Backlash over 'sexist and racist' DVD cover of The Sapphires [Artistic Freedom? Nope.]

UK Telegraph ^ | 8/6/13 | Jonathan Pearlman

[MeshugeMikey]

Reverant Sharpton has seen better days....but if the money flow ...he ready to GO ""

[SeaHawkFan]

I agree with you.

[SampleMan]

OR they are just showcasing the best known draw in order to get people to buy it.

I’ve noticed this on about every movie cover I see.

It is interesting to note re-released DVDs of a movie that had a “now famous” actor in a secondary role. The first release either didn’t show the actor at all or they were in the background. The re-release makes it appear that they are the primary star of the movie, while shifting the fading star to the background.

Meanwhile, supporting role attractive females generally get far more prominance on a movie cover than their role in the movie alone would warrant.

[DPMD]

Saw the movie. He carried the film; they were good, but highlighting unknowns in such a minor movie serves to kill all chances of success.

I would have paid to see the movie if O’Dowd were appearing with four goats.

[snarkytart]

In the linked article a lady complaining said something about the women were not blue (referring to the "racist" cover of them in the background shaded in blue), she said they were black, blackety, black black. Huh?

The real Sapphires:



They look light as the white dude that is front and center.

More libtard silliness.

[pluvmantelo]

‘furore on social media’=tempest in a teapot

[kabumpo]

I don’t know to whom you refer. I know that I never said any such thing.

[x]

Seems pretty harmless:

It's not like the group or the actresses were actually known in the US.

But if the guy is your selling point, wouldn't you want a picture that was recognizably him on your cover, rather than some guy who could be anybody looking away and howling?

[Boogieman]

Ok, then you should realize that nobody sat there at the DVD company and said “we don’t want to show black people or women on this DVD cover”, so why would you blame racism and sexism?

Here’s a similar example. If you go look for the old Roger Korman version of “Little Shop of Horrors” on DVD, every version will say “Starring Jack Nicholson”, with a big picture of him on the cover, even though he only has a bit part in the film. He’s just the only selling point to the film, so that is what the marketing is designed around.

[CatherineofAragon]

"I don’t know to whom you refer. I know that I never said any such thing."

Well, you did. Post #92, in response to my #89.

Also, you told me that lynchings were "common throughout the 1950s", when the chart on the next page of the linked thread shows there were eight lynchings during the fifties, and two of them were white.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3034311/posts?q=1&;page=51

[CatherineofAragon]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3034311/posts?q=1&;page=51

[Oztrich Boy]

There's a Trope: Billing Displacement

The tendency of a film to be retroactively linked in the public mind with the biggest name in the film or be marketed as "starring" the biggest name, even if that actor is not the main character (at least from the filmmakers' point of view), and occasionally even if his or her character is very minor indeed.

eg: Back cover cast list does not match front cover image