A film is part of culture. A film with guns that are used by the protagonists to achieve their goals, goals with which the audience agrees, is part of gun culture. I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.
so, Saving Private Ryan is “gun culture”???
Is this correct? Aren’t there already various advertising restrictions tied to alcohol and tobacco? How come the 1st doesn’t apply to them?
Bond movies frequently identify his weapon as a Walther PPK. stated above, they are paid to do so.
I think I’d have a hard time trusting any documentary that couldn’t mention a basic fact about an event. The documentary Kalashnikov, released in 2020, about the inventor of the AK-47 and other firearms would be very difficult to tell without mentioning the AK-47.
Babale said that they’d ban any mention of a real life firearm in motion pictures which is a little more restrictive than the current tobacco ban. And while I’m not lawyer or constitutional scholar, I do believe there’s a big difference between commercial and political speech. Making it illegal for gun manufacturers to pay film studios to feature their products is a bit different from telling film producers they can’t mention any real life gun product in their film. It’s a restriction on political speech.
Indeed… what if there’s no placement? What if the filmmaker just says, well, this film involves the NYPD in 2018 and the NYPD service firearm of 2018 is a Glock 17 so the star will be shown using a Glock 17 (or lookalike)?
BTW and this has been brought up before, you can always do a film featuring gunplay where you just use “generic guns” that only the biggest geekboy freeze-framing on an HD screen will be able to name the maker or point out are mere “stage” guns. And both AR15 or AKM pattern rifles are long ago out of patent, so there’s a hundred makers from which the studio could buy something the average layman can’t tell apart from the OG GI version of either, and they would not need to mention or display what maker or model it is.
(aside)
Looking at both those sites I observe though that they mention brands that appear but not details of actual placement payment BY Walther. Heck, the PPK was in the book canon of Bond before it became a hit movie series. Now, surely, once it became a series of big worldwide hits, ya betcha some contracts were negotiated so things could stay smooth between companies.
But the Bond series is kind of a mixed oddball here – in the early books there was a lot of international brand name dropping just as a way for Fleming to signal worldly sophistication to the mass readership (and that reminds us of a time when ordering Gordon’s gin and Smirnoff vodka [the original spirits in the Vesper-tini] was considered sophisticated, vis-a-vis Calvert or Seagram’s or whatever rail crap your local bar had). As the movies became hits you did begin getting proper paid product placement.
I also notice one of the pages puzzlingly points to Smith & Wesson as a product placement in Dr. No, when the brand is mentioned only once in passing in the context of its wielder’s failure, while totally obviating the glowing review of the PPK at the start of the film that sets the stage for 60 years.
(/aside)
It’s an interesting idea but do you have any real examples of product placement? Otherwise it’s going to fall into the category of security theater. Because I don’t think there’s any link to the gun used and the intent of the killer.
But lets extend the thought out a bit. What if violence itself was addressed in media portrayal. Cigarettes are pretty much gone in TV portrayal. what if guns were removed from TV in the same manner.
Are you defining any mention of a specific type of gun as an “ad?” Because that seems overbroad.
I have a bigger problem with politicians pocketing millions in donations from the NRA and gun manufacturers than film producers.
As I say, media glorifying guns exists everywhere. But politicians trying every rhetorical trick to shill for the gun companies and ensure teens can buy assault rifles is a uniquely american thing.
Nope, and I certainly think that documentaries should be allowed to discuss guns even if we put limits on works of fiction glorifying them. But the person I was responding to seemed to struggle with such “nuance” so I didn’t get into it.
“Teens” includes eighteen and nineteen, who are considered legal adults in many states. This imho is emblematic of the juvenilization of American society, where seventeen year-old gang members murdering each other are referred to as “children”.
The constitutionality of such bans is questionable, and guns have much larger popular support than tobacco does, so I’d expect such a ban to be struck down by the courts, if it didn’t just get repealed the next time the Republican party is in power.
It may be worth noting that the restrictions on tobacco advertising were achieved via a “voluntary” settlement with the tobacco companies:
[I think we’re still in Fair Use territory ??]
One presumes a similar deal would have to be made in the OP in order for it to pass 1stA muster.
Which would present challenges all of its own, to be sure.
I didn’t use the word “children” though, I accurately used the word “teens”.
And it is quite consistent with, say, the prohibition on drinking before 21. The point being that even if you’re considered an adult your cohort is considered too high a risk (e.g. for drink driving) for society at this time.
Full disclosure: I’m not necessarily in favor of the drinking age being as high as 21 but I am in favor of the age of adulthood – which remember is arbitrary – varying slightly for different activities in recognition of how humans develop and the relative risks for society.
The age of adulthood depends on whether the purpose is for rights, or for punishment.
Fair enough.
The Feds can restrict broadcast TV and radio. But most of the restrictions came from a series of lawsuits etc, after it was found that Big Tobacco knowingly and willfully knew and concealed that fact that smoking causes lung cancer. So, to avoid some of the worst penalties, the Tobacco companies agreed to some concessions.
Right.
IIRC the Gun lobby is something like down in the 100’s of lobbies that donate the most. Not in the top 20, in any case-
Pharma and Medicine are up there.
Sure, and they are all a problem IMO. I think this kind of legalized bribery is foundational to many of the issues that America currently faces, and I am a supporter of the Wolf PAC amendment (or something like it).
I can’t argue there. But the gun lobby is peanuts in comparison.
Note those numbers is why Sanders silly MFA plan was doomed from the start, and he had to know it.
I’ll put aside the “silly” as it will take us off-topic.
But I think that just looking at the total donation sizes might give a misleading picture. The gun lobby largely has what they want, including stuff like the Dickey Amendment which put guns in quite a privileged position. So the gun manufacturers just need to pay off a handful of craven senators like Cruz to maintain the status quo.
Meanwhile with pharma; new drugs and therapeutics are developed all the time in an industry which is around 20x bigger than the gun manufacturers. It’s beneficial to grease a lot of wheels, in every state in the country.
As I say though, I’d rather it was all thrown out of politics, so I am not trying to defend anything, just giving further context.