Custom doughnuts and subliminal messaging: How excessive marketing ruined the validity of awards season
I recently found myself wandering around a perfume store in central London before noticing an obtrusive marketing display in the corner for A Complete Unknown. I was completely baffled by the relevance of such an advert and so asked the shop assistant whether Bob Dylan had worn their scents, to which they said that the singer hadn’t, but Timothée Chalamet had at the London premiere of the film. And with this, I present to you the sole reason why A Complete Unknown has been nominated for eight Oscars, despite being the most average film I’ve seen this year.
In recent years, the business of filmmaking has become dependent on the marketing circus that accompanies its release, with awards ceremonies now being a showcase of the films with the highest marketing budgets, not those of high artistic merit. If we’re looking at it objectively, the only aspect of A Complete Unknown that deserves critical recognition is the performance of the lead actors, with an impressive portrayal of Dylan by Chalamet that is rightfully recognised. However, every other aspect of the film is completely mediocre and unmotivated, with a hollow story that roughly charts his fame in the most uninspiring way as the gigs slowly become bigger and he becomes increasingly insufferable and bland. The film becomes slightly offensive in how inoffensive it is, especially given the lack of self-awareness from the director on who Dylan actually was and the many stories that point towards the fact that he’s actually a bit of an asshole.
However, let us not forget that a crucial factor in the film’s success – the studio behind it that has put an absurd level of funding into the marketing, creating an inescapable and borderline manipulative campaign that convinces us that it is revolutionary and completely worthy of our time. Through the subtle brainwashing of constant advertising that is even present in perfume shops and doughnut flavours (yep, Crosstown created a Bob Dylan doughnut), audiences are being manipulated of the value of a film before they’ve even seen it, with people going into the cinema with an already warped view of what they are about to see because of the omnipresent marketing campaign that has told them it’s a ‘work of genius’. We are told how to feel about something before even seeing it, and because of the alarming Decline of critical thinking and our susceptibility to subliminal messaging, we usually believe it. After seeing some excessively positive reviews of the film on Letterboxd, I found myself thinking, did we all watch the same film?
But the Oscars didn’t always work this way, and sadly, we have one man, in particular, to thank for the rise of this trend and the bizarre connection between a film’s marketing campaign and its success during awards season. This only leaves smaller projects and independent films in an impossible spot to be recognised with only a tiny fraction of the same budget that essentially pays people to vote for their film.
After launching Miramax (the studio that merged commercial and independent filmmaking to focus on mid-budget films), Bob and Harvey Weinstein noticed that they were struggling to compete with bigger studios during awards seasons. It was because of this that the now disgraced producer created the idea of Oscar campaigning, in which he allocated a higher budget towards the marketing and organised creative ways to advertise the project that verges on bullying. Mark Gill, the president of Miramax, described Weinstein’s marketing campaigns as “hand-to-hand combat” that took the form of non-stop screenings, parties and publicity stunts.
Actors were required to be available for long periods after the film finished shooting in case they were needed for these campaigns. Daniel Day-Lewis was asked to go to Congress for My Left Foot and talk to American citizens about disabilities. More recently, for The Favourite, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the producers sent actors in period costumes to deliver cakes to film critics, with the film subsequently winning Olivia Coleman an Oscar for ‘Best Actress’. Gill described the intense commotion of the Miramax marketing campaigns, saying, “We used to joke that working at Miramax was like working at a tiny labour camp with a nice lobby.”
Within a more insidious vein of these tactics, Weinstein would also organise negative press campaigns and trash talk other films, beginning this tactic in 1997 when Shakespeare in Love famously won over Saving Private Ryan, which many people attribute to his bullying tactics and frantic PR campaign. Despite attracting some controversy, this later became a marketing model that has been adopted by many studios, with A Complete Unknown being a perfect reflection of this.
With increasingly negative press around The Brutalist and its use of AI during post-production, which was initially considered a top contender for ‘Best Picture’, some people are speculating as to whether this headline could have been planted by one of the other Oscar nominees (namely the team behind the fabled biopic), which wouldn’t be the first time in which a studio has manipulated the press to benefit their higher-budget picture. If the film wins an Oscar, then the film has essentially paid for itself, and then the cycle continues for their next mediocre project.
This incessant new approach towards marketing obliterates any other film that doesn’t have the benefit of studio funding, giving them an unfair step ahead that has nothing to do with the creative value of the project. If you compare the boundary-breaking genius of I Saw The TV Glow with the vanilla glaze of boredom that permeates every scene in A Complete Unknown, there is one that clearly trumps the other. The studios that do this reveal their true intentions with filmmaking, showing that profit and external validation are more important than integrity and true creative innovation, motivated by clout and critical attention instead of honest storytelling.
Independent films do not have the benefit of using psychological warfare and inescapable subliminal messaging to essentially purchase awards, boost box office sales and therefore make a higher profit. Because of this, we will only continue to see truly creative films and emerging filmmakers be wiped out by average stories that succeed not by merit, but through conveniently placed adverts in perfume stores and custom doughnuts.
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