6 ms·

The Gun Industry's Lucrative Relationship with Hollywood

35 points by endswapper 10y ago

gozur88 10y ago
The article doesn't really support its thesis - that there's a symbiotic relationship between the gun industry and Hollywood. Clearly gun manufacturers benefit from product placement, but it's not at all clear Hollywood benefits from the gun industry except as a place to buy props.
- zasz 10y ago
  I like your point, but Hollywood would be making a lot less money if it took out guns and stuck to people punching each other.
  - bananabill 10y ago
    What makes you say that?
  - eplanit 10y ago
    True. Lengthy sword fights, and western-style bar room brawls each had their day. For me, the final Hollywood punch was thrown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MVMbm6c0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MVMbm6c0k
  - nerfhammer 10y ago
    They would probably just come up with fictional gun designs rather than using molds of or blank-firing versions of commercially produced guns. The average person probably doesn't know and doesn't care whether a prop gun is an imitation of a specific real gun that exists or not.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish. Check the early westerns and such and the guy will seize up and tip over, and that's it. These days they will take flight, either over a bar, table or out a window, from a standstill. Never mind that they love going over the top with sound effects. A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker, and a punch is near silent...
    - slededit 10y ago
      Foley artists have been exaggerating sounds since the '20s (soon I'll have to qualify that with 1920s...). Guns are not the sole source of exaggeration in Hollywood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        I agree, but it is quite often the most outrageous. And they get away with it because so few of the current viewers have had to fire a gun, let along at another human being.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      But people don't just tip over and die in real life. And only the bad guys ever died like that. Protagonists meanwhile were unkillable. Also gunshots are loud enough to require hearing protection at a shooting range, and a punch is also audible, but just higher pitch. What was your point in posting this?
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        The hearing protection is about exposure over time, just as with using power tools etc. As for point, its that Hollywood have given a ever flashier and exaggerated presentation of the effects of guns.
    - knz 10y ago
      > Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish. Agreed but there are also many exceptions to this especially in the military genre (Hacksaw Ridge being the latest example).
    - gozur88 10y ago
      >A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker What? No. Guns are loud. https://youtu.be/7leSF_FE658?t=1m23s https://youtu.be/7leSF_FE658?t=1m23s
vtange 10y ago
This article presents one of those ironies about human society: how as much as we promote working things out without violence, we have that inner craving to just see the good guys to blow the baddies away. It's almost like fast food, in fact. And it's not just movies. You see it in many major video games too. Take Mass Effect for example; You could play as the most loving, all-tolerating paragon character in that game but in the end there are baddies that you have to shoot, not love/tolerate.
- dlss 10y ago
  I don't really see the irony. Humans are pack animals; love/tolerance is for the in-group, cruelty for the out-group. The only people I know who don't match that description are basically lacking an in-group.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- pps43 10y ago
  I would say that video games affect people's choices more than TV or movies. For example, gun ranges usually have Desert Eagle for rent, but not S&W M&P. In real life Desert Eagle is pretty rare because it is completely impractical, while S&W M&P is popular with civilians, police, and competition shooters. But in video games the situation is reversed - gamers know Desert Eagle and ask for it when they come to the range.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    There are many, many films and TV shows starring the Desert Eagle, though: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle Besides, there's a third possibility: that the Desert Eagle is simply a "cooler" weapon than the M&P, and hence chosen by gun ranges users and by film and video game producers for the same reason.
    - pps43 10y ago
      That's partly because M&P hasn't been around that long. Among recent movies (released after 2005 when M&P was created), imfdb lists 10 with DE and 16 with M&P. TV is 11 DE vs. 23 M&P, and video games 9 DE to 1 M&P. So if you think that movies and TV shape demand, you would expect to see more demand for M&P at the ranges. In reality the distribution of guns people ask for at the ranges is a lot closer to what's in video games than in movies/TV. There are many "cool" guns, but if they're not in video games, nobody cares.
tn13 10y ago
Makes no sense to me. Vast numbers of Hollywood stars who build their careers as violent people on screen (Jason Bourne e.g.) are anti-gun people in real life. I don't think Gun companies are putting any pennies into movies. People in general including myself love violence on television and love guns in real life. I think Hollywood is merely appealing to people's taste to make profits for themselves.
pps43 10y ago
Why would gun industry ask film industry to do product placement for M134 Miniguns, M240 machine guns, or Thompson submachine guns when they can't sell full auto guns to civilians since 1986?
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  I asked my dad a similar question, growing up in the 1970s-1980s era. "Why is IBM running TV commercials for mainframe computers on The Dukes of Hazzard? Don't those cost millions of dollars? Do they think we're going to buy one?" He muttered something about how the commercials might encourage people to buy IBM stock. Later, I realized that the reason for those commercials was to make IBM more or less synonymous with "computers" in my adolescent mind. They were playing a very long game... too long, as it turned out, but still not an altogether bad strategy. Maybe that's why the arms manufacturers do similar things. If he were alive today, I'd ask him some other hard-to-answer questions, such as "Why are the Democrats still obsessing over gun control, when all it does is cost them one election after another?" I guess it's just another misguided long game.
  - pps43 10y ago
    Quick, which company makes M134, M240, or Thompson SMG? I had to look up two of the three, even though I think I'm reasonably well-versed in guns. So if it is a long game, it's a really long one.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      I guess a cynical view (and probably that espoused by the article, which I haven't yet read) is that they're trying to normalize the presence of weaponry in popular fiction as well as in everyday social discourse. If you're in the gun business, you don't want the only people talking about guns to be your critics. The military also has a stake in glamorizing weaponry and warfighting, and they definitely have a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood in that respect.
      - 10y ago
Jedd 10y ago
I'm pretty sure guns have featured large in movie posters long before 9/11 ... and I don't recall there being a big change in that ratio, at least for USA-originating films, around that time. (I'm in AU - but much of our pop-culture comes out of the US.) I recall on a recent visit to India that movie posters there now seem to include shots of people looking stern and holding a gun -- previous visits (only a few years ago) tended to just have the stern looks, no gun. Presumably trying to compete for an audience that now likes a bit o' shooting. Back in 2011-ish I saw a poster for an animated sci-fi movie, I think aimed at kids, but sadly can't remember the name of it. A picture of a vaguely humanoid-looking alien, over-sized head, holding a stylised laser blaster, with the tag line 'This is the smartest creature in the universe'. Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing. An Excession quotes is relevant: "It could see that - by some criteria - a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgement implied. To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by its place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation of weapons was a kind of tragedy." - Excession, by Iain M Banks
- tzs 10y ago
  > Back in 2011-ish I saw a poster for an animated sci-fi movie, I think aimed at kids, but sadly can't remember the name of it. A picture of a vaguely humanoid-looking alien, over-sized head, holding a stylised laser blaster, with the tag line 'This is the smartest creature in the universe'. Megamind, perhaps? That was an animated comedy/superhero movie featuring a super-intelligent alien super villain, and is from the right timeframe (released late 2010). Megamind is an excellent movie, but was overshadowed by Despicable Me, which came out a few months earlier, because they both had as their major theme the villain turning into the good guy. > Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing. If it was indeed Megamind, of course he has a blaster: he's a stereotypical alien super villain. The movie is a spoof/twist on the superhero/villain relationship, so starting with a stereotypical villain is quite reasonable.
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Paul_S 10y ago
If you've never seen this: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page It's every gun in every film ever. Whether or not it's useful to know every film that ever used your favourite gun is up to you.
walshemj 10y ago
Didn't work very well for the bren 10 did it - sonny's side arm in Miami Vice
gravypod 10y ago
I don't see how someone would be able to benifit from getting firearms into movies since I'd say more then 90% of the people consuming this medium can barely tell a P226 from a Makarov or even tell the difference from a SIG MPX from an AR15. Don't you need the Brand-Recognition for this sort of advertising? Is this not how this form of normalization works?

35 points by endswapper 10y ago

The article doesn't really support its thesis - that there's a symbiotic relationship between the gun industry and Hollywood. Clearly gun manufacturers benefit from product placement, but it's not at all clear Hollywood benefits from the gun industry except as a place to buy props.

zasz 10y ago
I like your point, but Hollywood would be making a lot less money if it took out guns and stuck to people punching each other.
- bananabill 10y ago
  What makes you say that?
- eplanit 10y ago
  True. Lengthy sword fights, and western-style bar room brawls each had their day. For me, the final Hollywood punch was thrown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MVMbm6c0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-MVMbm6c0k
- nerfhammer 10y ago
  They would probably just come up with fictional gun designs rather than using molds of or blank-firing versions of commercially produced guns. The average person probably doesn't know and doesn't care whether a prop gun is an imitation of a specific real gun that exists or not.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish. Check the early westerns and such and the guy will seize up and tip over, and that's it. These days they will take flight, either over a bar, table or out a window, from a standstill. Never mind that they love going over the top with sound effects. A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker, and a punch is near silent...
  - slededit 10y ago
    Foley artists have been exaggerating sounds since the '20s (soon I'll have to qualify that with 1920s...). Guns are not the sole source of exaggeration in Hollywood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foley_(filmmaking)
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I agree, but it is quite often the most outrageous. And they get away with it because so few of the current viewers have had to fire a gun, let along at another human being.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    But people don't just tip over and die in real life. And only the bad guys ever died like that. Protagonists meanwhile were unkillable. Also gunshots are loud enough to require hearing protection at a shooting range, and a punch is also audible, but just higher pitch. What was your point in posting this?
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      The hearing protection is about exposure over time, just as with using power tools etc. As for point, its that Hollywood have given a ever flashier and exaggerated presentation of the effects of guns.
  - knz 10y ago
    > Never mind as the viewing generation moves further and further from the old west era, the effects of being shot becomes more and more outlandish. Agreed but there are also many exceptions to this especially in the military genre (Hacksaw Ridge being the latest example).
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >A gun shot is not that much different from a firecracker What? No. Guns are loud. https://youtu.be/7leSF_FE658?t=1m23s https://youtu.be/7leSF_FE658?t=1m23s

vtange 10y ago

This article presents one of those ironies about human society: how as much as we promote working things out without violence, we have that inner craving to just see the good guys to blow the baddies away. It's almost like fast food, in fact. And it's not just movies. You see it in many major video games too. Take Mass Effect for example; You could play as the most loving, all-tolerating paragon character in that game but in the end there are baddies that you have to shoot, not love/tolerate.

dlss 10y ago
I don't really see the irony. Humans are pack animals; love/tolerance is for the in-group, cruelty for the out-group. The only people I know who don't match that description are basically lacking an in-group.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pps43 10y ago
I would say that video games affect people's choices more than TV or movies. For example, gun ranges usually have Desert Eagle for rent, but not S&W M&P. In real life Desert Eagle is pretty rare because it is completely impractical, while S&W M&P is popular with civilians, police, and competition shooters. But in video games the situation is reversed - gamers know Desert Eagle and ask for it when they come to the range.
- icebraining 10y ago
  There are many, many films and TV shows starring the Desert Eagle, though: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle Besides, there's a third possibility: that the Desert Eagle is simply a "cooler" weapon than the M&P, and hence chosen by gun ranges users and by film and video game producers for the same reason.
  - pps43 10y ago
    That's partly because M&P hasn't been around that long. Among recent movies (released after 2005 when M&P was created), imfdb lists 10 with DE and 16 with M&P. TV is 11 DE vs. 23 M&P, and video games 9 DE to 1 M&P. So if you think that movies and TV shape demand, you would expect to see more demand for M&P at the ranges. In reality the distribution of guns people ask for at the ranges is a lot closer to what's in video games than in movies/TV. There are many "cool" guns, but if they're not in video games, nobody cares.

tn13 10y ago

Makes no sense to me. Vast numbers of Hollywood stars who build their careers as violent people on screen (Jason Bourne e.g.) are anti-gun people in real life. I don't think Gun companies are putting any pennies into movies. People in general including myself love violence on television and love guns in real life. I think Hollywood is merely appealing to people's taste to make profits for themselves.

pps43 10y ago

Why would gun industry ask film industry to do product placement for M134 Miniguns, M240 machine guns, or Thompson submachine guns when they can't sell full auto guns to civilians since 1986?

CamperBob2 10y ago
I asked my dad a similar question, growing up in the 1970s-1980s era. "Why is IBM running TV commercials for mainframe computers on The Dukes of Hazzard? Don't those cost millions of dollars? Do they think we're going to buy one?" He muttered something about how the commercials might encourage people to buy IBM stock. Later, I realized that the reason for those commercials was to make IBM more or less synonymous with "computers" in my adolescent mind. They were playing a very long game... too long, as it turned out, but still not an altogether bad strategy. Maybe that's why the arms manufacturers do similar things. If he were alive today, I'd ask him some other hard-to-answer questions, such as "Why are the Democrats still obsessing over gun control, when all it does is cost them one election after another?" I guess it's just another misguided long game.
- pps43 10y ago
  Quick, which company makes M134, M240, or Thompson SMG? I had to look up two of the three, even though I think I'm reasonably well-versed in guns. So if it is a long game, it's a really long one.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    I guess a cynical view (and probably that espoused by the article, which I haven't yet read) is that they're trying to normalize the presence of weaponry in popular fiction as well as in everyday social discourse. If you're in the gun business, you don't want the only people talking about guns to be your critics. The military also has a stake in glamorizing weaponry and warfighting, and they definitely have a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood in that respect.
    - 10y ago

Jedd 10y ago

I'm pretty sure guns have featured large in movie posters long before 9/11 ... and I don't recall there being a big change in that ratio, at least for USA-originating films, around that time. (I'm in AU - but much of our pop-culture comes out of the US.) I recall on a recent visit to India that movie posters there now seem to include shots of people looking stern and holding a gun -- previous visits (only a few years ago) tended to just have the stern looks, no gun. Presumably trying to compete for an audience that now likes a bit o' shooting. Back in 2011-ish I saw a poster for an animated sci-fi movie, I think aimed at kids, but sadly can't remember the name of it. A picture of a vaguely humanoid-looking alien, over-sized head, holding a stylised laser blaster, with the tag line 'This is the smartest creature in the universe'. Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing. An Excession quotes is relevant: "It could see that - by some criteria - a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgement implied. To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by its place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation of weapons was a kind of tragedy." - Excession, by Iain M Banks

tzs 10y ago
> Back in 2011-ish I saw a poster for an animated sci-fi movie, I think aimed at kids, but sadly can't remember the name of it. A picture of a vaguely humanoid-looking alien, over-sized head, holding a stylised laser blaster, with the tag line 'This is the smartest creature in the universe'. Megamind, perhaps? That was an animated comedy/superhero movie featuring a super-intelligent alien super villain, and is from the right timeframe (released late 2010). Megamind is an excellent movie, but was overshadowed by Despicable Me, which came out a few months earlier, because they both had as their major theme the villain turning into the good guy. > Obviously the film, and the poster, were not made by the smartest creatures in the universe, but the poverty of expectations inherent in the juxtaposition of the words and image were depressing. If it was indeed Megamind, of course he has a blaster: he's a stereotypical alien super villain. The movie is a spoof/twist on the superhero/villain relationship, so starting with a stereotypical villain is quite reasonable.

deleted 10y ago

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deleted 10y ago

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Paul_S 10y ago

If you've never seen this: http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page It's every gun in every film ever. Whether or not it's useful to know every film that ever used your favourite gun is up to you.

walshemj 10y ago

Didn't work very well for the bren 10 did it - sonny's side arm in Miami Vice

gravypod 10y ago

I don't see how someone would be able to benifit from getting firearms into movies since I'd say more then 90% of the people consuming this medium can barely tell a P226 from a Makarov or even tell the difference from a SIG MPX from an AR15. Don't you need the Brand-Recognition for this sort of advertising? Is this not how this form of normalization works?