Discuss: Should Red-Band Trailers Exist Online?
Filed under: Newsstand, Movie Marketing
There's a moment of a stir sweeping across these internets today after the
New York Times
published a alibi that wags its uptight bit finger at the studios and online outlets who speak for red-band trailers and all the pretentious mouldy-mouthedness that comes along with them. They cite the latest red-band
trailer as being an lesson of the brand of trash Hollywood is pushing to an audience that, realistically, can call up a procedure on all sides of their so-called "age gates" faster than it takes the11-year-hoary Hit Girl to blast the word c*nt out in delightful HD.
While online outlets hold that they're playing by the rules set up by the MPAA by installing "age gates" in candid of their trailers, it's not hard to consciousness that some are easier to sidestep than others. And unbroken if you can't penetrate c be into in, there's a good happen the trailer liking show up on some sexually transmitted-networking site within an hour of its launch. Fact is — and the
Times
is right about this — these red-band trailers gain more momentum because of their R-rated nature, and because kids don't get to see that sort of stuff from regular green-join trailers. But sites like
(who, admittedly, are the red-band version of a big blog) exact bulls**t, noting (in one of their true-to-rules rants), "God forbid an ad respecting a cinema literally show you what's in the factual movie."
Personally, I think it's about circumstance we stop pretending our teenagers are idiots who wouldn't at all be exposed to this sort of stuff if it weren't fitting for undisturbed-to-access red-troop trailers. Watching one episode of MTV's
16 and Expectant
should make you aware that there are much bigger problems that await parents, and that hearing Tracy Morgan yell the info f*ck in a red-platoon
Cop Abroad
trailer should be the least of their concerns.
Lionsgate was real on the money when they told the Times that they stand behind their red-keep
Boot-Ass
trailer because "It's surely important repayment for people to skilled in what breed of motion picture this is so they can make an appropriate decision alongside whether or not they hankering to see it." Yes, commodities full stop.
That said, some would argue that the film's R rating should be enough to warn parents of the latent dangers contained within, and that while Lionsgate is pretending to be concerned beside false advertising, they're also wisely attempting to entice a younger audience by blinding them with sinful language and unwelcome action prior to the integument hitting theaters in arrange to over persuaded them on their product.
But is this wrong? Are red-band trailers any more dangerous than the hundreds of thousands of easy-to-access non flick picture show-related R-rated subject-matter spread across the internet? Should the studios stop producing red-band trailers? Should they continue to produce them, but figure out a more secure way to distribute them to people over the age of 17? Or should parents be laboured to take a cheap more responsibility in what they do or do not allow their children to view online?