Hoaxing as movie marketing?!
April 30, 2017 at 3:58 am
(This post was last modified: April 30, 2017 at 4:00 am by Fake Messiah.)
So, Ridley Scott's new claims are making rounds on news sites of how aliens will wipe us out and that he carries a gun for protecting himself from them. Sure this could easily be seen as Scott's fall from grace, but are not actually seen like that. They are just brushed off as "marketing for his new 'Alien' movie".
It made me think and reflect on this phenomenon. I'm not saying it's dangerous, I just want to reflect on it and maybe we can make some out of it all.
For instance on previous "Alien" movie Scott said "it is illogical and arrogant of us to think that aliens never visited us in the past"
see the vid if you care https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4sdaFsc9lU
Although he doesn't say it (he's not precise) that kind of worldview of aliens helping ancients comes off as racist. Why is it that they never think aliens helped Europeans to build their buildings like Colosseum in Rome? Only when it comes to pyramids it has to be aliens because if not that would mean Africans /Mesoamericans built them.
Or I remember for the premiere of "The Lovely Bones" Peter Jackson said how he saw a ghost. Actually he made a really elaborate story of the encounter. Really desperate move to save that bomb of a movie.
But one of the most "aggressive" hoaxing in ads was I think in 70s when Columbia Pictures was promoting its UFO blockbuster "Close Encounters Of the Third Kind". Columbia was offering to the major planetariums across the US a 16-mm filmed lecture on UFOs by UFO proponent Dr. J. Allen Hynek and technical adviser to the film.
Also there were those ads (which can be still be found on net) selling necklaces stating "If you wear a Close Encounter, will you have one?" But for some reason they didn't exactly state how that little gimmick is supposed to attract UFOs.
There were reports by FASST - the Forum for the Advancement of Students in Science and Technology - that director Steven Spielberg has purchased cargo space from NASA on one of its first commercial launches of the Space Shuttle. Just what he planed to send up remained a mystery.
Perhaps most outrages was organising essay contest for students in grades 6 through 12 of what would they ask aliens. Prize was a four-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood, accompanied by a chaperone and by his or her teacher. The booby prize is a CE3K poster. Also some magazines wrote how Columbia was also providing teachers with UFO "study kits," to help bring UFO fables into the classroom. There was also Close Encounters club, which for just $5 not only brings you a regular newsletter with news of the latest sightings but also makes you eligible to have the account of your very own close encounter published!
And it damaged people! Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which didn’t care a fig about UFO sightings, had nonetheless suffered a 200% increase in the number of telephone UFO reports.
Aside from that, there were more other hypes that were later "explained" as promotions for some movie. I mean are we to believe that 2016 clown sightings were promotional stunts for 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's novel "It", as some papers claimed? Isn't it more like it was for "Charlie Charlie Poetry Challenge" craze (where even Vatican's exorcists chipped in saying that it poses real danger to kids because they are summoning daemons) was tried to be explained as marketing campaign for horror movie "Gallows" but it turned out it was not. The movie just tried to exploit the current craze.
It made me think and reflect on this phenomenon. I'm not saying it's dangerous, I just want to reflect on it and maybe we can make some out of it all.
For instance on previous "Alien" movie Scott said "it is illogical and arrogant of us to think that aliens never visited us in the past"
see the vid if you care https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4sdaFsc9lU
Although he doesn't say it (he's not precise) that kind of worldview of aliens helping ancients comes off as racist. Why is it that they never think aliens helped Europeans to build their buildings like Colosseum in Rome? Only when it comes to pyramids it has to be aliens because if not that would mean Africans /Mesoamericans built them.
Or I remember for the premiere of "The Lovely Bones" Peter Jackson said how he saw a ghost. Actually he made a really elaborate story of the encounter. Really desperate move to save that bomb of a movie.
But one of the most "aggressive" hoaxing in ads was I think in 70s when Columbia Pictures was promoting its UFO blockbuster "Close Encounters Of the Third Kind". Columbia was offering to the major planetariums across the US a 16-mm filmed lecture on UFOs by UFO proponent Dr. J. Allen Hynek and technical adviser to the film.
Also there were those ads (which can be still be found on net) selling necklaces stating "If you wear a Close Encounter, will you have one?" But for some reason they didn't exactly state how that little gimmick is supposed to attract UFOs.
There were reports by FASST - the Forum for the Advancement of Students in Science and Technology - that director Steven Spielberg has purchased cargo space from NASA on one of its first commercial launches of the Space Shuttle. Just what he planed to send up remained a mystery.
Perhaps most outrages was organising essay contest for students in grades 6 through 12 of what would they ask aliens. Prize was a four-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood, accompanied by a chaperone and by his or her teacher. The booby prize is a CE3K poster. Also some magazines wrote how Columbia was also providing teachers with UFO "study kits," to help bring UFO fables into the classroom. There was also Close Encounters club, which for just $5 not only brings you a regular newsletter with news of the latest sightings but also makes you eligible to have the account of your very own close encounter published!
And it damaged people! Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which didn’t care a fig about UFO sightings, had nonetheless suffered a 200% increase in the number of telephone UFO reports.
Aside from that, there were more other hypes that were later "explained" as promotions for some movie. I mean are we to believe that 2016 clown sightings were promotional stunts for 2017 film adaptation of Stephen King's novel "It", as some papers claimed? Isn't it more like it was for "Charlie Charlie Poetry Challenge" craze (where even Vatican's exorcists chipped in saying that it poses real danger to kids because they are summoning daemons) was tried to be explained as marketing campaign for horror movie "Gallows" but it turned out it was not. The movie just tried to exploit the current craze.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
