Sex sells. As do guns

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• You know what they say: in Hollywood nobody knows anything.
• The line alludes to the inability of even the most experienced moviemakers to know in advance whether a movie will be a box office hit.
• The history of Tinseltown is littered with flops with the best talent and the fattest budgets, the highest screening scores and even the best reviews.
• The art & craft of making movies, not unlike that of making ads, is an obscure art for odd people.
• Now then, to judge by the latest string of sexual abuse scandals, the Hollywood crowd has a penchant to look the other way too.
• We ad folks cannot cast the first stone, mind you, we have skeletons galore in our closets.
• At least we don’t pride ourselves on being a sanctuary of liberal progress.
• LOL.
• Hollywood not only is hotbed of hypocrisy: it might be the best advertising agency the NRA ever had.
• When was the last time you saw a Hollywood production in which a lead character doesn’t need to resort to gun violence to solve his or her problems?
• Several generations have been spoon fed with this worldview now.
• It is only natural that guns kill so many innocent people in this country.
• It is what we’ve been taught by movies & TV since the cradle.
• Mind you, I am not a “gun control” advocate.
• I tend to agree with the theory that stricter legislation might not really protect innocent people from gun violence.
• Canada, that notorious cesspool of bleeding hearts, boasts more guns per capita than the US and, for some reason, it doesn’t have these types of massacres every other week.
• I find quite a bit of logic in the notion that passing more stringent laws to limit or even ban the sale of firearms would only keep law abiding people from obtaining them.
• Criminals, on principle, don’t obey the law.
• The law strictly prohibits the sale of drugs too and it hasn’t stopped millions of idiots and quite some Hollywood types from using them, has it?
• But hey, don’t look at it from a partisan perspective.
• Don’t try to score political points with this.
• The alarming standards of hypocrisy on the left apply equally to the conservative side of the spectrum.
• Anyhoo.
• Let’s go back to the sexual scandals.
• Sex sells.
• In Hollywood and beyond.
• Looks like we live in a world that exposes women to alarming levels of male abuse and predatory behavior.
• Who would’ve thunk?
• If the allegations are true, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein and George Takei are indeed rapists.
• The definition suits them perfectly.
• The jury is still out on Louis CK and Kevin Spacey, though.
• The former has been accused of -and has admitted to- having performed pathetic acts of borderline perverted behavior.
• He is not a rapist though.
• Nor is Kevin Spacey.
• Are they disgusting horndogs who should be ostracized?
• You bet.
• Their careers are over for good reason.
• But they are not rapists or criminals, if you ask me.
• Moreover, the Louis CK case, in my humble opinion, has a certain whiff of opportunistic self-promotional victimization by shrewd, unscrupulous showbiz types.
• A phenomenon that, IMHO, has gotten a bit out of hand.
• With the help of a 24-hour news cycle that is just too desperate for titillating headlines.
• Sex sells.
• As do mass shootings, hurricanes, earthquakes.
• If it bleeds it leads.
• News is entertainment.
• Entertainment is key to insert ads.
• Oops.