks for the present generation of new media archeologists is the preservation of early computer culture. Noting that a great deal of early computer software has not survived to the present day Manovich states, with what reads like regret, that there was not a greater understanding, at the beginning of digital media cultures emergence, of its potential value to future generations. ¹ Interestingly, in a remarkably similar note in his book D. W Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film, Tom Gunning notes that much of early cinematic culture did not survive to the present day for much the same reason. ² As both scholars point out, it is often the nature of new forms of popular culture that their significance at the time are not recognized and are treated as disposable. As with film and early computer culture: so with many forms of advertising. Combining the fact that advertising has often been disposable with the fact that early film culture itself was seldom regarded as precious material, it is perhaps fortunate that any filmed advertisements survived from the early days of cinema itself. Their survival points to another history of the relationship between advertising and film. In many cases, as Lisa Gitelman explains in her account of the emergence of ‘new’ media Always Already New, the nature of new media forms are seldom mapped out in advance of their emergence and often take long and unexpected routes on their way to establishing industrial, cultural and textual boundaries. ³ This is certainly true of the relationship between early screen spectacle and the commercial interests that funded it, or featured within it, were seldom separate and distinct.

In recent years, emergent channels of digital distribution have in many instances replicated a similar (though by no means identical) landscape of undefined boundaries that characterised early cinema, often transforming access to, and the culture of, audiovisual advertising forms. ⁴ In particular, a new generation of directors are now encountering what might have seemed unimaginable only a decade or two ago: a production and distribution landscape in which audiovisual material that they produce in the run up to a Hollywood career is now freely and easily available for public consumption. While directors entering Hollywood through advertising have been a feature of the industry for many years, in the last decade a generation of directors have experienced something different from their predecessors. In many cases, advertisements are capable of being consumed, enjoyed and shared in a way that previous generations of audiovisual enthusiasts could not. Consequently the nature of these advertisements as cultural texts are changing, not only in being treated as examples of a screen professional’s oeuvre, but also in functioning as entertaining and conveniently sized examples of their authorial work. Considering online fan responses to such material is only half the story however. Indeed, I will argue here that to suggest Hollywood directors-to-be may not direct their advertisements for audiences in the manner commonly envisaged in the filmmaking process. Rather, it seems more likely, given the way advertising industries function according to “currencies of commercial exchange” ⁵ less concerned with end viewers than with the promotional power relations between creative producers and clients, ⁶ that directors envisage early career advertisements as self-promotional statements aimed at others in the industry: both clients and potential Hollywood suitors. In this sense advertisements may function on the internet as entertaining texts indicative to fans of an emerging directors style, but that may just as easily be the result of authorial attempt to assert command over spectacle for viewers at the other end of the industry. My interest, then is not only with the way in which contemporary advertisements can be consumed online by fans in a way that they previously could not, but also with the negotiation that takes place between directors as advertisers and directors as potential brands with a future in Hollywood. To put it another way, is the contemporary net-based television advertisement broadening its scope to also function as a directorial calling card?

To understand this development however, it is important not to fall into the common trap of overstressing the impact of “new media” in the emergence of advertisements as textual signifiers of a director’s work. Rather, I will argue that new media (and specifically net based distribution platforms) accentuate a trend that was already present across film and advertising industries before the internet. With this in mind I will, in this article, consider a range of spot advertisements made both before and after the rise of internet based distribution channels by Hollywood directors. Those made pre-internet point us toward the recognition of an accelerating trend in which advertisements increasingly function as culturally interrelated corollaries of films in their directors back-catalogues. We can break these spot advertisements into a number of categories.

The first are early television adverts made sometimes many decades before our transition to digital production and distribution technologies but which have now resurfaced on websites that track Hollywood director’s pre-cinematic careers making (amongst other things) television commercials. In many cases, directors made these adverts before their position in Hollywood was consolidated. Many of these texts would likely not have seen the light of day, and certainly would not have been easily accessible to film and television enthusiasts had it not been for the arrival of the internet and its unique manner of digitally distributing audiovisual content broadly and easily.

The second body of televisual spot advertisements are both commercials for specific goods and services that also relate directly to specific films. These are generally (though not always) directed by the filmmakers who made the films that they are referencing and are often marked by attention grabbing budgets and production values usually more suited to Hollywood movies in their own right. This body of advertisements did exist before the transition to contemporary digital production and distribution (as Ridley Scot’s million dollar 1984 advert for Apple Computers – titled 1984 – demonstrates) but seem in recent years to have become a growing genre, fuelled perhaps, by their potentially extended shelf life on the internet.

The third body of advertisements do not directly reference movies in their own right but instead, function in retrospect, as platforms where distinctive stylistics or arresting special effects are deployed that are latter found in Hollywood. Examples of this type are numerous and, because they frequently pre-date the special effects that are then recognised as Hollywood staples, they cannot be understood as directly relational, extra-textual promotional material. Nevertheless, such adverts are becoming increasingly important not only in trailing new digital attractions for potential audiences but by also functioning in a feedback loop where digital attractions are consumed as promotional and audiovisually reflective of each other (regardless of chronological emergence). Consequently, attempting to track linear relationships between these two large, amorphous and generally multipolar, industrial textual forms is a difficult, if not impossible task to effect.

Not only are the multidirectional relationships between Hollywood films and television advertisements difficult to adequately track in such a manner as could provide a scholar with a cause and effect thesis, the broad categories that I have described above are precisely that: broad. A brief consideration of any number of past or contemporary television adverts quickly demonstrates that if there is one rule for the categorisation of advertising it is that there are no rules. As many advertising theorists have pointed out, ⁷ one of the key features of advertising is its constant, even relentless quest to transgress textual boundaries. One could even describe this as a modus operandi. So for instance, no sooner do we distinguish between advertisements that showcase Hollywood style digital attractions and those that directly reference already existing films, than we come across a host that mix these two features together.

Turning to the first body of advertisements, in 1974 Ridley Scott directed an advertisement for Hovis. Featuring a bread delivery boy on a bicycle and the accompaniment of Dvorak’s New World Symphony as the soundtrack, the advert was interesting less for its sentimental nostalgia than for the fact that it pursued a specific narrative strategy. More accurately, this advertisement functioned successfully because it drew on iconographic imagery that could act as shorthand for a more complex set of narrative meanings despite the limited 28 second duration of the advert. Indeed, though most of his audience will not have known it at the time Scott’s Hovis advert was a 30 second distillation of his first, BFI funded, movie Boy and a Bicycle (1965) (Figure 1). Tellingly, Scott has himself referred to his approach to advertising as follows:

I didn’t come from advertising. I came from the BBC. So I’ve always come into commercial advertising and looked at each commercial as a film…as a little filmlet, always have done and I always will do. ⁸

Scott’s statement here asserts that advertising is not a marginal commercial text and he is not unique in seeing advertising as more than a peripheral cultural form. In his work on advertising as capitalist realism Michael Schudson has argued that advertising is “part of the establishment and a reflection of common symbolic culture.” ⁹ Equally Colin Campbell has argued in his work on The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism that what he calls the “imaginative enjoyment of products and services” is as important as the experience of consuming them in their own right. Consequently, he argues, “the line between representations [of products and services] in the interests of a particular manufacturer and distributor (i.e. advertising), and images produced primarily for entertainment is barely distinguishable”. ¹⁰ With this in mind, my interest with Scott’s approach to making advertisements as “little filmlet[s]” here lies in the way in which it tells us something about the negotiated relationship between Hollywood production and advertising. Or more precisely what we as scholars can take from an understanding of the changing role of advertising in a filmmaker’s career.

Figure 1

As I have mentioned above, in 1984 Scott went on to direct an advert for Apple. In contrast to the Hovis advert (which was directed when Scott was still relatively unknown), the circumstances of this subsequent Apple adverts production were very different. Notably, this advertisement functioned in the mass of news media attention devoted to it, not to undermine Scott’s status as an A-list Hollywood director, but to complement it. In doing so, Scott joined a range of filmmakers who, over the years, have engaged in very large budget, high production value advertising projects in such a way as to enhance their public profile and cultural capital within the star system. In light of both his early advertising and his subsequent forays back into it was an A-list Hollywood director we see that advertising was not just a gateway into a career in film and television, it was also a means of consolidating a commercial status once a career in Hollywood had already been achieved. Unacknowledged by much scholarship that has often had a tendency to treat advertising and promotional activity as a necessary evil that filmmakers engage in, the example of Scott demonstrates a number of things: firstly that his work in advertising can be used to understand something more about his filmmaking approach. Secondly, that despite relative scarcity in screen scholarship with advertising as an example of creative output, it has certainly functioned as more than a means of bringing home the bread. Indeed, in an era of high concept filmmaking we can see advertising, oddly, as a calling card to executives within Hollywood, not simply because the advertising industry might be a place where a director could “cut their teeth” but because their adverts might literally operate as a shorthand means of demonstrating their aesthetic, stylistic and even editorial vision for larger projects (of which I will consider some examples shortly). In this sense Scott’s assertion that he saw advertisements as miniature films may have run contrary to scholarship that often ignored advertising as a quintessential example of the culture industries commercial logic, but it also asserted a position that valued commercial directing as worthy of valorisation. For financial executives keen on high-concept directors, Scott’s position would sure have emphasized his commercial reliability as a director who understood the complexities of a career that spanned audiovisual industries. Scott was not alone in taking this position and indeed we see a very similar position on the part of David Fincher, whose career, like Scott’s, spanned both Hollywood and the advertising industry. As Fincher has stated:

When I started making television commercials in the mid-1980’s I was certainly privy to a lot of lifestyle packaging. But I gave the audience far more credit than most people do. There’s this assumption that commercials are just close-ups of celebrities holding products up to their faces. But some of them are great art. ¹¹

Like Scott’s statement, as interesting as Fincher’s assertion is here in its assertion of the value of advertising as art, it is equally interesting in the wider context of “authorship” as a contested, negotiated, promotional set of positions. That is to say that while Fincher may take the position that advertising is art, theories of authorship ¹² necessarily problematize the idea that we can simply take such directorial statements at face-value. Regardless of whether we can accurately judge the veracity of Fincher and Scott’s assertions however, what is more interesting is the way they position their brand of “authorship” around the notion of an engagement with advertising at all. In other words, regardless of whether we believe their claims or not, it is telling that both Scott and Fincher make a point of associating their position as directors around public for advertising as a medium that deserves to be taken seriously.

Interestingly, Fincher’s distinction between adverts as simply product showcases and advertisements as “great art” seems to have been here that the latter category involved self-reflexivity. Indeed, one of the central advertising campaigns for his film Fight Club when it was released in 1999 featured a faux advertising campaign of Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden holding up a block of pink soap to his face with the slogan “use soap”. While the self-reflexive irony was designed to appeal to a savvy, anti-advertising youth market at the time, what is more telling is the fact that Fincher developed this anti-advertising grammar during his days as an advertiser. To start with Fincher’s most notable advertisement however, in 1990 he made a television spot for the American Cancer Society (Figure 2). Featuring a close up of a baby smoking a cigarette in a womb the advert is both quite shocking for an advert of the time at the same time as it is remarkably telling to view in retrospect. Surprisingly punk in its abjection, ¹³ the advertisement reflects a motif in retrospect of unusual spatial representation that can be seen to return throughout his subsequent movies (Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac). There is a self-reflexivity about the insertion of a “camera” into the strange fascinating and distractingly macabre spatial location of the inside of the human body that Fincher replicated in the opening sequence of Fight Club. What we see in Fincher’s directorial style then, is both a visual playfulness with new spatial possibilities facilitated by emergent computer graphics, but which he was experimenting with through early 1980s advertising.

Figure 2

Indeed, an appreciation of this advert and other of Fincher’s advertisements reveals something of the way in which his experience in the industry fed into his approach to being a filmmaker. On an aesthetic level it is interesting to compare Fincher’s own stated support for the medium with Fight Club’s superficial criticism of advertising. It turns out Fight Club’s directorial tone came from the most unexpected of places. In the early 1980s Levi’s produced an ad campaign in which an acknowledgement of the advertising process and a simultaneous critique of it formed the centerpiece of their strategy. Robert Goldman has detailed the way in which Levi’s targeted a wary and increasingly consumer literate youth culture by producing what he calls “not-ad ads”. These knowing advertisements were, he argues, “constructed as a reflection on popularized critiques of consumer conformism. The stress on the self-reflective glance was joined to self-referential jokes about pseudo-individuality.” ¹⁴ Levi’s found it necessary to recognise their audience and to credit them with a greater degree of semiotic sophistication than had previously been accepted. Levi’s did not just recognise youth resistance to target marketing, they explicitly used this recognition as part of their marketing strategy. Though they did encourage their youthful viewers to consume their products, they did so by formal strategies that acknowledged and even deconstructed their own process of advertising. Their strategies involved more complex modes of address than traditional forms of advertising, expecting a level of knowledge, engagement and active participation on the part of their viewers to deliberately and self-reflexively exploit the logic of anti-consumerism.

To return to the question of such advertisements themselves however, where Scott and Fincher experimented with techniques and motifs that they could latter return to in Hollywood filmmaking, more recent generations of filmmakers have emerged with advertising experience that has included digital effects production before they move onto careers in Hollywood. Particularly noticeable, for instance, has been Neil Blomkamp’s path through the film industry, marked by a rapid rise in part because he used an intimate knowledge of CG effects production in advertisements as a calling card. In this sense, the advertisements Blomkamp made can be regarded not simply as intriguing audiovisual objects made to advertise consumer products or services for client companies, they also functioned indirectly as advertisements for Blomkamp himself.

Starting his career producing 3D photorealistic renderings of cars and airplanes for popular science magazines before moving onto Embassy Visual Effect and Rainmaker Digital Effects, Blomkamp moved rapidly into directing adverts and short films that lead onto the three Halo shorts he produced to promote Microsoft’s Halo 3 game. As a result of this Blomkamp was slated to direct a feature film adaptation of the Halo game itself but when this collapsed Blomkamp was offered the opportunity to adapt a short faux documentary film trailer (Alive in Joberg) into a full length feature. In effect, and in an interesting reversal of the usual production process, Blomkamp’s faux trailer acted as an advertisement for a film that had not yet been made, effectively operating to generate interest for the project in the Hollywood. With his direction of District 9 (2009) Blomkamp could be said to have embodied the spirit of the changed contemporary culture of audiovisual production, distribution and consumption. His earliest adverts and short films not only operated as YouTube attractions, but were consumed and discussed by online fans as legitimate examples of his oeuvre. A quick consideration of his short “films” and adverts on YouTube reveal not only that they register hits in the hundreds of thousands but also that his fans frequently referred to him in his early years primarily as the person who directed the “Citroën transformer ad” (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Blomkamp also directed adverts for Nike and Gatorade but in an interesting twist of fate it seems to have been his Citroën advertisement that garnered the most attention. In this case his advert may have garnered interest and helped kick-start the Transformers project in Hollywood, but equally, it is just as likely that the prominence of the Transformers franchise helped a savvy young advertising director to attract attention to his capacity to envision popular digital attractions ahead of time.

We could ask at this point what difference there is between Blomkamp’s career and any number of previous generations of directors ¹⁵ who made their way into Hollywood through the advertising industry? The answer however, is not simply a case of pointing out singular differences between professional landscapes of past and present filmmakers, but rather of identifying a multifaceted range of developments in production, distribution and consumption that, added together, make for a different promotional environment. With this in mind, the direction of influence between digital attractions in contemporary film and advertising is less important than the fact that their shared aesthetics often symptomatise a tendency toward the industrial interrelation of both textual forms.

To return to Blomkamp’s work, not only are the digital attractions deployed in his adverts the product of extensive experience in CG imaging, they can be seen retrospectively as components of an audition process for the Hollywood film making apparatus. In this sense, his advertisements served as more than a means of making a living, or advertising specific goods and services, but also as calling cards and skills demonstrations. A television advertisement that becomes a hit on YouTube serves as much to promote its director as it does the product within its textual boundaries. Concrete evidence that contemporary adverts are functioning in this manner can be found in the form of Joseph Kosinski’s recent career.

Figure 4

In the case of Kosinski, (whose first feature film was Tron Legacy) his rise to a career in Hollywood was equally as intimately connected to his work as an advertiser. Indeed Kosinski’s work as an advertising director was what brought him to the attention of Disney producer, Sean Bailey. ¹⁶ Unsurprisingly, the aesthetics of Kosinski’s advertisements were strikingly reminiscent of the feature film he was subsequently direct. In both Saab and Nike advertisements he directed, the play of light, architecture, highly stylized deployment of actors, the settings they were placed within and therefore perhaps most importantly a polished, minimalist, highly fabricated surfaces featured heavily. In short, Kosinski’s advertisements were perfectly positioned promotional calling cards for Disney executives in search of a new director of high concept movies that, as Justin Wyatt asserts,  “tend toward sleek, modern environments mirroring the post-industrial age through austere and reflective surfaces”. ¹⁷ But these were not the only advertisements that Kosinski made. From adverts for the Gears of War game franchise, in which he demonstrated his audiovisual versatility with the capacity to direct Machinima, to a telling “iSpec” advert for an imagined pair of Apple made glasses, ¹⁸ Kosinski’s pre-cinematic career has all the appearance of a determined and strategically planed call to Hollywood. Indeed, Kosinski’s debut was a success because of his consummate direction of spectacle rather than any capacity to work with narrative (which critics universally rejected). ¹⁹ Disney’s decision to hire Kosinski took the form of a protracted audiovisual try-out of his skills in the promotional arena. Tellingly, Bailey did not give Kosinski a few short films or even an assistant director role but instead provided him the budget to produce test footage that would act as a “a three-minute ride into the world of ‘Tron’ as Mr. Kosinski saw it.” ²⁰ Still more symptomatic of the post-high concept era Disney, reportedly “impressed at the outcome but still hesitant to pull the trigger” waited until the footage was screened to ecstatic reaction at Comic-Con International. The response led Disney to give Kosinski the green light. In many ways this is consistent with what Wyatt has argued to central to the high concept Hollywood production. Not simply slick, advertising aesthetics but also a promotional strategy that relies on striking images more commonly found in television advertising:

Generally, the development of this marketing and distribution strategy characterises the high concept film: the strong images and the pre-sold elements within both the film and the marketing campaigns are able to translate to the medium of television, thereby creating viewer awareness and interest. ²¹ (Emphasis added)

In this sense Kosinski’s try out for Tron was telling in the way that it did not test his capacity to wield a narrative. Rather, it double tested his capacity to convincingly create a high concept look that he had already developed in his work as a television advertiser. Ironically, then, Disney was less concerned about Kosinski’s capacity to direct a feature length narrative than his capacity to produce convincing, interest generating material that would play well in the necessary advertisements, trailers and publicity material. In fact, an analysis of Kosinski’s previous advertisements reveals an almost uncanny level of replication of the characters, sets, subject matter, camera direction and lighting of his earlier advertisements in the Tron movie (Figure 4).

Figure 5

While directors such as Blomkamp and Kosinski demonstrate a capacity to produce sticking imagery and CG effects as a calling card that demonstrates their directorial dexterity, in other cases advertisements have also acted as a calling card at an institutional level. For instance, while directors like Andrew Stanton and Pete Doctor were both hired into Pixar as animators required to help the company cope with a growing workload of advertising contracts in the early 1990s, the commercial results came to be seen as material belonging to, and having issued from, Pixar itself. In this case then an interesting slippage takes place between the traditional, star-centred authorial attribution favoured by the new generation of net-based transmedia textualists, and the position of Pixar as an authorial force within that system of categorisation. At its peak in the early 1990s, Pixar produced 15 adverts in a year and generated around 2 million dollars annually from this work. ²² In total Pixar is credited as having produced 79 commercials with 26 directors. Its revenue and output figures, however, are less interesting than the fact that many of these adverts clearly functioned as an opportunity for directors and animators to develop production and pipeline experience that would later be useful in the creation of their first feature Toy Story (a movie that not coincidentally resembled a 90 minute toy commercial). Indeed Flip Phillips (a commercials director in Pixar during the 1990s) has stated that these commercials helped Pixar prepare for the eventual production of its first feature film arguing that, “we could learn basically what kind of production infrastructure we needed to make a big movie.” ²³

Pixar’s movies marked the initiation of a fundamentally changed relationship between the function of television advertisements, products placed on screen and cinematically exhibited films. For when the objects on screen have been literally product designed with software also utilized in design engineering (and notably Pixar was nearly bought by a number of product design based industries in the late 1980s) the relationship between traditional notions of product placement and film making changes. ²⁴ With this in mind, any one of the many advertisements that Pixar produced could be used to illustrate the way in which its directors developed an aesthetic still prevalent in its features today.

Finally the last examples I wish to turn to in this article differ from the previous examples in one specific sense: where as all examples above can be regarded as advertisements made by directors or companies before they came to function in the wider context of Hollywood, there are many examples of directors and the advertisements they produce, leveraging the cultural capital that they have attained in Hollywood. Interestingly, in this list are many names we have already discussed for the obvious reason that directors who entered Hollywood through the advertising industry are perhaps more likely to welcome such work later on. For not only do they have a familiarity with the industry, its practices and its personnel, they also have a demonstrated ability to work across both textual mediums. In other words, in an odd twist of fate, advertising executives commissioning such directors will already be reassured that they can deliver the goods. At the same time, Hollywood directors who do assume a role on an advertising project bring with them a star persona that inevitably translates into free publicity and news media interest of the kind that an agency cannot usually hope to secure. Unsurprisingly given its need to associate itself with celebrity, Chanel in particular has been careful to pursue such a strategy for decades. From the use of French actress Catherine Deneuve in the 1970s to Ridley Scott’s direction of No. 5 advertisements Share the Fantasy (1979), Share the Fantasy 2 (1984) and La Star (1990) Chanel set a precedent of hiring Hollywood directors and providing budgets reflective of the film industries inflated costs. In recent years the continuation of this strategy was marked in 2004 with carefully orchestrated press reports that Chanel were to hire Baz Lurhmann to make a $20 million 3 minute ad titled No. 5 The Film (2006). The interesting twist on this production however was not simply that the advert would capitalize on Lurhmann and Kidman’s star personas and the link that they had through the 2001 film Moulin Rouge (2001). Rather, this advert explicitly and directly referenced Luhrmann’s film in a series of images that functioned as a distillation of key moments taken from throughout the features x hour length. Indeed, as Lurhmann is reputed to have pitched it at the time “What I can make you is a 2 minute trailer… for a film that has never actually been made, not about No 5 but No 5 is the touchstone” ²⁵ The majority of the advert’s dramatic action takes place on top of the New York equivalent of a Parisian artist’s rooftop studio. The protagonists dance and fall in love in a manner reminiscent of Moulin Rouge in fast-forward. Even Nichole Kidman’s position in the lead role maintains the continuity with the previous feature film. Unsurprisingly, close analysis of the two texts reveals a symbiosis of visual form (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Here then the scenes and the motifs in the Chanel advertisement can be seen as a form of algebra that draws its variables from Moulin Rouge. Like Scott, Lurhmann is explicit about the relationship between his filmmaking and his finished advert, stating that, “this idea of the rooftop garret is part of the red curtain cinema and what it refers to is a kind of perfect abode where the Parisian bohemian artists, writers and poets used to live in the nineteenth century.” ²⁶ Here Lurhmann explicitly constructs his advert as a part of his “red curtain cinema”: a term he uses to describe the defining characteristics of his films (the breaking of cinematic rules, heightened fantasy, utilization of audience participation). Here, then, we see another blurring, but this time the flow of influence travels in the opposite direction: the television advert is reconceived as the movie trailer. However, the Chanel advert may have been variously characterized as “film” ²⁷ or “movie trailer” but in reality it was an advertisement performing a role characteristic of the form since the inception of audiovisual advertising in the late 1890s; a collapse of the boundary between commercial message and audiovisual entertainment. Notably, this was not the last time Lurhmann was to pursue this strategy making a similarly distilled version of his film Australia (2008) for the Australian tourist board in 2008. Equally, it was not the last time Chanel was to pursue the strategy either, which has become a staple of their advertising strategy in the years since with filmmaker Joe Wright’s Chanel Coco Mademoiselle The Movie (2007), Chanel Coco Mademoiselle The Movie 2 (2011) and Jean Pierre Jennet’s Chanel No.5 (2009) which referenced the visual motifs he developed around Audrey Tautou in Amélie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement (2004) (Figure 7). Notably, in all of these examples, the shift to Chanel has not been accompanied by a shift in emphasis solely to star power of the actress involved. Rather, the news media attention that these adverts have received has been conspicuous for the way in which the star actresses share the limelight with the director as branded Hollywood star.

Figure 7

The fact that these advertisements have functioned in recent years as multiply promotional vehicles for their directors, the films they are associated with, the actors and the goods and services is only half the story however. What many of these advertisements also demonstrate is a wider tendency of both Hollywood, television and advertising industries to blur the boundaries between other, previously textually contained, promotional forms. For with these advertisements the notion of the trailer has expanded and has come to encompass more subtle and broad ranging promotional strategies. In accordance with Andrew Wernick’s articulation of a “promotional culture” that functions as a vast communicative industrial meta-structure in which products and texts refer endlessly back to each other, we might begin to see such advertising, not simply as a promotional directorial calling card but also a textual form that fits into a much broader context encompassing both Hollywood and advertising industries. For Wernick each “promotional message refers us to a commodity which is itself the site of another promotion.” This, he argues results in “in an endless dance [of industrial products and signifiers] whose only point is to circulate the culmination of something else.” ²⁸ In recent years this has certainly produced a body of audiovisual material in which it is difficult to identify where the entertaining spectacular attraction ends and the promotional text begins. In many ways Justin Wyatt mapped out the beginning of this process and its specific manifestation in Hollywood. ²⁹ In the current context, in which the notion of the trailer has shifted over the years (now existing on a spectrum that includes real films, fan-desired films, “fake” films, spoofs and advertisements) the notion of the “advertisement” itself as a textual form has evolved as television content has proliferated across a wider network of distribution channels. There is also, however, a case to be made that the cinematic image and the promotional text as spectacular attraction have had an intimate interrelationship from the inception of moving pictures in the late 1890s. ³⁰ In this light the focus moves from a claim that contemporary audiovisual texts are undergoing a shift in their relationship to the promotional realm and onto a question of scholarship and its appraisal of the rich history of cinema and promotion.

To return to the advertisements that have been the focus of this article however, what then are we to make of these rather broad ranging but compellingly interrelated examples of a crossover between Hollywood and the advertising industry? Without appearing facetious, the first and most obvious conclusion to be drawn is that there is a great deal more scholarship to be conducted in this area. Whatever the relationship between televisual spot advertising and Hollywood filmmaking of the past, the present context is marked by a changed production and distribution landscape in which, as JT Caldwell has pointed out, the production values and stylistic driving forces previously the preserve of the film industry are increasingly available and utilized by televisual advertising. Similarly, across new media businesses like gaming, advertising and special effects movies, a generation of digitally literate professionals specializing in computer graphics and coding increasingly cross the lines between one industry and another. It may be that we can begin to see increasing migration of skilled workers across industries, rather than what was previously an aspiration to move up to the film industry that is driving the growth of the advert as calling card. To be confident of this, however, we require more research on the migration patterns of industry professionals. ³¹ Alternatively, it may be that we could see these texts as the curious counter effect of what Matt Stahl has described as an increasingly corporately controlled (and therefore contested and un-malleable) notion of authorship. ³² In this context we may want to ask whether advertisements publicly attributed to directors who subsequently become Hollywood brands are the product of a democratized digital distribution landscape or are instead the result of a savvy film industry publicity machine that has always valued a rags to riches narrative for its rising stars. It seems likely, then, that the future of both production and consumption will be marked by further cross-pollination of advertising and filmmaking. Screen studies will have its work cut out for it tracing out such relationships and their implications.

Funding Acknowledgement: This research was facilitated as the result of a Marsden research grant for the project “The Digital Workshops of the World” from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Do trailers deceive an audience?  I think anyone who chooses to be in the advertising world has to just give that up.  You have to understand that you’re working in the world of propaganda.

 –Nancy Goliger, EVP, Marketing & Creative Affairs Paramount Pictures

We can lie like nobody’s business…the trouble is, when we’ve really got something good, nobody believes us.

— Andy Kuehn, Trailer Maker

Propaganda used to name a respectable activity.  When Pope Gregory XV established the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, it wasn’t deception he desired but dissemination of doctrine.  To modern ears, however, propaganda is pejorative, a synonym for lies rather than the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of information” in order to capture the public mind “in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea,” as Edward Bernays phrased it in his 1928 classic, Propaganda. ¹

By any objective measure, contemporary life is saturated with persuasive speech that relies on a self-interested presentation of information or “opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups,” as defined by mid-century social scientists Alfred and Elizabeth Lee. ²  Whether categorized as advertising, marketing, advocacy, news or entertainment, messages propagated by modern mass-communication technologies that “shape the attitude of many individuals simultaneously” using “calculated emotional appeals and indirect messages” instead of “overt, logical arguments” are ubiquitous. ³  Yet insofar as propaganda attempts to “put something across,” to “do the other fellow’s thinking for him” and to bring about a certain action, while encouraging belief in the recipient that ideas grasped and emotions felt are sui generis and that consequent decisions are freely taken, it poses significant challenges to cherished ideals of choice, agency and self-governance. ⁴

Of course, movie trailers are propaganda, as are commercials for soap powder and deodorant, political candidates and military recruitment and just about any persuasive argument or proposition you can think of that doesn’t rely on mathematical proof or lab reports to compel belief. But so what?  Or, better yet, how so or in what manner? Lest a technique of communication be confused with its content, it’s essential to distinguish the formal strategy of motion-picture  marketing – of telling, selling and describing – from the substance of its message.

As an historian of movie trailers, I’m interested in their emergence and early development.  At roughly the same time in which modern discourses of social control and suasion (crowd psychology, public opinion, human relations, public relations, market research, scientific polling and modern advertising) are promulgated, codified and applied – discourses in which the potential of the moving image is expressly marked -moving image advertising enters the American zeitgeist as an integral part of the movie-going experience.   In the pages to follow, I look at early trailers in light of their persuasive, non-rational mode of communication and their potential to perform the work of propaganda as described by its foremost American theorists, proponents and practitioners.

In asking how trailers of the emergent age persuade, I acknowledge that the evidence for such a determination is fragmentary.  The primary sources owe their preservation to accident: they are what survived and has been preserved at the UCLA Archive, the largest repository of such specialized materials in the world.  Considered of little importance for much of their existence, trailers were routinely destroyed, recycled, left to rot, over-exploited or rubbished.  After 1922, the record improves, but I am indebted to written accounts in the trades and the research of Vinzenz Hediger for much of what is known about trailers and trailer making in the first decade of their existence.

In 1912, the distributors of the Edison series What Happened to Mary thought to use the trailing, unexposed end of the reel–used to wrap and protect the film–to deliver salient information to an audience that had just consumed an installment.  As Hediger discovered:

The trailer at the end of Episode 8 of the Edison series…read: “The next incident in the series of What Happened to Mary? will be shown a week from now.” Taking the concept one step further, one trailer at the end of an episode of Selig’s 1913 serial The Adventures of Kathlyn, raises the question “Will she escape the Lion’s pit?” thus stressing the episode’s cliffhanger ending. The trailer further read, “See next week’s thrilling episode.” ⁵

In such proto-trailers, information about the coming attraction, its visual pleasures, stars and production quality is provided implicitly and by reference to the surrounding footage in which the message is embedded.  Ingeniously, economically and effectively (given the rapid and widespread adoption of the approach), an episode is enlisted to promote its successor.

Figure 1

By 1915, movie marketers had produced a trailer with the discrete form we recognize today.  Though short, simple (and possibly fragmentary), the trailer for The Red Circle uses copy, graphic design, moving images and the face of an acknowledged star (Ruth Roland) to alert the public to this coming attraction.  The static (though wobbly) opening shot is of the key art, an amorphous red circle, circumscribing three separate copy lines.  The distributor, Pathe Exchange has embossed its logo on the red circle, within which audiences are posed a simple question:  “What is the Red Circle?” Next, “Watch for it” sounds the call-to-action, while below that, scheduling information of a general sort is provided: “Coming to this theater soon.”

Figure 2

 

After the combination key art and title graphic, a large, jeweled ring appears rotating in space, as the camera slowly approaches.  Across the facets of the stone, a circularly matted image of Roland is superimposed as the rotation stops.  Roland smiles and the trailer concludes.

By 1918, trailer making had advanced to the point where a detailed presentation for exhibitors could be undertaken.  For Hands Up! (another Ruth Roland serial) a bifurcated message structures the promo: explicit business arguments for booking the serial, featuring a survey of “marketing helps” available to support the exhibition; and, traditional elements, including excerpted scenes, claims about provenance and the excellence/quality of the production, appear alongside appeals to stars, genre, spectacle and story.  After a review of influential writings about propaganda and the moving image from the period, I return for a closer look at this preview.

Figure 3

 

Propaganda in Practice and Theory: Creel, Lippmann, Bernays

In 1917, having obtained congressional approval to involve the US in the European conflict, President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee On Public Information (CPI) and appointed journalist George Creel to head it.  Under the able, energetic leadership of Creel, the CPI produced feature-length propaganda films, shorts, slides, posters and cards, and published thousands of articles, op-eds, bulletins, essays and reports in fulfillment of its mandate to support the war effort using every medium at its disposal.

Both Walter Lippmann, a young advisor to Wilson, and Edward Bernays, who worked for the CPI in Latin America, were profoundly influenced by the CPI’s systematic, media-wide campaigns of information, persuasion and perceptual management. Identified by historians and communications scholars as “the first time that a modern government disseminated propaganda,” the CPI produced content informed by recent research in individual and crowd-psychology, disseminated through every conceivable media channel (print, radio, film, in-person, graphics, etc.) and methodically distributed in every market, from local to international. ⁶

Significantly, if baldly, Creel entitled his 1921 memoir of his CPI tenure, How We Advertised America.  Lippmann, already on his way to becoming one of the most influential journalists and public intellectuals of the century, drew on his observation and analysis of the CPI’s work for his learned 1922 monograph, Public Opinion. ⁷  A few years later, Bernay’s, Propaganda (1928) distilled his war-time CPI experience into an instantly definitive account of the topic.

What George Creel judged “a plain publicity proposition” and “the world’s greatest adventure in advertising,” Lippmann analyzed as the “manufacture of consent” and Bernays heralded as propaganda or “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.” ⁸  But in describing opportunities for creating and managing public opinion(s), each writes insistently and enthusiastically about the medium of film and the deployment of advertising as the apotheosis of interested messaging within a democratic system of government.  Without recapitulating their well-known analyses and conclusions, I want to highlight each man’s obsession with moving pictures and their promotion, publicity and marketing as preview and exemplum of this epochal change in mass communications.

“[A]s a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner…persuasion has become a self-conscious art and a regular organ of popular government,” frets Lippmann. ⁹  Bernays, by comparison, is sanguine: he reckons society consents to this “vast and continuous effort …to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.” The selling of political notions he considers a market approach to governance and a clear improvement on dictatorship, its alternative. ¹⁰   Both were reacting to Creel’s work at the CPI, discussed below.

Intended to “mobiliz[e] the mind of the world so far as American participation in the war was concerned,” the CPI began a worldwide campaign in 1917. ¹¹ Rather than traditional censorship, the CPI flooded the channels of distribution with information selected to advance pre-determined objectives. Since the US was “fighting for ideas and ideals,” Creel urged the use of ideas as weapons. ¹²  But, he insists “we did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption.” ¹³

Confident that a straightforward presentation of facts was all that was required, Creel commissioned pamphlets to “bl[o]w as a great wind against the clouds of confusion and misrepresentation.” ¹⁴ Supplementing print, the CPI recruited artists to produce “posters, window-cards, and similar material of pictorial publicity for the use of various government departments and patriotic societies.” ¹⁵  More to the point:  “America’s war progress, as well as the meanings and purposes of democracy, were carried to every community in the United States and to every corner of the world,” by the medium of film.  “Pershing’s Crusaders, America’s Answer and Under Four Flags were …feature films by which we drove home America’s resources and determinations.” ¹⁶ Accordingly, “wide and intensive publicity and advertising campaigns were conducted.” ¹⁷

Because the motion picture “had to be placed on the same plane of importance as the written and spoken word,” ¹⁸ Creel arranged for the CPI to become the distributor of Department of War images and battleground footage. ¹⁹  Additionally, materials with “as high publicity value” as footage for feature films and the Official War Review were provided to news weeklies at bargain rates. ²⁰

As is well documented elsewhere, CPI propaganda was supplemented by the entertainment industry.  Wielding Trade Board authority and sanction power, Creel mobilized the talents of producers, directors and tradesman and leveraged the celebrity of actors.  “What we wanted to get into foreign countries,” he explains, “were pictures that presented the wholesome life of America.” ²¹

Creel didn’t have to twist arms. Studios, the industry lobby and individuals recognized a patriotic duty and an economic opportunity in supporting the effort. ²²

Studio executives promised “support for the defense of our country and its interests” offering to “to place the motion picture at your [Wilson’s] service in the most intelligent and useful manner.” The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry pledged “the undivided conscientious and patriotic support of the entire [film] industry in America.” Louis B. Mayer called motion pictures “a powerful tool of “the government and its various propagandas.” Cecil B. DeMille told the Motion Picture War Relief Association that, “[t]he motion picture is the most powerful propaganda…a message …which can’t be changed by any crafty diplomat.”[/ref]  A Motion Picture News editorial from 1917 describes establishment sentiment and resolve: “… every individual at work in this industry wants to do his share,” it opined, pledging that “through slides, film leaders and trailers, posters and newspaper publicity they [would] spread that propaganda so necessary to the immediate mobilization of the country’s great resources.” ²³ (Emphasis mine)

Analyzing political history and reviewing the CPI’s application of theoretical insights to a practical circumstance, Lippmann, in Public Opinion, sought to understand “why the picture inside [their heads] so often misleads men in their dealings with the world outside,” what this says about the “traditional democratic theory of public opinion” and how it might be possible to make “unseen facts intelligible to those who make decisions.” ²⁴

From a study of the actions of the French General Staff during WWI, Lippmann concluded that control of information – and visual information especially – was fundamental:  “a group of men, who can prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to suit their purpose.” ²⁵ (As with Bernays and Creel, Lippmann uses figures of visual perception to express understanding, such that to “see” is always, already, a dead metaphor.)

Though critical of CPI suppression of information, Lippmann acknowledged its achievement: “while the war continued it very largely succeeded…in creating … one public opinion all over America.” ²⁶ Typically, however, for most of the population, there are no “channels” connecting the various circles they inhabit that would allow an enlargement of perspective. “For them,” he laments, “the patented accounts of society and the moving pictures of high life have to serve.” ²⁷  While he initially begrudges such a role to film, he soon extols it: “[i]n the whole experience of the race there has been no aid to visualization comparable to the cinema,” for “on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you.” ²⁸

Moreover, since “[w]e cannot be much interested in, or much moved by, the things we do not see,” public affairs are “dull and unappetizing” for most people,  poorly perceived and understood “until somebody, with the makings of an artist, has translated them into a moving picture.” ²⁹ It’s only then, Lippmann concludes, that fact and experience can be transformed by individuals into public opinions or “the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationship.” ³⁰  But such pictures must be imbued with our personality. “Until it releases or resists, depresses or enhances, some craving of our own, it remains one of the objects which do not matter.” ³¹  Logical argument or reasoned analysis will not suffice.  The agglomeration of individual belief into a public opinion requires emotional investment (empathy) and personal involvement (identification).  Movies, more than any other medium, possess this power to move us.

With respect to the formation of Public Opinion, Lippmann describes the processes of association and analogy, symbol and substitution, in evocative terms:

The stimulus… may have been a series of pictures in the mind aroused by printed or spoken words. These pictures fade and are hard to keep steady; their contours and their pulse fluctuate. Gradually the process sets in of knowing what you feel without being entirely certain why you feel it. The fading pictures are displaced by other pictures, and then by names or symbols. But the emotion goes on, capable now of being aroused by the substituted images and names…. ³²  (Emphases, mine)

Notably, it’s the press agent, that professional advocate of private interest, who is the master of these processes: “the picture which the publicity man makes… is the one he wishes the public to see. He is censor and propagandist, responsible only to his employers, and to the whole truth responsible only as it accords with the employers’ conception of his own interests.” ³³

But whereas Lippmann is apprehensive about the consequences of propaganda for democratic theory and practice, Edward Bernays is blithe. ³⁴ He approves the fact that “we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ³⁵ It is these invisible rulers who “sift and high-spot” fact and information and narrow our choices to “practical proportions.” ³⁶

Like Lippmann, Bernays finds inexhaustible reference and example in motion picture entertainment and advertising of the application of and capacity for propaganda.  Indeed, “[v]irtually no important undertaking is now carried on without it, whether that enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a university, marketing a moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or electing a president.” ³⁷ For Bernays, Creel’s work “opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind.” ³⁸  In this group Bernays places “the fifty most popular authors, the presidents of the fifty leading charitable organizations, the twenty leading theatrical or cinema producers, the hundred recognized leaders of fashion, the most popular and influential clergymen in the hundred leading cities.” ³⁹ (Emphases, mine.)

As with Lippmann, the public relations counsel, a special pleader and professional propagandist, represents to Bernays the avatar of this socio-political revolution: “[h]e examines the product, the markets, the way in which the public reacts to the product, the attitude of the employees to the public and towards the product, and the cooperation of the distribution agencies.” ⁴⁰  If the job resembles that of a marketing executive, it’s not by coincidence.  It was the “amusement business,” he notes, that taught industry and commerce how to advertise. Commerce then “adapted and refined these crude advertising methods to the precise ends it sought to obtain.” ⁴¹

Inexplicably,  politics – or the marketing of ideas and beliefs – has lagged behind its peers in amusement and commerce.  While politics was the first important department of American life to use propaganda on a large scale, Bernays critiques its delay in retooling to meet the changed conditions of the public mind. ⁴²  Since “Every object which presents pictures or words…can be utilized in one way or another,” political campaigns must be organized and executed with particular attention to media, content and distribution. ⁴³

In a telling anecdote, Bernays affirms the reciprocity I’ve hypothesized between discourses of social control and the marketing of visual entertainment:

I often wonder whether the politicians of the future… will not endeavor to train politicians who are at the same time propagandists. I talked recently with George Olvany. He said that a certain number of Princeton men were joining Tammany Hall. If I were in his place I should have taken some of my brightest young men and set them to work for Broadway theatrical productions or apprenticed them as assistants to professional propagandists before recruiting them to the service of the party. ⁴⁴

As Bernays knows, argument is hard; appeal is easier. Better to dramatize the issue to attract attention, answer the “spontaneous questions” and address “the emotional demands of a public already keyed to a certain pitch of interest in the subject.” ⁴⁵  “As the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world,” the American motion picture should be utilized to “standardize the ideas and habits of a nation.” ⁴⁶

While it is indisputable that Creel, Lippmann and Bernays understood the propaganda potential of motion-pictures and their marketing from positions of familiarity, apprehension or avidity, is it also the case that trailers of the 1910’s and 20’s (apart from their features) were aware of or attempting to realize that potential? To see whether and in what ways the era’s preference for entertaining persuasion over physical coercion is discernible in early previews of coming attractions, a closer look is warranted.

The exhibitor’s reel for Hands Up! (1918) ⁴⁷—one of the oldest promotional treasures in UCLA’s collection—is not strictly a trailer because it is not addressed to ticket buyers but to the theater owners Pathe Exchange wants to exhibit its new 15-part western series.  In industry jargon, it’s called a promo, which is a trailer edited to appeal to buyers and exhibitors.

A scant six years into the trailer era, this promo contains nearly all the elements met with since:  titling; graphic design; copy; excerpted scenes; cast run; production credits; focused marketing appeals; genre cues; story details; and scheduling information.  After a introductory sequence of title cards and key art, a succession of interstitial cards appear specifying characteristics and qualities of the film including its production team, stars, setting, plot points and visual attractions.  Following this trailer-esque section, the promo moves into its business argument, wherein the various advertising “helps” that Pathe provides are enumerated.  Finally it closes with the distributor logo, a visual appeal to Pathe’s reputation.

On its opening title card, featuring a graphic image of a masked rider on a galloping horse carrying a swooning victim,  Hands Up! calls itself “ A Cyclonic Western;” on the next, it refers to itself as “the most ambitious Western ever filmed.”  The first is fine sounding nonsense; the second is hyperbole, though not absurdity.  Pathe includes its brand slogan, “The House of Serials,” on the second card to indicate its mastery of the format.

The next cards introduce us to the writer and producer, shown working together, and to the Supervising Director, George Fitzmaurice, flanked by his production staffers and a camera.  This production is the first serial from the distinguished feature filmmaker. ⁴⁸

Stars Ruth Roland and George Chesebro are introduced before they appear, talking to and smiling at the camera.  Next, fellow players are described then shown.  First, the Phantom Rider, whose mysterious identity is intended to draw the curious, episode-by-episode.  Then come the villains:  the Gentleman Rancher, an outlaw by night, lurks behind a building and ties a kerchief over his face; next, the Adventuress, a scheming socialite and romantic rival to Roland, appears. Close-ups reveal eyes narrow and calculating.  Finally, the Incan priests, “custodians of treasure” in Pre-Columbian regalia, make their appearance.

A series of genre appeals follows.  “From the start, there is love interest,” captions an embrace between Chesebro and Roland.  Next, “Stunts and thrills galore,” are promised backed by celluloid evidence.  Chesebro and Roland, on horseback, are framed in a medium shot.  Roland darts left and we cut to a rear shot of her riding toward a tree.  She hits a branch and tumbles off.  Chesebro, meanwhile, has started after, first toward the camera, then seen from behind as he approaches, dismounts and, in close-up, cradles the awakening damsel in his “manly hero” arms.  She eyes him suspiciously in an even closer shot.

Without transition beyond a card introducing “The Escape from the Tower,” scenes of Roland imprisoned and imperiled unspool.  The editing is fast (>1 cut per second) and the action is kinetic: Roland shelters in a tower, slamming the door on her swarming pursuers, shown medium and in close-up.  Cut to Roland in the bell tower about to descend a rope.  She falls into the horde below.  Chesebro rides to the tower, guns at the ready, and enters on horseback. Cut to the interior where, framed tightly in a circular mat, he addresses Roland’s captors with a cocked pistol in each hand.

Roland is suspended over a blazing pit as her tormentors revel. Despite the threatening pyrotechnics, Chesebro prevails.  Roland runs to him, mounts in front and together they ride out.  Cut to an exterior shot of their exit and then to a longer shot of their escape up an adjacent hill.

In the next scene, Roland has been imprisoned in a cell over an archway.  Building a human pyramid from unidentified compatriots, Chesebro climbs the ladder of flesh and helps her descend.  Watching these representative scenes, an attentive exhibitor would derive a good idea of the picaresque story and the “cliff-hanger” hinges between episodes.

Hands Up! turns now from story to setting:  “Here’s a sample of the rugged Western country in which Hands Up! is being filmed,” declares a card.  A long shot, panning upward, reveals a spectacular alpine waterfall.  Next, “lavish sets” and expenditure are promoted.  The “Throne Room of the Incas” and the “Sacrificial Chamber” constitute evidence of both, shown by an exterior to interior dissolve.

Transitioning from product characteristics to marketing considerations, a card from Pathe explains, “What we are doing to help you cash in big profits.” I’ve characterized the visual evidence in parentheses below.

–“A nationwide Billboard campaign on ‘Hands Up!’ has been undertaken by Pathe.  These stands will be posted by Pathe in upward of 500 cities.”  (Key art is shown)

–“Ask Pathe representatives for details of our offer of these magnificent posters absolutely free of charge.”  (Three different posters are displayed)

–“’Hands Up!’ in serial form will run in the Motion Picture Magazine on sale early in August. The October cover features picture [sic] of Ruth Roland. This story will be read by over two million people.” ⁴⁹ (Roland appears on the cover)

–“Here is a list of the advertising helps we have prepared in order to help you cash in Big Profits with Hands Up!” (1,3 & 6 sheet ad-slicks are specified, as well as lobby photos and key-art/title graphics)

–“Magnificent banners” are promised, printed “in five colors on linen.”

–“Cuts with mats” of Chesebro and portraits of Roland are also available.

Still, Pathe’s strongest argument remains this one:  “Mr. Exhibitor, listen to this.  By running Hands Up! at your theater you will be guaranteeing fifteen weeks of prosperity.  You will be selling seats fifteen weeks in advance.”

If a moviegoer in 1918 had little more than a dime and free time at risk, the prospective exhibitor of Hands Up! is asked to commit significant resources.  Consequently, he required strong, verifiable arguments. Yet, in this proposal, the business claims, while extensive, are unexceptional; it’s the aesthetic ones that are special.  By 1918, exhibitors knew that a good serial was a good booking; they knew which marketing “helps” were valuable and which less so.  What was unknown was the product and whether it would meet expectations. Though an exhibition contract stipulates the terms of the rental and the extent of the marketing support (posters, lobby cards, a magazine tie-in) the quality of the product has to be deduced from excerpted scenes. The trailer is the claim (and evidence) of whether the film is any good.

Does the trailer depict chemistry between the stars? Is the feature well shot and professionally directed? Are the stunts thrilling, the sets extensive and spectacular? Is the scenery interesting?  Is the genre well developed?  For answers, an exhibitor, then as now, depends on the distributor’s (re)presentation, the central feature of which is the trailer. A shrewd exhibitor in 1918 would have learned to consume such representations with a jaundiced eye.

The Hands Up! promo implies that the exhibitor’s benefit is foremost to the distributor, (viz: “what we’re doing to help you make money!”) although no mention of factors that might interfere with full houses and overflowing tills is made. The argument from experience is trotted out as well:  Ms. Roland, Mr. Chesebro, Mr. Fitzmaurice and Pathe are established, bankable collaborators who have lent their reputations to the undertaking.  Roland’s beauty offers an additional source of authority.  Hands Up! must be, by rhetorical logic—if not the analytic variety– not only legitimate but excellent.

For all the innovation in visual storytelling (cinematographic technology and technique, editing, acting, etc.,) in the first decades of the 20^th century, films and their animated heralds remain dependent on words to communicate and persuade. To “see” the stars, spectacles and scenes is the constant appeal, but always through the filter of words. ⁵⁰  Moving images function as proof not proposition, evidence not assertion.  Language explains and interprets meaning.  Their propaganda is significantly rhetorical.

Apart from their informational and promotional value, inter-titles were required to cover gaps and effect transitions in an era when quality outtakes were in short supply and the negative was too precious to use.  Moreover, editing was as yet an emergent mode of visual communication, mastered by a limited number of crafts-persons.  Rhetoric, by comparison, had 2500 years of precept familiar to armies of skilled practitioners.  It was cheaper and easier to deploy.

Even in such sophisticated silent trailers as Beau Sabreur (1927), The Great Gatsby (1926), The Garden of Allah (1927), Ben Hur (1925) ⁵¹ and A Thief in Paradise (1925), showing is framed by telling. ⁵² Though these previews deliver spectacle, action, genre cues and character typing to draw audiences, proffering sensual and narrative pleasures rather than reflective or analytical ones, copy mediates the terms of engagement and carries the burden of persuasion.

The trailer for Gatsby, for example, which first emphasizes the best selling novel and theater-packing play that inspired the film (the band-wagon approach), ultimately chides:  “There’s no need to talk about this picture; just look at these sample scenes.”  We see Jazz Age revelers around the pool and on Gatsby’s staircase, before cutting to a confrontation in the salon between Gatsby and Tom.  Ballyhoo, wealth and romantic conflict are the film’s authorized marketing content, not literary merit and cultural insight.    “Come and see it all and enjoy the entertainment thrill of your life,” the cards continue.  “The Great Gatsby is Great!”

Unlike Bernays’ conception of political propaganda, with its opposing claims, film advertising is rarely contradicted, unless by the consumer’s experience. Trailers assert, illustrate, advocate and solicit, but rarely dispute.  Instead, competition for viewers is won by betters appeals and stronger visual evidence, subject to the rule that audiences resent being misled and that if the trailer is the first word, the final word is “word of mouth,” and the worst word that of a deceived ticket buyer.

In this light, the propaganda of early trailers seems benign or inconsequential. The change of attitude solicited by the commercial message is from neutrality or indifference to intent and curiosity. Then as now, trailers connect the qualities of the film with the presumed interests and belief system of the viewer, rather than persuading her to adopt another.  Where trailers for the silent era make ideological claims it is in the most unexceptional way:  normative representations of sanctioned events, characters and dynamics and invisibility of unauthorized ones.  They reify prejudice and stereotype more actively than they deceive or misrepresent.

But as persuasive, non-rational texts, they persistently draw from the rhetorician’s handbook and propagandist’s toolkit: ad nauseum repetition; appeals to authority, fear, prejudice, patriotism, beautiful people and the common man. They exploit the either/or fallacy and trade in cognitive dissonance, disinformation and diktat, etc. ⁵³ As the format most indebted to editing, they manipulate image, graphic design, chronology, pattern and rhythm in the production of pleasures independent from if ultimately referential to their features.

Yet, by the same gesture with which they involve and compel, trailer form and content foreground and denaturalize their propagandistic work.  While there may be no more appealing kind of film than a movie trailer, as a communication, it is believed only “just so,” as Kuehn’s epigrammatic complaint about incredulous viewers indicates.  Whereas documentary footage – for Creel, the choicest instrument of the propagandist – asserts a version of reality that typically naturalizes its construction, its narrative and its point of view, trailers self-consciously advertise their dissimulation, point of view and recontextualization. Fans, adepts and connoisseurs recognize and evaluate the tricks they know them to play. ⁵⁴

What this awareness reveals is the ambivalent role of trailers within the arsenal of propagandistic speech.  For while trailers—then as now–are eagerly anticipated, consumed and enjoyed, their formal and formulaic self-referentiality (seen in taglines and inter-titles, discontinuous editing and graphic design) effects a constant interruption of visual seduction: they denaturalize themselves with marketing meta-content, creating distance from and resistance in the viewer who is thereby reminded of their casual if interested relationship to mimetic representation.  While trailers use visual means to produce somatic and haptic reactions in viewers (as Enrica Picarelli has described elsewhere), ⁵⁵ their manifest work is always already bracketed, received under stipulation and filtered through a skein of skepticism.  No one has ever been in confusion about their status as persuasive speech.

The “lies” that movie trailers tell are rarely about facts or figures; rather they are lies of omission and misrepresentation.  The trailer maker (like the publicist, novelist or director) is a story-teller, hired to tell a story about another story, not to argue a point of fact about it.  Audiences learn not to believe the claims of the trailer maker at face value, but they do retain, upon review of the visual and verbal evidence, the capacity to judge whether the film will entertain them.  This has been true since the first serial interrupted its own story to advertise its continuation on another reel.

As stories about stories, trailers are doubly removed from reasoned argument, logical debate or scientific inquiry and assessment.  Indeed, much of the “fun” of watching movie trailers is the act of critical assessment, the skeptical reading of these film texts for their latent rather than manifest content.  It’s why trailers are ideally suited to media education: they make visible the constructed and functional quality of film narrative by foregrounding editing decisions and marketing objectives.  Watch a trailer once to be stunned and speechless.  Watch it twice and the seams show.  Watch it ten times to dissipate the magic but anatomize the craft.

Critics of propaganda note that for it to achieve its objectives, recipients should be shielded from detail, context and evidence and directed toward emotionally satisfying generalities and familiar symbols.  Yet, for 100, trailer audiences have been invited to do the opposite, such that the critical work of “reading” them has become as natural an activity as film viewing.  Courtesy of inter-titles, audiences instantly recognized what trailers were, understanding simultaneously the need to interpret their claims critically.  Rather than satisfying generalities and familiar symbols, trailers delivered a dense bolus of content to be processed and appraised, concatenations of formulae and convention that have enriched our cultural inheritance, without, until recently, being objects of systematic analysis.

Whereas propaganda film repelled 1920’s audiences—insulted by its transparent advocacy, weak arguments, aesthetic failures and production quality—trailers became their delight and pleasure.  Film marketers became more and more skilled at achieving emotional identification and investment, arguing without logic and persuading without fact.  Their meticulously edited films– exquisite tools of ideological indoctrination and political suasion—colonized the culture from within the Trojan Horse of entertainment.

From the moment we learned to present, persuade and promote using the awesome power of the moving image, we have found ourselves susceptible to the social, political and economic management techniques of public relations and the shaping of public opinion by private interests.  But susceptibility is not inevitability: we may be entertained by images, stories, characters and claims we in no way admire, approve or accept.

Are trailers nefarious?  No more than the films they herald or the ideas they position.  Are they a place to work out complications, resolve contradictions, and boldly manipulate information, reference and emotion? Indubitably.  They may work mischief as well as good.  At the very least, they tend to reify the ideas, characters and themes of the films they promote, whatever their content, value or morality.

But for all their subordination to commercial imperatives, they are also revelatory.  As Kernan points out, “trailers are where Hollywood displays its contradictions right at the point where its promotional message is most direct.” ⁵⁶ Because they inevitably, insistently and self-consciously draw attention to their functional status, their formulae of construction and their interpellation of the viewer, they invite interaction and examination. The consumer understands the game and only to a degree believes in what is said and shown. Indeed, the ability to “read” the trailer, to find the tell in the trailer that tells you whether it’s any good or not, is how you show yourself a fan.

 

Frederick Greene, Ph.D. (English Literature, UCSB, 1997) is a visiting assistant professor within UCLA’s Department of Film, Theater and Television, where he teaches a graduate seminar on movie marketing.  Writer, researcher and co-producer of Coming Attractions: A History of the Movie Trailer, (the first documentary feature on the history and practice of audio-visual movie advertising), Greene is a copywriter serving the entertainment industry. He has lectured on trailers and the history of movie marketing at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, NYU and Pasadena’s Arts Center.   He blogs at movietrailers101.com.

 

There exists a well-established rhetoric regarding the immediate post-war era and American women; the narrative runs that having been urged to enter the workforce to aid the Allied war effort, once peace was declared America’s female populace were systematically coerced into the belief that their patriotic duty was once again as housewives rather than workers.  It is claimed that Hollywood, along with other popular culture industries, was complicit in the propagation of this message. The existence of this campaign and the degree to which it was successful has been a point of contention for various film scholars ¹ who have both supported and discredited this claim utilising a variety of films with differing agendas.

Whilst individual films can, and do, indicate to their audiences (and to the historian) a range of ideological constructs, the advertising materials and publicity used to promote these films in many ways can offer more immediate, lasting and public, but by no means any less ideologically contentious or complex, examples of the messages and values, both direct and mixed, that producers wished and considered acceptable to express to their audiences in order to sell their products during this period.

During the classical era studios frequently had more than one property which they were promoting within any one film campaign; the film and the longer term investment of their star, and while the star leant their value to the marketing of the film, equally the film and its reception had to add to and not damage the star’s currency. Film advertising and promotion then presented a carefully constructed and multifaceted blend of textual signifiers which amongst other saleable commodities, such as genre or prestige, commonly emphasised elements upon which this study focuses – a star’s established persona and a recognisable character archetype (frequently closely linked and complimentary to the performers established star persona; what Barbara Klinger refers to as the “character/star unit” ²) and an indication as to the function of that character within the films narrative, with a view to creating what Barbara Klinger terms as a “consumable identity” ³ for the film and making the film as appealing and saleable to as broad an audience as possible.

The late 1940s saw a raft of Hollywood films – cycles of thrillers, gangster and detective pictures – which have subsequently been grouped together initially by critics and academics and more recently by studios and distributors marketing and re-branding their back catalogue, as a single, apparently coherent genre: film noir. While the initial academic interest in these films centred around particular qualities and commonalities of films from this period, the desire to re-brand films as quality products and expand the canon of a fashionable and saleable genre has led to an ever-increasing and often dubious labelling of films as noir, despite both the ahistorical and increasing vagueness of the generic term.  The subsequent reclassification by both industry and academics of these films, makes many assumptions drawn around the films, their meanings and their social relevance – in both their reflection of and influence upon audiences and wider society, moot.

One group of thriller-detective pictures often incorporated into the noir brand are those featuring what Hansen refers to as the “working-girl” investigator. A female clerical figure “[who] use[s] their position in the city to investigate and solve crime enigmas” ⁴ and the working girl investigator is located within and associated with the public sphere; a figure whose placement within that sphere was not only justified but necessary, whose conduct was agent and assured, and who was considered both respectable and virtuous despite, in fact because of, her entering of that sphere. She is therefore an archetype who stands outside of what Place ⁵ terms as a “vice/virtue” dichotomy of traditional film noir theorising. However, given the ahistoric baggage that comes with noirs post-hoc generic grouping, the study of a group of films such as working girl investigator narratives may be better served by an analysis through the prism of their contemporaneous marketing advertising and publicity materials, than by a more usual genre / film text analysis.

Pressbooks for film texts provide the historian with an expansive range of print based promotional materials and suggested advertising and exploitation strategies offering a complex and fruitful resource for the gathering of ‘epiphenomena.’ ⁶ As Haralovich notes:

“Throughout Hollywood’s classical era, every studio release was accompanied by a pressbook, an oversized and glossy booklet which outlined the films national sales campaign and contained basic materials crucial to that campaign. Pressbooks included two types of material: advertising (primarily mats used for newspaper ads) and publicity (stories and exploitation ideas). Advertising was designed to engage the potential moviegoer’s interest in the films story by stressing genre, the conjunctures of star and character, narrative suspense, and the special qualities of a film, such as its adaptation from a popular novel. Publicity presented a film in more detail through prepared reviews, and it also extended beyond the film itself through production stories and stills, merchandising tie-ins, praise for the studios expertise, suggestions for exploitation stunts and so on.” ⁷

Owing to the “lack of self-containment” ⁸ and the deliberate engagement of film texts and their marketing with wider cultural and media phenomena through “complex external referential systems” ⁹ pressbooks offer a rich seam of cultural artefacts through which it is possible to re-examine films and their contexts; in this instance Hollywood’s marketing of its female stars during the post-war period, the gender politics of post-war labour, and the subsequent conjunction of these two elements as seen in the 1947 film Lured.

These materials cannot tell us what audiences actually thought about particular films, their stars, or what was considered to be their relevance to wider cultural discourse within particular contexts, (“I saw this particular film, it convinced me that my rightful place was now in the home”), but they provide the best evidence we have for the ways in which audiences and exhibitors were engaged by producers, just who producers believed these imagined audiences actually were, and what sorts of messages were considered tolerable and appropriate for those audiences and wider society.

During the post-war period film consumption was a fleeting experience, and further access to a particular narrative beyond its cinema ‘run’, was not normally an option. The representations found in film advertising may therefore have offered a more significant and lasting impression of a film, its characters, it stars and its ideological message; whilst as the enthusiastic efforts of the promotional team responsible for the Lured pressbook amply testify, it is often a films marketing and promotion which frames (or at least attempts to frame) the discourse around particular films rather than the film itself.

This analysis demonstrates the usefulness of advertising materials alongside and even over the use of the film text itself. In understanding the contextual function of film/media products, far from being of peripheral or ephemeral interest, the promotion of films was and still is central to the consumption, meaning and cultural identity of a text. Through the use of primary resources then, it is my aim here to call into question elements of the post-war backlash narrative and broaden our understanding of Hollywood’s response to its female audiences and to women who were unwilling or unable to enter or return to the domestic sphere post war. Finally, this demonstrates a more broadly applicable technique through which it is possible to explore the wider contexts that surround films.

The problem of the post-war backlash

The notion of a conservative cultural backlash against American women at large and the public and potentially problematic figure of the female war worker in particular, is a provocative and compelling one. Within this narrative it is supposed that two dichotomous female representations were on offer within the American media during the mid to late 40s; the capitulating housewife – a virtuous martyr figure firmly located within the domestic sphere – and the morally suspicious public woman.  These two female representations current in late 40s discourse could frequently and strikingly be found in what has subsequently become termed as Noir.

The capitulating housewife figure, having done her duty during the war, returned to the home to create a safe, loving domestic haven for her returning veteran husband is not surprisingly frequently linked with the noir archetype of the “nurturing woman” – a figure who offered safe and secure domestic refuge for the jaded noir hero. (See, for example Lilly in The Killers (1946, Universal), Ann in Out of the Past (1947, RKO) and Katie in The Big Heat (1953, Columbia)). By way of a direct counterpoint, the figure of the public woman who continued, postwar, to very visibly to occupy the public sphere is commonly understood to have been portrayed as deviant, selfish and even threatening; these were bad mothers, bad wives, bad housekeepers, or just plain bad; taking men’s jobs and generally undermining attempts at re-establishing cultural harmony. Such a troubling representation maps conveniently onto noirs “femme fatale” – a figure who represented a “nightmarish manifestation of masculine anxieties within the period.” ¹⁰

It is worth briefly emphasising here that the term ‘public woman’ has been deliberately chosen here, in part, for its similarity to the idiom ‘fille publique’ – a French turn-of-the-century expression for prostitute – as both terms evoke the inevitable negotiation of propriety which must be undertaken by any woman who makes her self visible within a contested public sphere. Equally the term “working girl” used within the context of the ‘working girl investigator’ also functions euphemistically for prostitute.

In the academic imagination the figure of the femme fatale – an intensely sexualised figure, often discussed as an independent female and frequently conflated with the independent working woman – has come to be considered particularly indicative of the latent misogyny of noir, Hollywood and post-war society at large because it is presumed that it was her visible presence within the public sphere and her refusal to become a homely reassuring figure that marked her as aberrant. However this is a deeply problematic interpretation of the femme fatale and of the politics of female labour during this period. As Mark Jancovich notes:

“Although there certainly was a concerted effort to force women back into the home, it has to be remembered that many women had already been working outside the home before the war, and that this process of conversion was often about getting women out of specific types of work. For many women, it was a matter of giving up highly paid jobs as skilled labourers and returning to lowly paid jobs as unskilled labour, domestic servants or worse.” ¹¹

In addition there are further issues with these existing assumptions surrounding noir and post-war femininity. As both Hansen ¹² and Jancovich ¹³ have argued; whilst the femme fatale came to be considered, certainly in film academia, and particularly amongst feminist scholars as “even more iconographic than the private eye or the weak neurotic hero” ¹⁴ as Jancovich highlights she was “actually a rather infrequent feature of the films commonly identified with noir” ¹⁵ and a much more diverse range of filmic female representations actually existed during this period than is often credited. As Jancovich demonstrates using contemporaneous critical reviews of noir films, these female representations were subject to much more nuanced understandings. For example the femme fatale wasn’t received negatively for her associations with the public sphere but for her slovenly and egotistical nature and because she “preferred to remain insulated within the domestic sphere.” ¹⁶ She was considered a ‘slacker’ – unwilling to participate or contribute productively within either public or domestic spaces. As such, ironically, she was actually “often [contemporaneously understood to be] overtly opposed to the figure of the independent woman of wartime.” ¹⁷

The appeal of the femme fatale; her sexual agency and propensity for resistance which often made her a highly potent image for promotion, marketing and for identification with female audiences ¹⁸ has also been regularly discussed by academics. However, the exploitation of female sexuality was not limited to the figure of the femme fatale or to noir. The character Gilda in the film of the same name (Columbia, 1946) whose marketing and subsequent circulation in cultural discourse both rhetorically and pictorially so closely resembled the conventional conceptions of the femme fatale that despite the evidence of the film narrative itself (she does not kill, she is not treacherous and she is apparently emotionally and sexually loyal to Johnny) has largely come to be (mis)understood as a femme fatale.  Hayworth’s previous acting roles, their cultural currency and her accumulated star persona at the time of Gilda’s release, as Richard Dyer notes, ‘were as the ‘other woman’ (Only Angels Have Wings, Strawberry Blonde) and most vividly as an archetypal evil seductress in Blood and Sand, roles that made it easy to read Gilda in femme fatale terms.’. ¹⁹ Essentially Gilda’s social and sexual coding throughout the film and its marketing: her costuming and grooming, her placing throughout the narrative, either in public locations such as nightclubs, casinos and restaurants or in boudoirs, because of her ultimate ‘unknowability’ ²⁰ as a character within the narrative, as well as a combination of extra textual elements, all contribute to a reading, beyond the evidence of behaviour or personality, as a femme fatale.

As Hanson asserts, the academic preoccupation with femme fatales and nurturing women has subsequently led to the neglect of the working-girl investigator.  In exploring this figure within the context of several key promotional resources and proposed promotional techniques found in Lured’s pressbook it is possible then to explore the ways in which such a figure, who occupies a deeply contentious representational space, who in the context of fraught postwar inter-gender work relations would surely have been ripe for denigration and thus problematic to market – was promoted to everyday American audiences. 

Lured and the allure of the working-girl investigator

As a thriller narrative set in an urban environment, with a complex crime-centred plot, an ominous tone, shot in black and white and which uses expressionistic lighting Lured bears many of the stylistic and thematic characteristics which have come to be attributed to film noir, whilst it’s gutsy, quick-witted female protagonist – mobile, modern and independent – also marks Lured as a text which can be classified as belonging to the noir sub-cycle of the female investigator narrative.

Lured is the story of Sandra (Lucille Ball) – an American taxi dancer in a London night club who is recruited by Scotland Yard to bait a homicidal psychopath known as ‘the Poet Killer’ who preys upon young, attractive women through lonely hearts adverts, having already detailed his murderous plans in verse and sent them anonymously to the police. Sandra’s brief is to answer suspect personal ads, arrange rendezvous and hopefully ‘lure’ the killer into a police trap.

In many ways Lured is an unexceptional narrative and contemporaneous critical responses from both sides of the Atlantic indicate that whilst not considered a poor film, Lured was not seen as particularly exceptional or progressive in its female representations. ²¹ Still Lured is a narrative in which the agent activities of a central female protagonist are key and as a film that appears to be very average in its appeals Lured, or more specifically the marketing proposed in the Lured pressbook, offers the film historian a fascinating insight into what constituted accepted and plausible female representations in the immediate post-war era. The semiotic analysis of several promotional materials for Lured therefore enables us to extrapolate upon wider representational and promotional trends in operation in the post-war American media, particularly where this marketing intersects with advertising campaigns for other products and other industries. This will ultimately allow us to determine to what extent, if at all Hollywood partook of backlash rhetoric when engaging with a female representation so firmly located within the public sphere.

Genre, iconography and audiences

The variety of materials available to promote Lured range from three-sheet, six-sheet and twenty-four-sheet posters to lobby cards and window cards. ²² These materials feature a number of recurring elements or motifs, which tell us much about Lured’s audience and appeal.

Firstly, as an indicator of Sandra’s narrative prominence and Ball’s import as a star draw for Lured, in the 14×36”  insert card, the announcement slide, on the front cover and the inside spread of the herald and one of the two 22×28” lobby displays Sandra/Ball commands the largest portion of the image. In addition she appears in all eight of the 11×14” lobby displays. In the majority of the representations of Sandra/Ball, she is primarily photographed or illustrated in either a full-body or a ¾ shot ²³ and whilst in three instances ²⁴ only a head-and-shoulder shot of Sandra/Ball appears, only one other character/performer represented within Lured’s accessories and posters (George Zucco/Officer Barrett who in just one instance – the inside spread of the herald – is permitted a ¾ shot alongside Sandra/Ball) appears in anything other than a head-and-shoulder shot. It is clearly she, who is the protagonist within Lured’s plot.

In terms of costuming, Ball/Sandra’s hair is smartly upswept and partially concealed under a head scarf. She wears a pencil skirt, heels and a long rain coat cinched flatteringly at the waist. She is smart and glamorous, simultaneously indicating competence and desirability. In full-body-shots she clutches a newspaper (presumably the source of the personal advert which ‘lured’ the murdered girls – a ‘clue’ for our glamorous detective) and she brandishes a revolver. The mackintosh/revolver combination evoking what has come to be seen as classic detective or noir thriller iconography, thus suggesting Lured may be such a narrative but reversing the traditional gender role of the detective character. It is notable that her gaze is averted, but alert, her pose active, cautious and capable rather than passive or fearful, as she faces an unseen assailant, possibly the murderer.

A vertical arrangement of head-and-shoulder portraits of Ball’s co-stars appears in the 14×36”  insert card, both 22×28” lobby displays, on the announcement slide, on the inside spread of the herald and on the twenty-four-sheet, six-sheet, three-sheet and one-sheet posters. In several instances where a full-body or ¾ shot of Sandra/Ball does not appear, a head-and-shoulder portrait of Ball appears as the top-most image within this arrangement. Each portrait bears a caption which hints at character motive and narrative function in order to further intrigue audiences as like an identity parade, equal suspicion is cast over each character. Who amongst these characters, is the poet killer?

The sense of mystery is further heightened by other iconographic elements such as a red carnation atop a torn personal advertisement which appears on one of the 11×14” and the 22×28” lobby displays, the one sheet and the herald inside spread; suggesting an intriguing liaison whilst the tagline for the 22×28” lobby display, the herald inside spread and the one-sheet –“don’t answer this ad” – presents a desperate plea scrawled in red ink or possibly a blood-stained warning which drifts in to the whirlpool below further suggesting a thriller, mystery or horror narrative.

Whirlpool imagery features in all of Lured’s posters, in one of its lobby cards, one of the 22×28” lobby displays and the inside spread of the herald. Such imagery was not uncommon within the marketing for many ‘noir films’, having been frequently used in the marketing of narratives with a preoccupation with psychology and the unconscious such as the paranoid woman’s picture; a group of films, which not unlike Lured also expressed a thriller or even horror ambience and featured prominent, agent, publically visible and sympathetic female characters ²⁵

Another psychological angle also evident in Lured is its covert claim to offer an exploration of monstrous sexual perversion that could play well with audiences hungry for sensation (see proposed tabloid display tagline “glamorous bait for an amorous killer!” ²⁶) whilst paradoxically offering a simultaneous appeal for more conservative audiences through its positing as a cautionary tale for errant young women ²⁷ The subtle emphasis upon sexual suggestion is reinforced in the insert card tagline which asks of Sandra “How far will she go to trap a killer, or get her man?” hinting at the jeopardy to which Sandra has subjected herself (both physically and morally) in leaving the safety of the domestic sphere and entering the perilous world of the public. Equally proposed feature “How many local girls were Lured?” ²⁸ also emphasises Lured’s potential for sensation by somewhat tastelessly encouraging exhibitors to create lobby displays that link the film to the then recent high profile ‘Black Dahlia’ murder in LA with the suggested heading: “Lured to a Rendezvous with Death!”

Despite the variety in poster layout, iconography and address the elements, even where they offer variants and alternatives have a common theme in their presentation of the protagonist. Sandra/Ball is agent yet sympathetic, stylish yet capable, conflating the supposed dualism of noir women. Though this reflects the actuality of the narrative, the studios did not have to choose to promote these elements – and choose with them to promote a positive image of the working woman, public and glamorous; an image in no small part supported by the choice to cast Ball and work with her star persona.

‘Great stars join forces in dynamic…drama’: Star power as marketing strategy

Much work exists upon the import of star power; ²⁹ the distinct and unique combination of appeals or “resonances” ³⁰ a particular star offers, as probably the most effective means of luring an audience to a particular film. As audience studies such as those by Rachel Moseley, Jackie Stacey ³¹ or Annette Kuhn ³² demonstrate; throughout Hollywood’s classical period the star was key to audiences stated film preferences and thus to film promotion, meaning they were often the most costly part of the production budget. Naturally then, ‘the money’ appeared prominently on almost all posters, though not always in similar depictions to their characters in the screenplay. Not surprisingly then, the positioning of Lured’s female lead – Lucille Ball – is crucial both to the film’s marketing and to the presentation of her character Sandra as a convincingly assertive female protagonist.

Although the notion of glamour and of the glamorous woman has often been associated with passivity, with academics such as Marjorie Rosen claiming that American wartime women were apparently “anesthetised by the idea of glamour” ³³, marking them as cultural dupes complicit in their own oppression, glamour has also been linked to self-actualisation. ³⁴ Utilising Bordieu’s theory of cultural capital, Beverley Skeggs, observes that:

“Glamour is a way of transcending the banalities of femininity which render women as passive objects, as signs of appearance without agency, as something which has to be done…Glamour involves attitude as well as appearance… It is the attitude that makes the difference. It gives agency, strength and worth back to women and is not restricted to youth. They do glamour with style. Glamour is about a performance of femininity with strength.” ³⁵

Whilst Carol Dyhouse has observed that:

“Adult women aren’t simply prisoners, dupes or victims, and there can be a playfulness around glamour…. It is important to remember that women practice glamour, they are not simply the object of the male gaze.” ³⁶

Rather than being a means through which to present Sandra/Ball as passive, and temper any potentially troubling questions raised by her agent activities, glamour is used within Lured’s promotional strategies as an index of Sandra/Ball’s agency, self-assurance, and competence.

Less agent representations of Sandra/Ball which invoke the notion of potential victimhood are occasionally offered within the Lured campaign ³⁷ as peril is a prerequisite of the effective marketing of thriller narratives. Alongside this, the repeated incongruous image of the glamorous woman holding a gun lends Sandra an agency that hints that she alone is the solution to the perils to which she is subject. The concept of Sandra and Ball as agent, ‘modern’ and glamorous women operating competently and with purpose, within the public sphere is the central premise throughout the film’s promotional campaign.

Ball’s prominent position within Lured’s marketing also raises the inevitable question of what capital her star persona brought for audiences in 1947. Long before her I Love Lucy success, Ball was already established as a comedic actress, but with a very different comedic style to that of her later ‘Lucy’ star persona. Having appeared as sassy, vivacious and occasionally brassy ‘broads’ in films such as DuBarry Was a Lady (MGM, 1943), The Big Street (MGM, 1942) and Dance Girl, Dance (RKO, 1940) by 1947 Ball was already known for her portrayal of articulate, sassy, self-assured characters adept at verbal sparring and quick on the draw with the deft one-liners – a comedic technique popular in genres such as screwball comedy – which served to compliment the assertive and glamorous, pin-up persona for which at this time she was also simultaneously known.

Molly Haskell, alluding to cinemas tendency to use verbal dexterity as an index of female agency, sardonically observes of silent film representations that ‘women are more loveable without the disputatious, ego-defining dimension of speech.’ ³⁸ Knowledge of Ball’s quick-witted, fast-talking star persona allows an understanding that Sandra is sharp, intelligent and agent and this reading is reinforced by a series of publicity articles in the film’s pressbook. Headlines such as “Lucille Ball helps Scotland Yard unravel a baffling case”  which deliberately blur the line between Sandra and Ball and present both as gutsy role models.  In one feature Ball is claimed to be the first star in Hollywood to own her own helicopter ³⁹, and in another is (fictitiously) said to have overcome paralysis, ⁴⁰ prompting an episode of personal development:

“The biggest blow to her career came after an automobile accident, when she was paralysed from the hips down. She was out of the running for five years, three of which she spent in a wheelchair. During this time Lucille, as she puts it “learned to live with myself.” ⁴¹

It is not surprising then that this linkage of glamour and agency to Sandra lead to her image being adopted by another company’s marketing department; that of cosmetics manufacturer Max Factor.

As various works such as those of Jane Gaines ⁴² and Charles Eckert ⁴³ demonstrate, the advertising tie-up was a common, and by 1947, well-established cross-promotional technique used to help raise the profile of films. Not unlike most other Hollywood studio products of the era, the Lured pressbook suggests a bewildering array of potential tie-upsfrom women’s suits and jackets, jewellery, a Lured ‘hairdo’, even to proposed pet shops tie-ups, ⁴⁴ but at large the cross promotional techniques are strongly weighted towards products that hold an appeal primarily or entirely for female consumers.

Female film star endorsement and film tie-ups were a key advertising strategy for Max Factor with “all advertisements prominently featur[ing] screen stars, [whilst] their testimonials [were] secured in an arrangement with the major studios that required them to endorse Max Factor,” ⁴⁵ so it is not unusual then that a Max Factor ‘color harmony’ lipstick/Lured tie-up was in circulation in the American media at the time of Lured’s release. In addition to the glamorous associations with Hollywood and his glamorous clientele of desirable, self-assured starlets, another of Max Factor’s marketing coups was the company’s capitalising upon the trend for “marketing women’s fashion separates and accessories as complementary ensembles.” ⁴⁶ Working on the premise that women could divided into ‘types’ according to facets such as skin tone, hair or eye colour Max Factor encouraged its consumers to select cosmetic goods in particular shades to suit their own individual skin tone, eye or hair colour, enhance their natural features and create particular and coherent ‘looks’. The Lured/Max Factor tie-up features three small illustrations representing three distinct ‘looks’ each with its own corresponding lipstick shade – a formal day look possibly for a wedding or day at the races (suit, hat, clutch bag), a smart everyday look, possibly for work (suit and overcoat, no hat or bag), and a romantic evening look (ball gown, opera gloves and corsage).

This sales approach offered the consumer the illusion of choice and individualism encouraging women to adopt, and shift between recognised female personas – the working-girl, the glamorous vamp, the wholesome sweetheart – through the purchase and use of such goods whilst having the added benefit of encouraging consumers to purchase a full complement of ‘harmonised’ cosmetic goods rather than individual purchases of single cosmetic items. ⁴⁷

By the time of Lured’s release cosmetics had for a considerable period, come to be not only acceptable, but associated with “freedom and individuality.” ⁴⁸ Due in no small part to the efforts of cosmetics advertisers, the wearing of makeup had become “an expression of self and personality” ⁴⁹ which allowed its wearers to project an image of modern, agent and desirable femininity. Therefore an item as affordable and easily available as a lipstick is presented in the Lured/Max Factor tie-up becomes a visual signifier of female autonomy, and female fans are encouraged indulge in what Stacey terms as “extra cinematic identificatory practices” ⁵⁰ by purchasing the “new lipstick from Hollywood” in order to represent these particular traits for themselves.

Whilst Max Factor advertising tie-ups’ frequently cited the star endorser’s latest film in their advertisement as a means of indicating how culturally ‘current’ the star was, (working reciprocally as promotion for the star’s film) these endorsements also occasionally made a closer textual reference to the film narrative itself and/or the actual character played by that star within the film. For example a 1946 Max Factor tie-up for ‘Tru Color lipstick’ and Gilda features an illustrated tableaux from the film featuring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford as the characters Gilda Mundsen and Johnny Farrell. A particularly notable example of the convergence of film star and character can also be found in the Max Factor/Lured tie-up. Whilst the advertisement features no immediate reference to Lured other than the caption, top right; ‘Lucille Ball co-starring in Lured. A Hunt Stromberg production’ Ball’s star power and her performance as Sandra is still key to the ideological coherence of the advert in which Ball is dressed for the outdoors with upswept hair, raincoat and prominently displaying a smart pair of tailored gloves, suggesting rather than a glamorous starlet, here she is photographed as Sandra ready to take to the streets and track down the poet killer.

Presumably then when both the star and the character they played were in line with the kind of brand image that Max Factor wished to promote Max Factor’s ‘Hollywood’ branding (apparent in the tie-ups slogan “the new lipstick from Hollywood”) was further reinforced not only by Max Factor’s “makeup artist to the stars” tagline but also by its association with that particular star and their particular glamour. In choosing to occasionally co-opt specific characterisations found within specific films these advertisements associate, in the case of the Gilda tie-up example, further glamour and sexual potency to the character Gilda or, in the instance of the Lured tie-up, intellectual agency, financial independence and sexual self-possession with the character of Sandra.  These characteristics were only derived associations for those who saw both the Max Factor advertisement and the film Lured, however they are clearly not associations from which the Max Factor brand wished to disassociate itself as they might have been if the company whole heartedly supported the campaign for women to return to the home; if only because financially independent women were often the customers who were purchasing Max Factor’s products.  Equally, the ubiquity of this campaign and the locations in which the advertising tie-up was placed ⁵¹ provides further evidence for such representations being considered common place and appropriate for a mainstream audience at the time.

In conclusion the study of marketing techniques used to promote Lured offers a means through which we can extrapolate upon wider marketing trends in female representation circulating in the immediate post-war period.  Representations clearly did exist of capitulating women returning to, or already situated within the domestic sphere, and an attempt to claim otherwise would be erroneous, but the existence of the working-girl investigator archetype; agent and glamorous like the femme fatale but simultaneously respectable and virtuous like the nurturing woman, was a key site of negotiation regarding appropriate feminine behaviours and domains at this time. The prominence of the working girl investigator in Lured’s marketing and her use in the Max Factor cosmetics tie-up suggests that Hollywood and wider industries were, as a matter of course, willing to, and indeed did, engage with a range of post-war female representations including agent, financially independent women who were active and visible within the public sphere; and that a paying audience for such representations and products must have existed for such products to be marketed to.

Glamour is a choice afforded by female agency, and a tool to further that agency, within the films and campaign strategies examined here.  Rather than being used as a means of diluting the threatening potential of agent women, glamour becomes an acceptable marker to suggest Ball/Sandra’s female agency.

Whilst women largely did leave the often more lucrative ‘men’s jobs’ this does not mean that a place for women both in the workforce and the public sphere no longer existed or that such a space was not represented in the media in post-war America.  That is not to say that the politics of the workplace weren’t deeply problematic for post-war women.  Just as Sandra’s entry into the public sphere was fraught with perils which required constant careful negotiations, working women also had to navigate hazardous terrains of a different kind. But as the marketing for Lured amply demonstrates Hollywood at least believed there was a market for, and an acceptance of, such female representations.

Ellen Wright lectures in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia, where she recently completed her PhD thesis on discourse surrounding Hollywood pin-ups in Second World War Britain. She has co-written ‘Betty Grable: An American Icon in Wartime Britain’ with Dr Melanie Williams, for The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 31, Issue 4 and ‘A Glimpse Behind the Screen: Tijuana bibles and the pornographic reimagining of Hollywood’ for Taboo, Trend, Transgression, Vol. 2. Her article ‘Spectacular Bodies: The swimsuit, censorship and Hollywood’ is due for publication in Sport in History later this year.

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Sarah Berry, Screen Style: Fashion and femininity in 1930s Hollywood. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

D’Ann Campbell, Women At War With America: Private lives in a patriotic era. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

Richard DeCordova, Picture Personalities: The emergence of the star system in America. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

Maria Dibattista,  Fast-Talking Dames. (London: Yale University Press, 2001).

Richard Dyer, Stars. (London: BFI Publishing, 1986).

Richard Dyer, ‘Resistance Through Charisma: Rita Hayworth and Gilda.’in Women in Film Noir. ed. Kaplan, E Ann, (London: BFI,1980).

Carol Dyhouse, Glamour: Women, History, Feminism. (London: Zed Books, 2010).

__, ‘Glamour Versus feminism? Just Look at the Images in the Media We All Adore.’ The Observer. 21 March, 2010.

Charles Eckert, ‘The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window.’ in Fabrications: Costume and the female Body. eds. Gaines, Jane and Herzog, Charlotte. (London: Routledge, 1990).

Susan Faludi, Backlash: The undeclared war against American women. (London: Vintage, 1992).

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique. (New York: Dell, 1963).

Jane Gaines, ‘The Queen Christina Tie-Ups: convergence of show window and screen’ Quarterly Review of Film and Video. Vol. 11 No 1 (1989).

Rochelle Gatlin, American Women since 1945. (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1987).

Helen Hanson, Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the female gothic film. (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007).

Mary Beth Haralovich, ‘Selling Mildred Pierce: A case study in movie promotion.’ Schatz, Thomas. Boom and Bust: American cinema in the 1940s. (Berkeley: University of California, 1999).

Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The treatment of women in the movies. (New York: Holt, Rhinehart and Wilson,1974)

Maureen Honey, ‘Remembering Rosie: Advertising images of women in World War II’ in The Home Front War: World War II and American society, eds. Kenneth Paul O’Brien, and Lynn Hudson Parsons (London: Greenwood. 1995

Mark Jancovich,  ‘Phantom Ladies: The war worker, the slacker and the ‘femme fatale’’ New Review of Film and Television Studies. Vol. 8, No. 2 (2010): 164–178

Stefan Kanfer, Ball of Fire: The tumultuous life and comic art of Lucille Ball. (London: Faber and Faber 2003).

E. Ann Kaplan, (ed). Women in Film Noir. (London: BFI, 1980).

Cathy Klaprat, ‘The Star as Marketing Strategy: Bette Davis in another light’ in The American Film Industry, Ed.  Tino Balio, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).

Barbara Klinger, ‘Digressions at The Cinema: Reception and mass culture’ Cinema Journal, Vol 28, No 4 (Summer 1989).

Annette Kuhn, An Everyday Magic: cinema and cultural memory. (London: IB Tauris, 2002).

Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and gender in postwar America. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).

Rachel Moseley, Growing Up with Audrey Hepburn: Text, Audience, Resonance, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).

Kathy Peiss,  Hope in a Jar: The making of America’s beauty culture. (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007)

Janey Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, in Women in Film Noir, Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. (London: BFI,1980)

Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, movies and the American dream. (London: Peter Owen, 1975)

Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American cinema in the 1940s. (Berkeley: University of California, 1999).

Beverley Skeggs, Formations of Class & Gender: Becoming Respectable. (London: Sage, 1997).

Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. (London: Routledge, 1994).

Filmography

The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang, Columbia).

The Big Street (1942, Irving Reis, MGM).

Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur, RKO).

Dance Girl Dance (1940, Dorothy Arzner, RKO).

Du Barry Was a Lady (1943, Roy Del Ruth, MGM).

Gilda (1946, Charles Vidor, Columbia).

Lured (1947, Douglas Sirk, United Artists).

Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur, RKO).

Possessed (1947, Curtis Bernhardt, Warner Bros).

Secret Beyond the Door (1947, Fritz Lang, Universal).

Sleep My Love (1948, Douglas Sirk, United Artists).

Whirlpool (1949, Otto Preminger, RKO).

Stage greetings are special features on DVDs of Japanese films which consist of promotional footage. They document a film’s premiere, press conference, or other similar event, and show the stars and audience who are in attendance. For audiences outside of Japan, however, the most likely site for viewing such greetings is the extra features included on DVD releases, such as the 4Digital Asia disc for Death Note: L Change The World (dir. Nakata Hideo, 2008). ¹ The article will use the DVD releases from one particular sub-label as a case study. 4Digital Asia is no longer active within the operations of 4Digital Media (an independent UK DVD distributor), but from 2008 to 2010 it predominantly released Japanese films for consumption in the UK ²  The DVDs were often the first, or the only, instances where these films were released for the English language market. ³ Stage greeting footage frequently appears alongside the films on the DVDs – either as separate special features, or as part of interviews or making-of footage. 4Digital Asia was given exclusive license to distribute the extra material alongside its film releases. ⁴ And later UK DVD releases of Japanese films, from other Asian film distributors, have contained special features similar to those found on 4Digital Asia’s discs. Specifically, the Death Note: L Change The World DVD is an illustrative example, both because of its extensive array of special features, and the various types of stage greetings that it includes. ⁵

It is undoubtedly the case that the stage greetings are re-circulated promotional material, and their basic characteristics can be seen as similar to existing special features (e.g. the cast and crew often discuss the making of the film, which is comparable to interviews that are often included in making-ofs). But what is not so clear from their inclusion on UK DVDs of Japanese films is who, or what, they are promoting. After investigating the stage greetings, it becomes clear that the footage does not promote the film alone. Certain stars and crew members are given prominence over others, companies are credited with creating the extras more often than individual production members, and source material for a film’s script and story can be discussed more than the film itself. Analysing the stage greetings gives insight into what this footage can potentially tell an audience outside of Japan. 4Digital Asia disseminates this material before any other distributor outside of Japan, thereby providing evidence of the distributors’ intentions to provide a unique viewing experience.

Methods of analysing DVD extras, such as Craig Hight’s assessment of making-of documentaries, can be easily transferred to these examples to demonstrate their status as promotional material. ⁶ But such an approach has not gone on to address what this material is promoting and why it is re-used on a DVD disc. Re-addressing Hight’s approach, with a case study that does not disguise its promotional traits, will help explain what distributors intend to add to the film-viewing experience with certain DVD special features. Adapting Hight’s method means that the promotional purposes of extras such as stage greetings can be questioned, as well as what purposes they fulfil on a DVD.

DVD Special Features: Recycled Promotional Material, But Why?

Existing DVD research helps illustrate how Hight’s approach is the most detailed and versatile for the analysis of special features. All existing work claims that DVD special features are drawn from material originally used for the promotion of media texts, but do not explore the purpose of re-circulating it on a disc. DVD studies grew in conjunction with the popularity of the medium itself. As a consequence, most research has been published within the last decade. Robert Alan Brookey and Robert Westerfelhaus were among the first writers to suggest that special features could affect film-viewing, in their 2002 article on the DVD release of Fight Club (dir. David Fincher, 1999). ⁷ The commentary communicates views on the film’s production from certain cast and crew members. ⁸ In 2005, Brookey and Westerfelhaus then made similar conclusions in relation to making-of features. ⁹ Furthermore, they claimed that these views were added to aid promotional activities of filmmakers and production studios. ¹⁰

In support of these findings, both Graeme Harper and John Caldwell explained that the format of most special features is derived from the electronic-press-kit (EPK) format. Such media are used for the promotion of films and television shows by providing pre-recorded interviews, making-of footage and a variety of clips and images to print and broadcast media outlets. ¹¹ As a result, both writers see the possible interactions offered to audiences by the DVD medium as pre-determined by the commercial aims of filmmakers and production companies. In 2006, Barbara Klinger came to a similar conclusion, and stated that DVDs disguised their commercial purpose by presenting their extras as “trivia” and “insider knowledge”. ¹² Despite this evidence, the appeal of these commercially-rooted extras does not seem to be dwindling, as argued by Nicola J Evans within her analysis of particular DVD box-sets in 2010. ¹³

What can be seen from this overview is that much DVD research does not go beyond revealing the commercial aims of the filmmakers and production studios. Hight’s work from 2005 is not only illustrative of these conclusions, but also details how he found these commercial aims within making-of documentaries (MODs). ¹⁴ Making-ofs frequently appear on certain types of releases, such as the special extended DVD editions of The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) films. ¹⁵ Though these discs are exceptional due to the volume of material that they contain, Hight finds them to be limited in their scope. He states that “the pattern on special edition DVDs is for MODs to contribute to a complex variety of partial production discourses, all conforming to the broader constraints of the film industry’s efforts to develop DVD as an EPK platform.” ¹⁶ Hight also criticises and evaluates his own methodology, which is based on four proposed steps for studying making-ofs and other special features. ¹⁷ They assess:

1. the nature of the content of each MOD segment

2. the possible combinations of MODs as part of trajectories, shaped through by the disc’s interface, through the DVD’s content

3. the relationship these extras have with the feature film as central parts of a complex layering of possible readings of this text (from the suspension of disbelief inherent to a reading of the film, to the detailed presentation of the industrial techniques behind the creation of that fictional narrative)

4. the relationship with other extras, with their own combinations of narrative and database forms. ¹⁸

The last point helps highlight the basis from which Hight developed his perspective, leading to his evaluation of his approach.

Hight draws on the work of Brookey and Westerfelhaus, and media scholar Lev Manovich, to argue that making-ofs can offer additional narratives and interpretations of a film, or a film’s production, ultimately suggesting such extras act as “interpretive frames”. ¹⁹ However, other concepts are needed to demonstrate how this is possible within DVD media. Manovich argues that all digital media (CD-ROMs, websites, compute games, etc) are structured as databases, from which various types of text or audio-visual media can be accessed. ²⁰ While this helpfully fits with the example of DVD menus, from which both the film and extras are accessed, it does not explain what order these databases take. Though Manovich himself later used narrative as an explanation, Hight’s combination of database and interpretive frames allowed him to form his methodology through the four steps cited above. As a result, the purposes of the special features can be investigated.

Utilising these steps means that individual segments within the making-of features and other extras can be closely analysed. In addition, any potential links between them that could provide an additional or alternate interpretation of a film’s narrative, or its production, can be identified. Hight believes that DVD can offer audiences new ways of interacting with cinematic texts, and seems to be searching for these potential interactions. However, in his analysis he claims to reveal that the making-of is simply another means of commercial promotion for a film text and the film industry overall, as a particular film studio or production company ultimately controls the construction of DVD extras. Hight also claims that more work is needed to develop an appropriate methodology that can find out how the consumption of films is affected by the “language” of DVD media. ²¹

In actuality, Hight’s method and conclusion help illustrate an additional perspective within DVD media research. This is especially the case when the LOTR article is taken into account with other work from both before and after 2005. In 2004, Deborah and Mark Parker suggested that the intentions of film directors can be found through DVD commentaries. ²² Along with other “supplementary materials” (e.g. extras), the DVD re-orientates the viewing experience of a film, making the disc release a new “edition” of a film. ²³ And similarly, in 2007, Rayna Denison claimed that a DVD does not simply present a text and extratextual materials, but acts as a “multitext”, meaning that it has: “…competing yet combined narratives, any of which potentially impacts on and changes the meaning of the others depending on which features audience members engage with.” ²⁴ Even if it is a fact that DVD extras originate from material originally used for the promotion of a film, they still provide a means of interacting with a film other than through its narrative. It is necessary to chart these discursive patterns, because audiences may not watch all the extras on a DVD (as suggested by both Hight and Denison), ²⁵ and different extras and menus may accompany varying DVD editions of films (as suggested by Parker and Parker). ²⁶ Hight does argue that all the LOTR making-ofs similarly promote different aspects of the films’ production, but he also finds that there are two separate discursive patterns within them. There is both an assertion of the films’ authenticity (as adaptations of the original books by JRR Tolkien), and the sophistication of the digital technologies used in their production. ²⁷

Hight’s methodical steps can therefore be adjusted in order to investigate the purposes of other extras. The following steps are proposed for the analysis of DVD extras in general, and not just for making-of features. This would involve assessing:

1. the nature of the content of each extra;

2. the possible combinations of extras as part of trajectories, shaped by the disc’s interface, through the DVD’s content;

3. the relationship these extras have with the feature film as central parts of a complex layering of possible readings of this text (from the suspension of disbelief inherent to a reading of the film, to the detailed presentation of the industrial techniques behind the creation of that fictional narrative);

4. the relationship they have with other extras.

A further step could be added for the comparison of different DVD editions of a particular film, as suggested by Parker and Parker’s research. But, in the case study for this article, the 4Digital Asia discs are often the first (or only) instances where the stage greeting footage appears on English-language DVD releases of Japanese films. And, as will be demonstrated by applying the first step to the 4Digital Asia releases, the stage greetings are evidently the most prolific extra on these discs. They are essentially re-circulated promotional material from a film’s theatrical release in Japan. But the DVD of Death Note: L Change The World will show that the stage greetings features give additional information and viewing material to audiences. And, in the case of 4Digital Asia’s DVDs, this is an exclusive viewing experience. 4Digital Asia manages to promote its own releases by providing additional footage that cannot be found on another disc available with English subtitles. If the stage greetings are seen as promotional material for the DVD distributor, their purpose can be revealed. The 4Digital Asia DVD of Death Note: L Change The World acts as an appropriate case study. It contains an extensive range of special features, as well as various types of stage greetings features, which are found on several other 4Digital Asia releases.

Stage Greetings: The Promotion of Stars, Companies, Media and DVD Labels

Death Note: L Change The World (DNL) is the third live-action film within the multimedia Death Note franchise. ²⁸ It stars Matsuyama Kenichi, who reprises his role as the lead character from the previous two films: the mysterious detective named L. The earlier films involved a cat-and-mouse-style battle-of-wits between L and Light. Light (played by Fujiwara Tatsuya) is a student who gains possession of a notebook that can kill anyone whose name is written in it. The resolution of this narrative leads to L’s death after a certain number of days, and the third film places the character within another mystery that has to be solved before his time runs out. The first two films are based on the same story, which was originally written for a Japanese comic (manga); then adapted into an animated television show (anime); before being adapted into two films in 2006 (with the third being released in 2008). 4Digital Asia released the first two Death Note films for the UK audience, as well as the third film, on DVD in 2008. ²⁹ The special features on the DNL DVD refer to the same context of manga and anime origins, despite the film having a separate storyline. Alongside the anecdotes from the cast and crew of the film, the DNL stage greetings particularly provide reference to the manga and anime context, and other additional information. Their content will now be examined to ascertain the potential purposes of the extras.

The first step proposed for analysing DVD extras states that the nature of the content for each extra should be assessed. Charting the extras’ content helps illustrate how often the stage greetings features appear on the second disc of the DNL DVD. As with many DVD releases, the stage greetings and other features are found on a second disc separate from the film. Before detailing the content of each extra, it is necessary to provide a brief list of the disc’s contents. This usually accompanies the film’s synopsis on 4Digital Asia’s webpages (within the 4Digital Media website), as well as retailers’ websites, and the DVD case itself: ³⁰

A similar synopsis appears on 4Digital Asia’s webpages: ‘Death Note L Change The World’, 4Digital Media website, accessed 27/12/2012.[/ref]

1. a making-of feature (entitled ‘A Slice of “L Change The World”’);

2. trailers and TV Spots; ³¹

3. an interview with Matsuyama Kenichi;

4. footage from the Production Wrap Press Conference; ³²

5. footage from the Asia Promotion Campaign (Jump Fest 2007);

6. footage from the film’s Gala Premiere in Japan;

7. footage from the film’s Opening Day Stage Greetings in Tokyo;

8. footage from the Japan Tour (the film’s openings in different cities);

9. and an image gallery (of stills from the film and its production).

Despite being given separate titles, the features numbered 5, 6, 7 and 8 all share traits with each other. They each contain the basic characteristics of stage greetings extras, found on the DNL DVD and other 4Digital Asia DVDs. Though other discs may entitle the extras as ‘Japanese Premiere Stage Greetings’, ‘Opening Day Stage Greetings’, or ‘Press Conference’, the footage used is very similar. Such extras appear on over half of the DVDs released by 4Digital Asia, ³³ and often more than once. ³⁴ The DNL DVD has the highest number of instances of this type of footage within its extras, and all bear many resemblances to the extra entitled ‘Gala Premiere.’

In this extra, the main cast are introduced before the film’s premiere in Tokyo. Several of them sign flyers of the film’s poster that are to be handed out to the crowds. The cast then await the arrival of Matsuyama and the director, Nakata Hideo. After a brief greeting, the attendees are ushered into the room where the film is to be screened, and the cast eventually walk out on to the stage in front of the screen. Matsuyama is the first to ascend the stage, and does so after walking through the audience and greeting fans and signing autographs. After the fans thank Matsuyama, and chant the film’s title, the cast and director leave the stage, and are briefly seen talking together as they leave the building. The footage allows the viewers to share in the premiere attendees’ experiences, by having the cameras record footage from their point of view. But they also follow the cast and crew to document their perspectives.

The ‘Stage Greetings’, ‘Japan Tour’ and ‘Campaign’ extras all include footage resembling many of these scenes. Most parallels are found in scenes where the cast and crew stand in front of a cinema’s audience and greet them from the stage in front of the screen. The main differences from the ‘Gala Premiere’ extra are in their locations. The ‘Stage Greetings’ extra documents corresponding events happening across Tokyo, as certain members of the cast and crew travel from one cinema to the next in one evening, because of the city’s high number of cinemas. The ‘Japan Tour’ shows equivalent events happening during a tour of Japanese cities. And the ‘Campaign’ extra documents similar events taking place in other East Asian countries – namely, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Though other cast and crew members may vary, Matsuyama is always present at each event that is recorded. In comparison to all other 4Digital Asia DVDs, Kaiji (dir. Sato Toya, 2009) is the only disc that includes similar footage of a promotional tour of Asian countries for a Japanese film. In all other instances where the stage greetings are presented as a DVD extra, the film screening is almost always taking place at a single venue. But the format of these events is virtually identical, despite any potential change in location that can occur.

The different types of stage greeting extra that appear on the DNL DVD give an idea of the various ways in which it is categorised, as well as its basic traits. However, there is one other way in which this footage appears on the 4Digital Asia DVDs, which the DNL features disc also illustrates. Within the DNL making-of, footage is shown from some of the film premieres and other live events that are documented in the stage greetings extras. The making-ofs for Kaiji and the 20^th Century Boys trilogy (dir. Tsutsumi Yukihiko, 2008-2009) also include similar footage. And the stage greetings can also be incorporated into other extras. The DVD of X-Cross (dir. Fukasaku Kenta, 2007) contains an interview with certain cast members, and it is preceded by a brief clip of the cast participating in stage greetings before the film’s premiere. These examples of stage greetings crossing over with other features help illustrate how regularly this type of footage is found on UK DVDs of Japanese films.

With the example of the DNL DVD, it has become clear that the stage greetings frequently appear alongside making-ofs, interviews, trailers, still images, and other types of DVD special feature. This has shown what DVD extras appear on these discs, and how often the stage greetings footage appears within them. The menu for the second disc in the DNL DVD release (listed earlier) indicates that the extras can be viewed separately, or altogether if chosen to be viewed one after another (or in another order entirely). The menu list also illustrates that the stage greetings extras are usually found after others, such as making-ofs and trailers. But interrelations between the types of extras have also been made clear, and examining them further is necessary in the analysis of the DNL DVD. They will demonstrate how the stage greetings footage acts as viewing material recycled from a film’s promotion, as well as what purpose this fulfils.

The prominence of Matsuyama was particularly evident within the ‘Gala Premiere’ extra, and he appears regularly in many of the other DNL DVD extras. Though the event has been put together for the promotion of a particular film, the events surrounding Matsuyama make it clear that there is additional significance to his presence. Particular emphasis is placed on the central character of L – through the flyers and posters, the film’s title, the chanting by the audience, as well as ‘L’ symbols made by the hands of the cast while they are on stage. L is not only a link that DNL has to the previous two Death Note films, which were hugely popular in Japan. ³⁵ The character was one of the most popular aspects of the earlier films, and Matsuyama seems to be one of the reasons for this. A huge cheer greets him as he arrives with Nakata, and again when he signs autographs in the screening room. Matsuyama may be helping to promote a certain film in this instance, but he has no qualms about using the premiere to enhance his star persona. The dual promotional purpose of the stage greetings is more implicit alongside the other DNL extras. In other Japanese cities, and other East Asian countries, fans in attendance at the stage-centred events are as excited to see the lead actor as they are to see the new film. 4Digital Asia gives an insight into how popular Matsuyama is, in a similar way to media coverage in magazines and television programmes.

However, equally important influences on the content of the DNL extras are the companies financing the film’s production, which are also prominent within the DVD’s extras. There is a conglomeration of media production companies within the film’s credits, and they are collectively titled as ‘L Film Partners’. ³⁶ Some have control over certain activities, such as the theatrical distribution and events surrounding the film’s release. The ‘Gala Premiere’ extra shows organisers of the event issuing instructions to the cast of the film before they walk out on to the red carpet and the cinema stage. When viewed in conjunction with the other extras on the DNL disc, it becomes clear that these organisers are acting on behalf of Warner Bros – one of the film’s production companies, and the film’s theatrical distributor. The company is credited in the film’s theatrical trailers (another DVD extra), and is revealed to own several cinemas in Tokyo which feature in both the ‘Press Conference’ and ‘Stage Greetings’ features. ³⁷ 4Digital Asia is happy to promote Warner Bros’ actions indirectly, as they provide additional viewing material for their DVD releases.

What the features reveal altogether is that many of them are taken from events used to promote the film’s theatrical release. The footage within the special features can support the conclusions of studies of DVD extras that claim they are promotional material, and demonstrate that they provide UK viewers with extra information. As material used for a film’s promotion, the extras reveal what events and paraphernalia can be used to boost a film’s publicity in Japan. Stage greetings are revealed to be a useful promotional resource for the theatrical release of a film, as they can accompany a film’s premiere, as well as a more localised event in multiple cities or countries (which are all documented on the DNL DVD). International film companies, such as Warner Bros, not only accommodate these events within their operations, but seem to have provided premises in Japan explicitly for them. The events documented on the DNL DVD are publicising the release of a specific film, and can allow stars to promote themselves to their fans. These companies are promoting their own activities and resources, in a similar fashion to particular media properties (e.g. specific films and their stars). 4Digital Asia therefore provides another insight into these activities that the premiere attendees are not necessarily aware of, which is exclusive to viewers of the DNL DVD.

Furthermore, another facet of publicity material re-used for a DVD release can be the indirect promotion of interrelated media. The earlier Death Note films are constantly mentioned in all the DNL DVD extras, including the ‘Gala Premiere’. Before the cast do greet the audience on-stage, they briefly meet the director of the previous two films, Kaneko Shusuke, who has been invited to the premiere. And it is not just the earlier films which are an important part of the promotion of DNL. The third film’s theatrical trailers constantly refer back to the popularity of the first two films, as well as the original manga and their anime adaptation. While this could simply be argued as the re-use of a strategy employed in the marketing of the previous Death Note films, it provides an additional context for viewers of the 4Digital Asia DVD of DNL. Though trailers for DNL are a selectable extra on the DVD, others are automatically presented on its first disc. In contrast to any other 4Digital Asia release, trailers for the first two Death Note films are consecutively displayed before the DVD menu screen can be seen. And, as stated earlier, the context of the original manga and anime adaptation are also referred to within these trailers. Even if UK viewers simply use the DNL DVD to watch the film, 4Digital Asia exposes them to promotional material that emphasises its origins in other media texts. The stage greetings then continue to emphasise the manga and anime context in conjunction with the trailers and other special features.

Within the analysis of the DNL DVD extras, several findings have been made. In essence, these special features can simply be interpreted as re-used promotional material, but that implies that they can simply be understood by uniform characteristics. Even though great attention has been paid to the stage greetings footage, the analysis has shown the different formats it appears in. The extras have the capacity to provide extra information about a specific film and its place within popular culture – either through its lead actor, its production company, or its links to other media texts. The extras promote these individual aspects as much as the film titled on the DVD disc, and help illustrate the special features’ interrelations. The vital role in presenting all this material to UK DVD viewers is particularly evident – that of the DVD distributor.

DVD Distributors and Their Intentions

Actions taken by distribution companies to distinguish and shape DVD releases are usually overlooked within DVD research. But allusions to them have been made. For example, Hight claims that special edition discs are useful to study as they contain a multitude of features. ³⁸ Caldwell claims that companies can, and often, release a special edition DVD following the release of a disc with no extras to maximise profits. ³⁹ Parker and Parker’s earlier work supports these claims, and goes further by stating that each DVD of a film “constitutes a new edition, and it should be seen in those terms.” ⁴⁰ Ultimately, the research of Denison clearly outlines that the DVD is an opportunity “in which the makers can put back or reemphasize missed or missing genre parts.” ⁴¹ Though Denison is using DVD to discuss media genre, her conclusion does imply that DVD can allow different aspects of media texts to be emphasised within different disc releases. Following these points, and the analysis of the DNL extras, it is becomes clear that their purpose is ultimately to highlight the actions of the DVD distributor. They are responsible for creating an exclusive viewing experience on their discs, and not one that is simply re-circulated for home consumption on behalf of the filmmakers and production companies.

Parker and Parker hint at this conclusion, in stating that each DVD release for a film is a different edition of it. With DVD, this is often the physical reality. It is especially the case with international film distribution, as a separate company is often employed by filmmakers to release a film in a foreign country. ⁴² Different distributors do not just offer varieties of packaging, subtitles, audio-tracks and marketing strategies for different countries. ⁴³ They can provide a whole different viewing experience within their DVD – through both the extras’ contents and their links to the central film text. The DNL disc provides a further illustration which clarifies this point. 4Digital Asia has exclusive licence rights for disseminating the material on DVD within the UK. ⁴⁴ Similar or alternate material must be negotiated for release from the filmmakers for DVDs distributed in other countries. Therefore, while the USA release of DNL (by Viz Media) contains similar behind-the-scenes and interview content, it also has contrasting features, such as audio commentaries and a dub-track for the film’s dialogue. ⁴⁵ The audio commentary for the DNL film could provide information that is similar to that found in the 4Digital Asia DVD extras. However, it is delivered in a different format, and provides a different viewing experience from the UK DVD. And these exclusive extras indicate a demand which has been recognised by other UK distributors. In 2010, Third Window released the DVD of a Japanese film, Fish Story (dir. Nakamura Yoshihiro, 2009), with a feature that consists of a public performance (in Japan) of the fictional band within the film. Also in 2010, Arrow’s release of Departures (dir. Takita Yojiro, 2008) contained a making-of which documents stage greetings at various premieres and festivals in East Asia. It is true that the availability of this material is determined by the filmmakers and production companies in Japan, but it is ultimately the decision of the distributors as to whether or not it is included on the DVD discs.

In response to the titular question, ‘Who’s Promotional Material Is It Anyway?’, the DVD distributor provides the answer and the discs’ extras represent the evidence. The example of stage greetings has been used as a case study because it is quite clearly footage of a promotional event, but it has not simply been recycled to increase the number of special features on a DVD disc. Using Hight’s method of assessing DVD extras, and adjusting its perspective, it has been argued that the stage greetings demonstrate a type of special feature that indirectly promotes its subject matter. And that does not mean the film text alone – it can relate to cast and crew members, production companies, and other interrelated media. Therefore, the question that entitles this article can be given a plural answer, as there are multiple promotional intentions. But it is perhaps discussion of the distribution company which is most illuminating in regards to the purposes of the DVD extras. After all, the composition of the discs’ content is central to DVD distribution, and yet it has often been overlooked in earlier research of DVD discs. Distribution may not always be separate from other processes in the film industry, though it is a major industrial process in itself. Choices made by a DVD distributor affect the appeal of a film, or other media text, as much as other means of promotion. In essence, 4Digital Asia is disseminating promotional material with the intention of it providing a viewing experience, suggesting it is as worthwhile to watch as the films the sub-label distributes.

Jonathan Wroot is a PhD student and Associate Tutor at the University of East Anglia. His thesis, entitled The distribution and marketing of Japanese films on DVD in the UK, is due for completion in September 2013. He has taught undergraduate courses for analysing film and television, as well as postgraduate seminars on Japanese cinema. He has also presented numerous papers on topics related to his thesis at Coventry, London, Manchester and St. Andrews.