"It’s about money. It’s always about money. 'Money before people,' that's the company motto. Engraved on the lobby floor. It just looks more heroic in Latin." -- from Better Off Ted
The last few days, I've seen a lot of re-posts of articles on the absence of Black Widow from The Avengers: Age of Ultron marketing: t-shirts, action figures, etc. Here's a couple of basic overviews, from io9, Vanity Fair, and the Mary Sue.
Brouhahas like this always create conundrums for me, because I am a feminist, and I would like Black Widow on a t-shirt too, as long as it was a cool one. But I always end up feeling like I -- conscientious objector to the system that I am -- have to explain how modern capitalism works. The problem isn't with Marvel/Disney's marketing divisions. The problem is that we're in a system in which consumerism is seen as the primary means of social engagement, and the ultimate demarcator of value. We have defaulted so much to this idea, and become so immersed in this environment, that this seems completely natural to us.
Unfortunately, our consumer culture cannot be those things, whatever values we ascribe to it. Because that is, very specifically, not its job! In this case, providing strong female role models would be a very nice thing. But Disney's merchandising division isn't there to do that. It exists to generate obscene profits for a large corporation.
A more detailed Mary Sue article says that "My demographic (female) was already giving them money anyway, with Disney Princess purchases. Even now, there’s no incentive to make more Marvel merch for women, because we already buy Brave and Frozen products." All true. But she prefixed her remarks with this: "I’d entered the comics industry because I was a comics fan. It hurt to see so plainly that to Disney, people like me didn’t matter."
Of course we don't matter! We've never mattered. Disney is a giant soulless conglomerate (not an insult, just a fact). Whatever the law says, a corporation isn't a person; it doesn't have feelings; and it doesn't care about any of us -- up to the point at which obviously not caring starts to impact sales, and then it pretends that it does. Individuals at Disney might care, but they aren't going to "matter" either. It's always about money.
The Vanity Fair article sums up: "It seems pretty clear that Disney doesn’t think boys are interested in female heroes and, even worse, that little girls don’t care about action heroes at all." But I doubt that this is based on a gut feeling on Disney's part. And I don't think there's a supervillain in a boardroom, rubbing his hands with glee over perpetuating institutionalized sexism. I'm sure there's lengthy, expensive testing, sales demographics, focus groups, and projections of all kind. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence about people who'd like to buy more merchandise with female action heroes on it, and I'm sure that's true. But it's probably also true that if they run the projections based on all their research, and the dollar amount is below a certain threshold, they won't even consider it. Maybe they could sell millions of Black Widow action figures, but if they think they can sell billions of Iron Mans, it's not worth their while to pour the plastic.
It's easy to forget how big these figures are. For example, the movie The Book of Life was supported by a surprisingly large marketing push, and sadly, all that cool stuff was in the bargain bin really quickly, because the movie wasn't a big hit. What's not a big hit? It opened third in its weekend, and (according to the Wikipedia), made a total amount of $95,347,255. Ninety-five million is a lot of money to me. But the biggest hit that weekend, Brad Pitt's Fury (which, frankly, I forget ever existed) made $211.8 million. The second-biggest, Gone Girl, went on to make $368 million. I also just saw an article that ratings for this year's Grammys were way down -- only 25.3 million viewers.
25 million people is a disappointment! That's the scale these movies are working on, and they're small potatoes to Disney. According to this article in Variety, Disney's licensed merchandise raked in "$40.9 billion in global retail sales in 2013."
By contrast, the largest comics distributor, Diamond, has stated that the "OVERALL North American Dollar Sales for Diamond's Comics, Trade Paperbacks, and Magazines for 2014" is "around $540.4 million." That's for Marvel, DC, and everybody else put together. That kind of money is nothing to Disney.
Similarly, I doubt anyone purposefully planned all the Disney Princess B.S. with the intent to undermine diverse roles for women. Little girls like princess crap, and their moms and aunts and grandmothers like to buy it for them. If antiquated gender roles sell, that's what's going to be available. That's exactly how the system works. Sadly, marketing and society do reflect each other, so the more toys that reinforce the gender roles, the more those gender roles influence toys. So the people who are mad at Disney aren't wrong; it is a problematic circle. But again: that's how the system works.
Of course, the profit-motive isn't always the only factor at play. Public perceptions and public pressures do play a part, and can encourage companies to hold to more socially-conscious standards. If encouraging strong female role models will serve long-term goals, or create good enough P.R., it might be worth their while to do that. So I'm not saying that people who really want to buy Black Widow merchandise shouldn't let somebody know. There's a reciprocity between buyers and sellers; they won't sell what we won't buy. Consumer choices can influence what's available to us. But even if we get to the point where we have "all the toys" (little shout-out to Natasha there), we'll still be enmeshed in a system that judges everything by its dollar value.
Yeah, what was that thing I was saying about values and social engagement? Well, I'm as obsessed with the Avengers as anyone (and let me tell ya, those Watergate issues of Captain America and the Falcon I've been reading are FANTASTIC!), but consumerist toy merchandising probably isn't where we should be making our stand for women's rights. To do that, we probably should be paying attention to our boring legislative sessions, which don't get nearly the attention in social media. And in general, we need to figure out a way to have cultural engagement, and put value on things, apart from what anyone wants to sell us. I'll admit I don't really know how that would work in this day and age, but I'm open to suggestion.
The last few days, I've seen a lot of re-posts of articles on the absence of Black Widow from The Avengers: Age of Ultron marketing: t-shirts, action figures, etc. Here's a couple of basic overviews, from io9, Vanity Fair, and the Mary Sue.
Brouhahas like this always create conundrums for me, because I am a feminist, and I would like Black Widow on a t-shirt too, as long as it was a cool one. But I always end up feeling like I -- conscientious objector to the system that I am -- have to explain how modern capitalism works. The problem isn't with Marvel/Disney's marketing divisions. The problem is that we're in a system in which consumerism is seen as the primary means of social engagement, and the ultimate demarcator of value. We have defaulted so much to this idea, and become so immersed in this environment, that this seems completely natural to us.
Unfortunately, our consumer culture cannot be those things, whatever values we ascribe to it. Because that is, very specifically, not its job! In this case, providing strong female role models would be a very nice thing. But Disney's merchandising division isn't there to do that. It exists to generate obscene profits for a large corporation.
A more detailed Mary Sue article says that "My demographic (female) was already giving them money anyway, with Disney Princess purchases. Even now, there’s no incentive to make more Marvel merch for women, because we already buy Brave and Frozen products." All true. But she prefixed her remarks with this: "I’d entered the comics industry because I was a comics fan. It hurt to see so plainly that to Disney, people like me didn’t matter."
Of course we don't matter! We've never mattered. Disney is a giant soulless conglomerate (not an insult, just a fact). Whatever the law says, a corporation isn't a person; it doesn't have feelings; and it doesn't care about any of us -- up to the point at which obviously not caring starts to impact sales, and then it pretends that it does. Individuals at Disney might care, but they aren't going to "matter" either. It's always about money.
The Vanity Fair article sums up: "It seems pretty clear that Disney doesn’t think boys are interested in female heroes and, even worse, that little girls don’t care about action heroes at all." But I doubt that this is based on a gut feeling on Disney's part. And I don't think there's a supervillain in a boardroom, rubbing his hands with glee over perpetuating institutionalized sexism. I'm sure there's lengthy, expensive testing, sales demographics, focus groups, and projections of all kind. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence about people who'd like to buy more merchandise with female action heroes on it, and I'm sure that's true. But it's probably also true that if they run the projections based on all their research, and the dollar amount is below a certain threshold, they won't even consider it. Maybe they could sell millions of Black Widow action figures, but if they think they can sell billions of Iron Mans, it's not worth their while to pour the plastic.
It's easy to forget how big these figures are. For example, the movie The Book of Life was supported by a surprisingly large marketing push, and sadly, all that cool stuff was in the bargain bin really quickly, because the movie wasn't a big hit. What's not a big hit? It opened third in its weekend, and (according to the Wikipedia), made a total amount of $95,347,255. Ninety-five million is a lot of money to me. But the biggest hit that weekend, Brad Pitt's Fury (which, frankly, I forget ever existed) made $211.8 million. The second-biggest, Gone Girl, went on to make $368 million. I also just saw an article that ratings for this year's Grammys were way down -- only 25.3 million viewers.
25 million people is a disappointment! That's the scale these movies are working on, and they're small potatoes to Disney. According to this article in Variety, Disney's licensed merchandise raked in "$40.9 billion in global retail sales in 2013."
By contrast, the largest comics distributor, Diamond, has stated that the "OVERALL North American Dollar Sales for Diamond's Comics, Trade Paperbacks, and Magazines for 2014" is "around $540.4 million." That's for Marvel, DC, and everybody else put together. That kind of money is nothing to Disney.
Similarly, I doubt anyone purposefully planned all the Disney Princess B.S. with the intent to undermine diverse roles for women. Little girls like princess crap, and their moms and aunts and grandmothers like to buy it for them. If antiquated gender roles sell, that's what's going to be available. That's exactly how the system works. Sadly, marketing and society do reflect each other, so the more toys that reinforce the gender roles, the more those gender roles influence toys. So the people who are mad at Disney aren't wrong; it is a problematic circle. But again: that's how the system works.
Of course, the profit-motive isn't always the only factor at play. Public perceptions and public pressures do play a part, and can encourage companies to hold to more socially-conscious standards. If encouraging strong female role models will serve long-term goals, or create good enough P.R., it might be worth their while to do that. So I'm not saying that people who really want to buy Black Widow merchandise shouldn't let somebody know. There's a reciprocity between buyers and sellers; they won't sell what we won't buy. Consumer choices can influence what's available to us. But even if we get to the point where we have "all the toys" (little shout-out to Natasha there), we'll still be enmeshed in a system that judges everything by its dollar value.
Does
Disney sincerely believe that little girls don’t like or want action
figures? Or that little boys might not be interested in adding Black
Widow to their action figure assembly to properly complete the lineup?
Not to mention all the adults of both genders who collect action
figures, too. Girls and women need to see themselves represented not
just on screen, but off as well, and it’s unfair and insulting to
exclude Black Widow from merchandising — and it sends the message that
she’s not an equal part of the team.
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
Does
Disney sincerely believe that little girls don’t like or want action
figures? Or that little boys might not be interested in adding Black
Widow to their action figure assembly to properly complete the lineup?
Not to mention all the adults of both genders who collect action
figures, too. Girls and women need to see themselves represented not
just on screen, but off as well, and it’s unfair and insulting to
exclude Black Widow from merchandising — and it sends the message that
she’s not an equal part of the team.
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
Does
Disney sincerely believe that little girls don’t like or want action
figures? Or that little boys might not be interested in adding Black
Widow to their action figure assembly to properly complete the lineup?
Not to mention all the adults of both genders who collect action
figures, too. Girls and women need to see themselves represented not
just on screen, but off as well, and it’s unfair and insulting to
exclude Black Widow from merchandising — and it sends the message that
she’s not an equal part of the team.
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmcli
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmcli
Now obviously, decisions aren't made solely on the profit-motive; there are public perception issues, and long-range goals, which providing strong female role models may be part of. Public pressure can be put on companies to act more in alignment with higher social values. But in the end, you don't generate billions in sales by being altruistic. If you did, public libraries and homeless shelters would be gold mines.
Yeah, what was that thing I was saying about values and social engagement? Well, I'm as obsessed with the Avengers as anyone (and let me tell ya, those Watergate issues of Captain America and the Falcon I've been reading are FANTASTIC!), but consumerist toy merchandising probably isn't where we should be making our stand for women's rights. To do that, we probably should be paying attention to our boring legislative sessions, which don't get nearly the attention in social media. And in general, we need to figure out a way to have cultural engagement, and put value on things, apart from what anyone wants to sell us. I'll admit I don't really know how that would work in this day and age, but I'm open to suggestion.
it’s still annoying — not only is her role in the film just as important as those of her co-st
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
Read More: Black Widow Gets Left Out of 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Merch | http://screencrush.com/avengers-black-widow-merch/?trackback=tsmclip
