Saturday, May 17, 2008
TNT exec defends "Animal Farm" ad and film; adventurous travelers should be prepared for the worst; "open-source journalism" dates back to Oklahoma City bombing.
Oct 15, 1999 | Pig in the Gulag
BY GARY KAMIYA
(10/08/99)
As head of marketing for TNT (or, as Gary Kamiya delicately theorizes, "a propaganda chief named Squealer whose keen insights appear to have assisted with the creation of the ad"), I found his point of view quite interesting. He seems mightily offended that TNT decided to take out large ads in an effort to get the viewing public interested in watching what many feel is a profound, and profoundly important, movie. Furthermore, he finds our method of promoting the film most egregious. Wow!
First, Kamiya admits that he hasn't seen the film being promoted. Yet he takes issue with the featured quotes in the ad, which came from reviews of the film ... from people who have seen the movie. Then, Kamiya has an issue with the fact that the film was made by Hallmark Entertainment and the Jim Henson Creature Shop -- as if it were somehow inappropriate for a film version of a George Orwell novel to be made by such family-oriented folk. He should check out Hallmark's and Henson's credit list; he'll see that both have created movies and television productions geared to adults, with serious subject matter.
Kamiya goes on to categorize (pigeonhole?) Orwell's tale as "a bleak anti-communist allegory," implying that our use of words like "thrilling," "delight" and "magic" are affronts to Orwell's intentions and his work. Since Kamiya is so well-versed in Orwelliana, he must know that the author's full title for the work is "Animal Farm, a Fairy Story." Orwell seems to have intended his work to be appreciated on many levels; he seems to have hoped readers would be captivated by the story, as if his political allegory would have even more impact if it were aimed at the heart. I don't think TNT was being sensational, misleading or untrue to Orwell or his work. I don't think the ad undermines the film or its source. And I think that the hundreds of viewers and educators who took the time to call, e-mail and write us since the Sunday night premiere would agree. Sorry that Kamiya thinks such responses are "inappropriate."
And, by the way, the ad does not depict a quaint barnyard scene. The animals are either looking slyly at the camera, or staring intently (and, in some cases, unnervingly) at the reader. We've gotten more comments about how disturbing the ad is than how "adorable" it is. Maybe it was too subtle for some.
-- Scot Safon
Senior vice president of Marketing
Turner Network Television
I am only slightly less apalled by your article about TNT's "Animal Farm" than I was by the movie itself. Gary Kamiya suggests that the advertising campaign is remarkably clever for disguising a dark, bitter anti-communist fable beneath animatronics and cute duckies. Had he actually gone so far as to watch the movie he would have seen the even more awful truth. TNT took the bitterness, darkness, and anti-communism and turned them into sweetness, light and pro-capitalism. The movie practically skips the pigs' takeover, which forms the core of the original story. In fact, the movie presents the real corruption of the pigs as almost entirely due to the evil influence of a rival farmer. So much for anti-communism.
The movie then goes on to add a post-cold-war ending that completely ruins the story and presents things exactly as they are suggested in the advertisement: a typical maudlin American morality play. In the end, the animals welcome new, wealthy, blond smiling humans as their masters. This seemed equivalent to making the final scene of "1984" be John Smith joking with his betrayed lover in a Starbucks, each wearing an "I survived Room 101" T-shirt as they welcome the benevolent Little Brother as their true master.
Your writer should have watched the show before writing the story. Had he done so he would have realized that this was not a case of deceptive advertising, but a case of deceptive storytelling that gutted Orwell's book.
-- Rich Simon
Princeton, N.J.
Gary Kamiya remarks: "It's hard to imagine anything that could have turned Eric Blair [aka George Orwell] into a pinko."
If Kamiya's imagination fails him, he should read Orwell's nonfiction. For example, in a 1944 book review, he wrote: "Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets, and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship, and war. There is no way out of this unless a planned economy can somehow be combined with the freedom of the intellect."
The contrast between Orwell's political essays and the views attributed to him is far more depressing than TNT's marketing campaign.
-- Seth Gordon
Boston
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