Idolator
Record sales are pretty bad right now, right? And sometimes no matter how much you pimp yourself to the media to get the word out about your project, your numbers are still gonna suck. But then Britney's Blackout and American Gangster (with an all-important 10 minutes of T.I. screen time) come out and dominate the sales charts. Frustrating! So maybe musicians would be better off turning themselves into narcotized deadbeat moms? Or going out and getting themselves a federal weapons charge? MTV and Entertainment Weekly writer Margeaux Watson think yes!
And fortunately for Jive Records, Britney's the type of superstar who doesn't need to go the traditional route when it comes to promoting a project. "She has a built-in audience that's enormous and she sells herself," Watson said. "She's like, 'Why do I have to do an interview? You're gonna write about me anyway.' So it's unnecessary, and it's kind of lucky for a record label that they don't have to spend the money on promotion. It's kind of a win-win situation for all." Even if Jive had wanted to mount an extensive promotional campaign, it would have been impossible because Britney has just not made herself available to them — but with Britney, every time she steps out of her house, that's a public appearance.
So what about the bazillions of musicians without a "built-in audience that's enormous"? Still, at least that makes sense in this particular instance—woman who's been "dominating" the news cycle shifts mad units through a mix of spin and luck—even if it does yet again underscore the sad fact that no one shifts mad units anymore on the back of the music, at least without a compelling (or horrifying) media tie-in. But the article's second assertion, that Universal is using T.I.'s arrest to subliminally promote American Gangster, makes a little less... okay, it makes no sense.
"The one scene that he's in is basically what they keep showing in the commercials," Watson points out. "It almost seems like they're trying to play up the fact that, 'Here's this guy who's in hot legal water, and now he's in this movie "American Gangster" and he's telling [Denzel's character], "I wanna be just like you, Uncle Frank." ' So it almost seems like they're trying to play that up and capitalize on it."
And though no one can know for certain whether Watson's theory worked, "American Gangster" did open at #1 at the box office.
Huh? Or maybe it's a well-promoted movie with two high-profile leading hunks and a Jay-Z tie-in, plus the fact that America doesn't really need its arm twisted to go see people blow each other away? Or maybe the commercials (and trailers!) were cut months before T.I.'s arrest? Or maybe judging by T.I.'s sales this year he needs do as much promotional work as he can? (T.I. Vs. T.I.P. didn't exactly see a monster spike after he got busted.) And his record label would probably rather have him around to do interviews than forcibly stuck at home playing Xbox. Since "crazy drugged-out broad" and "dude on house arrest" are such surefire money-makers.
Comments
I wouldn't be so quick to write off the criminal angle. After all- you don't see american Gangster flaunting Fab Five Freddy's role in the flick.
American Gangster, to me, is all about selling itself to young, dumb, hood kids who think that Scarface is not a tale of a downfall due to being a sociopath, but a cool-ass movie because the guy makes money and kills people. The fact that Ridley, Crowe, and Denzel even signed on to this bullshit movie has made me lose major respect for them.
Just what we need: more legitimization and glorifying of drug-dealing killers.
And that Jay-Z album fucking sucks.
@Aquemini: Hey, "American Gangster" may be channeling movies like "The Godfather" and "Once Upon a Time In America" but to say that it's going to go out inspire "dumb hood kids" to use your oh-so-eloquent turn of phrase is an absurd conclusion to draw. First of all, the movie does a pretty good job depicting how awful heroin is, and how much it - and Frank Lucas' wide-scale distribution - helped contribute to the continued economic distress of 1970s Harlem. Besides, I'm not sure that any sane person would walk out of that movie saying, "Oh, I wanna be Frank Lucas." And as for T.I.'s character...well, let's just say he doesn't come out of it either.
Romanticism in gangster movies has always been a problem - particularly in the campy mess that was "Scarface" - and "American Gangster" sinks in to that on occasion. If anything, though, "American Gangster" and Ridley Scott do a much better job painting the mafia as the criminals they are, then Scorcese and dare-I-say-it, Coppola ever did. That doesn't mean Coppola and Scorcese didn't make great movies - they did - but it's ridiculous to imply that "American Gangster" is going to up the crime rate.
@Aquemini:
I hear ya, Aquemini. "American Gangster" is meant for the same knuckleheads strutting around in "Scarface" jackets emblazoned with the words "Power, Money, Respect" on the sleeve. (Which I saw some young idiot wearing downtown last week. Depressing.)
@WhosWho: go spend a year in an inner city public school and then we;ll talk, buddy.
@DaeSu: exactly.
@WhosWho: Plus, I didn't say it would up the crime rate, i am just saying it legitimizes the already abhorrent ideals that kids i dealt with everyday carry: namely, that killing people and running drugs is okay, and even glamorous.
@Aquemini: Uh, I went to one "buddy", so howabout we not make snap judgments about crap we don't understand.
@Aquemini: And I really don't think it does. Which is, I guess, something we're just going to disagree on. If anyone is to blame for the glamorization of gangster behavior, it's marketers who pander to it, not so much the films themselves. The whole Scarface phenomena is probably a better example than "American Gangster" because there has been an entire marketing campaign around emulating Al Pacino's scenery-chewing bad-assedness. Why this is, who the hell knows, because the movie is totally absurd. Personally, I think it's because Scorcese spent so much time pandering to the "isn't blowing shit up on screen cool" part of the story, and not as much to the "would you really want to be Al Pacino" part.
Honestly, I really don't think "American Gangster" does that at all. Its anti-drug bent is pretty evident from the get-go, and the gangsters certainly don't triumph. What it failed to do, I think - or could have done a lot better, anyway - was stress the racism that allowed Frank Lucas (in a twisted way) to get as far as he did, and how this in itself was another prime example of white apathy towards problems in Harlem.
The fault I find with American Gangster isn't that it's reinforcing the idea that selling drugs is cool. People who do bad things in the movie get the comeuppance they deserve. Rather, I think that it creates too much of a Rebel versus Empire dynamic, which - and you're right here - could possibly encourage some sort of idolization of Frank Lucas the same way it's created an entire sub-culture of Che devotees. But I don't think the movie deliberately pandered to that demographic at all; it's more of a side-effect of trying to make a racial tensions sub-plot fit in to a screen play about the rise and fall of a drug lord.
Sorry, for the length. It's hard to be brief on the subject.
@WhosWho:
Actually, Brian DePalma directed "Scarface."
@DaeSu: Good point. Probably should of looked that up before I got all high-and-mighty. Honestly thought it was a Scorcese movie for some reason, which seems dumb now that you've corrected me.
I stand by my statement about the difference between "American Gangster" and "Scarface" though.
@Paula:
Easy to see why the mix-up happened. While Scorsese in 1983 never would have touched that mess, "Scarface" is exactly the sort of overheated dreck ol' Marty would probably direct now.
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