Sex Does Not Always Sell
Which reminds me of what I read yesterday:
The Media: A World of Hits
1.When they tell you that they can't cast minority actors because the audience doesn't know them? They are lying to you.
2. If stars are not reliable movie money generators, and if sexuality does not necessarily bring in the money either, is there any chance that Hollywood would up the ratio of actors to pretty people who can't act, and stop flaunting women's bodies in my face in lieu of a plot? To point where James Cameron is sexualizing freaking ALIENS?!?!!?
The message we always hear is sex sells, especially at the movies. A new report Sex Doesn’t Sell — Nor Impress by Anemone Cerridwen and Dean Keith Simonton refutes that claim. The report studied 914 mainstream Hollywood films(and their box office domestically and overseas, critical appraisal and awards) from 2001-2005, and found that in contrast to most of the Hollywood thinking “sex and nudity do not, on the average, boost box office performance, earn critical acclaim, or win major awards.” The study was recently published in the Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts journal.
Well, that sure throws a wrench into the conventional wisdom which has been that sex, sexuality and nudity are vital for box office success. Yet, according to Simonton preconceived notions are hard to break even with data:
…I was struck by how hard it is to overcome preconceptions about the box-office consequences of highly graphic sexual content…It seems that this whole thing was started by the righteous anger of a woman, the co-author Anemone Cerridwen who, when taking acting classes felt that the type of roles women she had to play made her very uncomfortable. (Guess it’s a good thing she became a researcher and left the acting to others.) But still, she wanted to know what the story was, why women’s roles are so sexualized, and spent many years crunching numbers. Here's some of her analysis
Which reminds me of what I read yesterday:
The Media: A World of Hits
Of all creative media enterprises, Hollywood is the most confident of its ability to predict demand. Film studios carry out rigorous audience research and adjust production and marketing budgets according to the size of the group they are targeting. The studios have learned that stars are much less reliable generators of profits than films based on known characters and stories. That is why, in August, Disney agreed to pay $4 billion for Marvel Entertainment, a veteran comic-book and media firm that had filed for bankruptcy protection in the mid-1990s.MORE
1.When they tell you that they can't cast minority actors because the audience doesn't know them? They are lying to you.
2. If stars are not reliable movie money generators, and if sexuality does not necessarily bring in the money either, is there any chance that Hollywood would up the ratio of actors to pretty people who can't act, and stop flaunting women's bodies in my face in lieu of a plot? To point where James Cameron is sexualizing freaking ALIENS?!?!!?