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Coming Soon To a Theater
Running Head: COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You:
How Movie Trailers Reflect and Communicate Societal Issues
Chad Tamborini
University of Illinois at Springfield
Committee Chair: Dr. Kathy Petitte Jamison, Assistant Professor
Committee Member: Dr. Hazel Rozema, Associate Professor
Committee Member: Dr. Jonathan Isler, Assistant Professor
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Abstract
An examination of movie trailers is essential in establishing media’s shifts from the 1950s
through 2009 in portraying and approaching gender, violence, and sexual content, as well as
reflecting how society has varied in approaching these topics. Through discourse analysis of
movie trailers a closer examination illustrates the variations on these topics combined with
overwhelming commercial messages. Theorists such as George Gerbner, Emile Durkheim,
Marshall McLuhan, and Jurgen Habermas provide examples of expectations and interpretations
the audience has and receives, linking communication and movie trailers. The conventions of
movie trailers- voiceover, images, and music, shape and establish a studio’s marketing strategy
while also developing what type of social statements are made, whether intentional or not.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 5
PART 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................... 8
Cultivation Theory .............................................................................................................. 8
Medium Theory .................................................................................................................. 9
Social Nature ................................................................................................................... 10
Critical Theory ................................................................................................................. 11
Marketing and Trailers ..................................................................................................... 12
Movie Trailers ................................................................................................................... 13
The Influence of Onscreen Images .................................................................................... 14
Motion Pictures Association of America Title Card ......................................................... 16
Movies Trailers and Societal Topics................................................................................. 17
PART 3: METHODS ........................................................................................................ 19
PART 4: RESULTS .......................................................................................................... 24
Comedy Genre .................................................................................................................. 28
Sex ....………………………………………………………………………........28
Gender………………………………………………………………………........29
The Absence of Violence……………………………………………………….. 30
Commercial Appeal…………………………………………………………….. 31
Horror/Thriller Genre ...................................................................................................... 32
Sex………………………………………………………………………………. 32
Gender………………………………………………………………………….. 33
Violence………………………………………………………………………… 34
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4
Commercial Appeal……………………………………………………….......... 34
War Genre .....................................................................................................................
35
Sex…………………………………………………………………………........ 35
Gender………………………………………………………………………...... 35
Violence……………………………………………………………………........ 36
Commercial Appeal…………………………………………………………….. 37
PART 5: DISCUSSION .................................................................................................... 38
PART 6: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 39
PART 7: REFERENCES .................................................................................................. 41
PART 8: APPENDIX 1 Movie trailers from the horror/thriller, comedy, and war
genres.................................................................................................................................48
PART 9: APPENDIX 2 Trailer Listings and Web Addresses.........................................85
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PART 1
INTRODUCTION
Movie trailers exist as a promotional tool to persuade the audience to come back to the
theater, or to go in the first place. The audience is conditioned from an early age, through
television, to recognize symbols and understand language with media acting as a storyteller, as
demonstrated by George Gebner’s cultivation theory. Marshall McLuhan’s medium theory lays
the groundwork for establishing how a medium can dictate understanding and meaning. As a
conditioned viewer chooses various forms of media, Emile Durkheim’s social nature explores
societal and internal struggles which can also affect perceptions. Jurgen Habermas determined
society’s three main interests: work, interaction, and power, and through the construction of
trailers, Habermas’ societal interests are pieced together consistently over various eras. Movie
trailers represent these theorists’ ideas by way of their repetitive images, availability through
various forms of media existing as part of popular culture, and the construction, execution, and
influence of a trailer. Through this framework, movie trailers from different eras show varying
portrayals of topics, as well as shifts in societal opinions, perceptions, and standards.
Ben Feingold, the president of Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and Columbia’s
home entertainment division, previously movies would be available about six months after being
released in theaters and up to a year after debuting in theaters that movie would be available for
purchase (Kipnis, 2003). This climate affects the messages of trailers, as well as the
interpretation and consumption of them. Societal topics are touched upon in various genres, such
as horror/thriller, war, and comedy, but what is communicated varies as greatly as how the trailer
for The 40 Year-Old Virgin presents its message about sex as complicated, often humiliating, and
completely human (Apatow, Robertson and Townsend, 2005) versus a trailer such as Eyes Wide
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Shut that portrays sex as cold, taboo, and secretive, reiterated by the choice of Chris Isaak’s Baby
Did a Bad Bad Thing on the soundtrack of the trailer (Kubrick, 1999).
Often, trailers create the audience’s first impression of the movie as a product or brand
and little more than that and generally do not raise many questions outside of those that affect
driving the promotional message. Filmmakers can consider the social impact, but with the first
impression of a trailer a studio’s intent to make a profit and generate revenue becomes the
primary focus. As messages are established, the ramifications of multiple messages can often be
significant, as supported by cultivation theory. Cultivation theory is one that proposes that the
audience sees media, particularly television, as a source of socialization. Television, just one
form of media, takes on a personality by becoming a storyteller and communicating messages in
an individual’s life (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorelli, 1986). Viewed in this manner, one
medium alone influences how individuals make decisions; here, medium theory distinguishes
how movie trailers impact the audience’s perception of a movie. In the case of a movie trailer it
becomes an experience with what is essentially a three-minute movie. Marshall McLuhan
(1995) explains the significance of a medium and how it affects an audience: “The personal and
social consequences of any medium, that is, of any extension of ourselves result from the new
scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new
technology” (McLuhan and Zingrone, p. 151). McLuhan believes that the message is
determined by the medium. Combined, cultivation theory and medium theory reveal a culture of
saturated, media-aware, and media-cynical audiences. These theories reveal how the information
is received can affect the lasting impact of the final message.
As short movies but long commercials, movie trailers are constructed in such a way that
numerous messages are provided frequently throughout the duration of each trailer. A movie
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trailer is “a brief film text that usually displays images from a specific feature film while
asserting its excellence, and that is created for the purpose of projecting in theaters to promote a
film’s theatrical release” (Kernan, p. 1, 2004). Looking at key elements of a movie trailer such
as voiceover, music choice, and key images, and from the genres of war, horror/thriller, and
comedy, is important in understanding what is being communicated. Voiceover is a major tool
utilized in movie trailers that functions to keep the viewer aware of the promotional message
(Kernan, 2004). Through techniques such as voiceover the basic principles of trailers have
remained similar over decades and decades. The construction of trailers is essential in measuring
the impact movie advertising has on the audience and how bottom-line-driven movie advertising
has become. Within the movie industry, a general window of six-to-eight months had once been
the timeframe for a movie’s release in theaters to when it would appear in video stores.
However, that time frame is often being cut in half by movie studios in order to seek more
efficient releases (Kipnis, 2003), which affects movie trailers as more commercial importance is
placed upon the marketing approach of the studio and the initial impressions of the movie. The
messages then become the studio’s, one that serves the purpose of generating box-office revenue,
while diminishing much of the filmmaker’s message of any type of social awareness. The
researcher proposes the following:
RQ 1: What messages do movie trailers communicate about societal issues regarding
gender, violence, and sexual content?
RQ 2: With their representations of gender, violence, and sexual content, what type of
societal shifts over time do movie trailers reflect?
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PART 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Through the theoretical framework movie trailers and their content are shown to be not
only repetitive images but also as constructed, calculated pieces of movie marketing. Movie
trailers act as a storyteller, similar to television’s role with cultivation theory, and saturate
numerous forms of media, including iPods, the Internet, and the theater. In addition to acting as
storytellers through various media, which demonstrates movie trailers as communicators, the
theoretical framework also provides the societal, reflective nature of movie trailers through
critical theory and social nature. The simple construction of every movie trailer demonstrates
Habermas’ critical theory and the tenets of the theory: work, interaction, and power. Durkheim’s
social nature is demonstrated with the viewer acting not only as an audience member but as a
consumer of a product.
Cultivation Theory
The audience being coveted today has evolved into one in which media shapes them, not
the other way around. “Television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and
preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources” (Gerbner, et al., 1986, p. 18).
After multiple experiences with a topic a person’s perception can become one that an idea, as
defined by television, is socially important and substantial in the real world (Bilandzic 2006).
Television’s impact from repeated viewing is evident with research that indicates that the
heaviest television viewers, classified as an overcultivation group, are unable to distinguish
between the real-world and the television world (Hetsroni and Tukachinsky, 2006). In movie
trailers, repetition and saturation is also used to dictate what is trying to be said and what is
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communicated. “Rapid repetition of similar types of shots or scenes is a familiar convention
through Hollywood trailer history” (Kernan, 2004, p. 87). The repetitions, as developed through
television at an early age, create a lens for the audience in viewing the real-world and other
media such as movie trailers. Children’s perceptions and real-world assumptions will become
those that they see on television (Eitel, et al., 2005). According to Amir Hetsroni and Riva H.
Tukachinsky, overcultivation leads to inaccurate and exaggerated estimations of both the real
world and the television world (2006). The audience becomes conditioned at an early age to
recognize, believe, and be influenced by the signs and symbols of a medium.
Medium Theory
Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone elaborate on the idea established by Marshall
McLuhan of how the medium dictates and influences what is communicated, along with what the
message ultimately ends up being to each individual:
Media, as contexts that translate psychological and social experience, eliminate
the possibility of simple clear meaning . . . The perception of reality now depends
upon the structure of the information. The form of each medium is associated
with a different arrangement, or ratio, among the senses, which creates new forms
of awareness. (1995, pp. 2-3)
Movie trailers have ranged in contexts as various as the theater, VHS, Laserdisc, DVD to
Internet, game consoles, cell phones, and iPods (Johnston, 2008), revealing an evolution of
access to trailers and wider distribution of varying messages. Today the Internet has become a
key element of promotion, specifically with movies (Tyler-Eastman, 2000). McLuhan’s
thoughts on discovery point toward what can be taken from a movie trailer: “We can discover
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anything we decide to discover” (McLuhan and Zingrone, 1995). Within each audience
member’s experience of the trailer content is an influence, often dictated not only by the studio’s
intent but also by the source of the content.
Social Nature
Not only does a medium influence perceptions, thoughts, and meaning, but outside
influences such as society also shape an individual’s beliefs and thoughts. “Much of what we
think is influenced by our societal membership” (Berger, 2005, p. 109). In Media Analysis
Techniques Arthur Berger (2005) summarizes Durkheim’s belief that each individual is a
member of society, while society is also constituted by people. Specifically, Emile Durkheim, a
French sociologist, looked at an individual as two beings. One individual is rooted in simplicity
and is limited, while the other individual is social and draws meaning from observing society
(Durkheim, 1965). With movie trailers there are the consumers of the product, simplistic and
limited, and the viewer, who draws meaning from observing the trailer. Berger elaborates on
Durkheim’s stance of the double individual by stating that people’s ideas are “shaped by what
we are taught in school and by the way we are socialized by our peers, our parents, our priests,
and our favorite pop stars” (2005, p. 109). As movie trailers exist as a part of media, the
representations and reflective aspects of various forms of media are demonstrated. Media is part
of what shapes society and shapes the dual roles of individuals as both consumer and viewer.
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Critical Theory
Critical theory developed by Jurgen Habermas as a critical look at not only
communication but also of society, establishes three major interests of society: work,
interaction, and power (Foss and Littlejohn, 2005). In these three major interests, influenced by
Habermas’ background with the Marxist tradition influence Frankfurt School, he examines and
critiques where society’s true concerns lie. These societal interests can also be a template for
movie trailers too. Work “consists of the efforts to create material resources” (2005, p. 333).
Trailers represent work, as they are constructed and pieced together. Interaction is “the use of
language and other symbol systems of communication” (2005, p. 333). Movie trailers utilize
voiceover and images to communicate messages to the audience. “Social order naturally leads to
the distribution of power . . . power leads to distorted communication, but by becoming aware of
the ideologies that dominate in society, groups can themselves be empowered to transform
society” (2005, p. 333). The studio creates a well-executed trailer with its messages and ideas,
drawing in the audience. However, the audience has the power to reject the marketing
techniques by identifying the studio’s intent and ultimately not consuming the product at the
box-office.
The theoretical framework consisting of cultivation theory, medium theory, critical
theory, and social nature serve as templates for not only movie trailers of today but also of those
dating back to the 1950s with similar techniques utilized throughout the history of trailers. The
media saturation, demonstrated primarily in cultivation theory, leads toward not only continual
media saturation but also the initial conditioning of individuals as viewers through television and
ultimately converted into consumers over the course of their life. As a foundation of
consumption, media variations, societal direction, and the dual nature of individuals, the theories
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of George Gerbner, Marshall McLuhan, Jurgen Habermas and Emile Durkheim demonstrate
aspects of movie trailers while collectively constructing the patterns of movie trailers as well.
Marketing and Trailers
Today’s culture is one where boys from 8 to 18 watch 3 hours and 16 minutes of
television a day and girls 8 to 18 watch 2 hours and 43 minutes a day (Eitel, et al., 2005). From
an early age individuals become part of a culture where concepts, reality and expectations are
developed with media as the guide. “Television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions
and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources” (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan,
Signorelli, 1986, p. 18). Messages from movie trailers today are directed to audiences raised on
popular media. Online advertising or promotion websites have already seen growth as the
second most attractive medium for advertising. Promotion websites for movies trailers are the
most attractive to college-aged respondents (Li, Hu and Nelson, 2005).
In marketing a movie, the movie trailer acts as the “coalition of the campaign’s”
strategies in the various elements of a marketing campaign that can consist of print advertising
and TV spots (Kernan, 2004). As the marketing of a movie evolves with various new media, so
does the approach of filmmakers. According to filmmaker Mar Rosenbush the online approach
to marketing that he took with his 2006 self-distributed film Zen Noir was one of contacting
websites with large lists of individuals with interests related to his film. Those interests included
Buddhism, spirituality, David Lynch movies and “anything we thought would be a good match”
(Potosky, 2008, p. 106). At the center of creating a trailer is the marketing, which concentrates
on the promotional message and little else. This was evident in The Blair Witch Project trailer
where a title card implied the movie was based on actual events, which then drew audiences into
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the movie’s artistic reality but was primarily focused on sending a promotional message that
directed them to the movie’s website (Cowie, Hale, Myrick, and Sanchez, 1999). The marketing
paid off in this case since the movie grossed $140,000,000 dollars at the domestic box office
after being made for only $35,000, a profit of 4,000 times its original budget (Gnerre, 2008).
Another aspect of movie marketing and trailers’ importance is defined as studios encounter
shrinking profit margins and higher production costs. In addition to this, the decisions about
making a movie lie more with the marketing executives than with anyone else involved in the
creation (Brodesser and Moerk, 1999).
Movie Trailers
Movie trailers have a rule, which is to not advertise the actual movie but the one that a
marketer wishes they did have, according to filmmaker Greg Harrison, who works for CMP Film
and Design, one of the three companies that make many of the trailers audiences see (“Making
trailer,” 2006). In addition to that rule, Harrison says that over 75 percent of the trailers
produced today do not accurately reflect the movies they sell. Marketing departments are
generally not happy with the movie they are trying to promote and sell (2006). This information
raises the question of why audiences consume a product where admitted manipulation is present.
One reason for today’s consumption of trailers may be due to the emerging personal viewing of
trailers. The shift is from social viewing of trailers among a larger number of people, such as in
the theater and or on television, to a more personal viewing of them (Johnston, 2008), on the
Internet or on an iPod. Viewers may consume trailers any time of the day, at the viewers
demand, and do not watch movie trailers as part of a schedule. The emergence of the Internet has
allowed audiences to access trailers that the audience wants and on their time as well (2008). In
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personalizing movie trailers the content may sometimes vary but the construction remains the
same. According to Senn Moses, former theatrical marketing executive at Columbia TriStar
Motion Pictures Group, movie advertising is not about creativity but continually going back to a
standard formula (Friedman and Vagnoni, 2001).
The Influence of Onscreen Images
Through its various messages the total impact a trailer can have on individuals is
noticeable in research focusing on movie-related tourism: “Movie tourism is not simply a
function of media influences but a medium through which a range of cultural meanings and
values may be communicated” (Busby and Klug, 2001, p. 321). Results of the study among
visitors to the area of London depicted in the 1999 movie Notting Hill (Kenworthy and Michell,
1999) indicated an influence of movies or acceptance of travel related to a perception created by
a movie. Most visitors were first-time visitors; however, 61 percent of the respondents knew of
other television and movie locations, 57.3 percent would consider making the trip to television or
film locations in future trips and 27 percent had previously visited a movie location (Busby and
Klug, 2001). Not only do movies influence audiences, but when audiences consume certain
products or packages, this influences future movie-related advertising. Movie trailers from the
1970s through today consist of a combination of marketing strategies developed during the
blockbuster era (Kernan, 2004). Market success led to the same messages being repeated over
and over again in trailers, with only slight variations. By including marketing in movie trailers
the result in these promotions is that they become formulaic and visually arresting (2004).
Marketing in trailers provides for the establishment of the product, which is the movie. Often the
messages, whether a tagline for the movie that establishes that the product is packed with action,
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or a tagline in which sex is continually referenced to appeal to young males, are communicated
and executed by similar techniques and images used in the trailers across eras.
Voiceover is a major tool often used in movie trailers that functions to keep the viewer
aware of the promotional message (Kernan, 2004). Blending promotional messages with any
narrative in movie trailers can reinforce stereotypes when topics such as gender and violence are
touched upon. The restricted trailer for The Brave One, at the 48 second mark, makes a
statement on gender and violence by promoting the implied tagline of the movie: “Payback is a
bitch,” with sounds of gun shots and DMX’s song X Gonna Give It to Ya on the soundtrack
(Downey, Silver and Jordan, 2007). In addition to that statement, immediately after the fivesecond segment of “Payback is a bitch,” dialogue declares that “All this time we’ve been looking
for a man with a gun. Gunshot. It was a woman with a grudge” (2007).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6NO8svBSvE
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Motion Pictures Association of America Title Card
The MPAA green band title card shown before trailers, as well as the red band title cards
before restricted trailers, establishes the meaning certain symbols in a piece of media can have,
whether the meaning is intentional or not. In the green band title card the three bold words are
“preview, all, audiences.” In the red band title card the four bold words are “preview, restricted,
audiences, only.” Here, in the green band title card the first latent meaning in the construction of
the trailer is established as the message that the preview is appropriate for everyone. The bold
words in the red band title card establish a curiosity or provide a confirmation for some,
indicating that the following is explicit in the content that will follow, verified by the saturation
of trailers on the Internet with an entire section of trailerspy.com devoted to red band trailers
(http://www.trailerspy.com/categories/19/Red-Band, retrieved April 5, 2009) and the MPAA’s
explanation of where restricted (red band) trailers can be advertised, including before R rated and
NC-17 films, late-night television, and Internet sites with restrictions on access to content
(Ratings and Advertising, 2009).
Studios have an interest in creating red band trailers based on the belief that Gitesh
Pandya, editor of boxofficeguru.com, shares: “For horror films, the red band trailer can make
them really stand out. If you’re assigned to market a new horror film, it makes perfect sense to
let gore groupies see some bloodshed in the trailer” (Toto, p. D01, 2007). Pandya’s belief is then
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reflected in Screen Gems approach to marketing 2007’s Resident Evil: Extinction with a red band
trailer. Marc Weinstock, executive vice president of marketing for Screen Gems, came to the
decision to create and release a red band trailer for the movie after there was such a wild
response for the R-rated footage that was shown at Comic Con (Toto, 2007). Weinstock added
that, “They went crazy for it. It would be great to get this on the Web" (p. D01, 2007) and
summarized the studio’s belief about providing the more explicit content under the red band title
card, thus once released, creating and eventually fulfilling expectations of viewers looking for Rrated footage.
Movies Trailers and Societal Topics
Social issues regarding sex, gender, and violence are tackled through various genres, with
the movie trailer’s genre often dictating what issue is addressed and to what degree. Genre is
simply “a French word meaning ‘type’ or ‘kind’” (Akass and McKabe, 2007, p. 283). Of the
slasher movies examined in Fred Molitor and Barry Sapolsky’s study (1993), more violence was
shown in movies released in 1989 than those in earlier years and females were often shown in
terror for longer amounts of time. As the media messages in trailers become more structured to
adhere to proven successful genre marketing, many movie trailers contain topics by simply being
a part of a specific genre. As part of the war genre, the Jarhead trailer addresses violence
through the lens of a past war but with social relevance at the time of its release in 2005, which
was the conflict in Iraq. The trailer for Jarhead, inter-cut with clips of combat, depicts the build
up to battle and conflict among troops, along with the waiting and the conflicting emotions of an
eagerness for combat and a fear of it as well (Fisher, Harris, Wick, and Mendes, 2005).
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In the horror/thriller genre, addressing violence through the prism of a “real” story has
become a tool capitalized on by movie trailers such as The Blair Witch Project (Cowie, Hale,
Myrick and Sanchez, 1999) and Cloverfield (Abrams, Burk and Reeves, 2008). By using this
approach, violence is shown to be an uncontrollable part of everyone’s reality, regardless of time
and place. “What frightens an individual is no doubt a function of his or her temperament and
previous experiences, as well as co-occurring real-world events” (Bryant and Vorderer, 2006, p.
315). With the Cloverfield trailer in particular, in today’s world the post 9/11feelings are felt by
the audience in a powerlessness that captures the heart of what the horror genre is (Toto, 2008).
An audience does not want to see the real or actual film but the film that it wants to see by
piecing together the fragments of shots that have been put together in the trailer (Kernan, 2004).
Lisa Kernan, author of Coming Attractions: How to Read American Movie Trailers, offers that
movies provide a safe place for an experience with fear and terror (2004). The fears that
audience members holds inside of them is what movie trailers, and the full length features too,
seek to capitalize upon. In blurring the lines between real-world terror and onscreen terror, the
societal issues in trailers exist in a world where commercial viability reigns supreme, and these
issues become commodities used to enhance the product.
As movie trailers are constructed as pieces of media that package elements of the story
together with the emphasis on the promotional message, the packaging becomes the vehicle
through which societal topics have to be examined. By utilizing the work of theorists such as
Habermas and Gerbner, the foundation for examining the media messages consumed is laid
down and a critique of the structure of movie trailers and the power structure from which they
are readily distributed becomes possible. That which is communicated by movie studios,
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through movie trailers, is a distribution of commercial messages that entice audiences to go see
movies within which societal topics are used as little more than tools of the trade.
PART 3
METHODS
Thirty movie trailers were selected from five different decades ranging from 1950
through 2009. The trailers were selected based on their accessibility and availability on the
Internet, connection to each respective genre based on overall plot and trailer construction, and
general recognition of titles that many readers would have some familiarity with the content of
the movie. If not able to recognize the specific genre upon referencing the title, the trailers
selected were chosen so that upon viewing them a reader could establish the trailer as part of a
specific genre. Each trailer was located through various websites and was viewed the first time
without notes being taken, in order to watch the trailer for the overall experience as a viewer or
what a member of an audience might encounter as a consumer. After the first viewing each
trailer was viewed while noting major themes, patterns, and general depictions of the topics of
gender, violence, and sex, without stopping the trailer. The third viewing consisted of studying
the images, sound, specifically voiceover and music, and any onscreen text. In the third viewing
the trailer was stopped to document specific messages, images that stood out, and how sounds
such as excessive or overly omniscient voiceover or music that reinforced specific messages.
In order to demonstrate the comparison of how the content was marketed across a wide
range of eras, the trailers from the 1950s were viewed first in each genre, following in
chronological order until the final trailer from the 2000s was viewed in each genre. The 10
trailers from the comedy genre were viewed and examined first. The horror/thriller and war
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genres followed in that order, with each genre viewed in the same pattern of three initial
viewings previously referenced. All three genres were fully examined after the three initial
viewings through multiple viewings that sought to find patterns, tendencies, and contrasting
evidence of how each topic may have been presented in different eras. By viewing, and
presenting the results in the same way, the intent was to provide the most digestible and
consumable genre first, the comedy genre, so that each genre would increasingly approach more
and more heavy subject matter, ultimately leading up to the representation of violence in war.
Each genre was examined with one trailer from the 1950s, two from the 1960s, two from
the 1970s, two from the 1980s, two from the 1990s, and two from the 2000s. A total of 10 from
each genre were selected to provide an even distribution among the three genres, as well as a
thorough examination of each genre. Only one trailer from the 1950s was selected due to the
lack of overall availability online but was necessary in the study to present the often stark
contrast between today’s trailers and those of the past. However, the study revealed some
similarities in the comedy and horror genre of similar techniques of communication and
representation of gender and violence, as well as the consistent message that sex always sells.
The intention of the research is to examine three genres of movie trailers by utilizing
techniques of discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is defined by Phillippa Smith and Allan
Bell (2007) in Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates as:
A close examination of text, including visual imagery and sound as well as
spoken or written language. It is concerned with both the form of the text and its
use in social context, its construction, distribution and reception. It aims to
understand and elucidate the meanings and social significance of the text. (p. 78)
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Specifically, the research will examine voiceover, music, and key images of movie
trailers of the past and present, showing movie trailers as communicators of societal ideas and
perceptions about sex, gender, and violence. One example of this is The Brave One restricted
trailer that includes the word “bitch” and a hip-hop song that plays as gunshots echo on the
soundtrack (Downey, Silver and Jordan, 2007). In The Brave One restricted red band trailer the
five-second segment, provides a statement on gender marginalizing by its reference to the Jodie
Foster character’s payback as being a bitch. In addition to this, there is a glorification of
violence as Foster is empowered only when she wields a gun. A restricted trailer is one in which
more explicit content can be marketed to certain audiences. “Film companies do have the option
of creating advertising for a limited audience . . . for whom the material is appropriate, i.e.,
‘restricted’ trailers, which may be shown only before ‘R’ and ‘NC-17’ films, restricted-access
internet sites, and television spots reserved for late-night audiences” (Ratings and Advertising,
2009).
In examining and critiquing the content and tools used to make movie trailers, this
will explore how trailers portray topics of gender, sex, and violence, and demonstrate
how movie trailers act as communicators that are reflective of societal issues. Movie
trailers of the past will be incorporated not only to present how a trailer of 30 or 40 years
ago had different messages about similar social issues but to also emphasize modern
media and consumer culture’s impact on how pointed and market driven the trailers of
today have become, in order to help the movie survive financially. Ten movie trailers
from each genre will be analyzed in order to obtain a detailed account of the images used
in each trailer while compiling genre related tendencies, such as the sexual objectification
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of women in the comedy genre, marketing of violence in the horror genre, and the critical
stance taken on violence within the context of battle in the war genre.
The focus and examination of each genre will remain within that genre, so that
one comedy movie trailer is analyzed against another comedy movie trailer. If The 40
Year-Old Virgin (Apatow, Robertson and Townsend, 2005) was contrasted with The
Deer Hunter (Cimino, Deeley, Peverall and Spikings, 1978) then the research would be
diluted, not justifiable, and simply not taken seriously. However, by looking at the
words, images, and sounds of the trailers for Porky’s against The 40 Year-Old Virgin, an
in-depth analysis of the communicated messages about sexual content and gender can be
used. For example, in the Porky’s trailer, innuendo drives the trailer with voiceover that
includes “Unfortunately we can only show you the outside of Porky’s” and “We’d like to
show you more of the locker room but this kind of physical education just isn’t taught,”
implying repression and restriction regarding sexual content (Carmody and Clark, 1982).
Within the first 20 seconds of The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer “I want you so bad” is
uttered and a woman licks a man’s toe during foreplay, setting the tone for the trailer
(Apatow, Robertson and Townsend, 2005). By exploring two trailers from separate
decades in the genre of comedy a reflection of media and societal attitudes toward sexual
content can be more comparatively explored.
The societal context of the communicated messages in trailers is also demonstrated with
the Platoon trailer from 1987 and the Jarhead trailer from 2005. Jarhead was released during a
time of war while Platoon was not. The approaches reflect different portrayals of war and
violence. In the Jarhead trailer there is a brief reference through dialogue to Desert Shield, but
little else is referenced to indicate that this film is taking place over 15 years ago or based on a
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former marine’s account. The studio’s intention is then to create a message of an escape or
fictional depiction, creating a commercial product set to Kanye West’s 2004 song Jesus Walks.
With the use of a song from 2004, this creates even more separation from the era of Desert
Shield and targets the movie at a younger audience, much coveted by the movie industry
generally, while also not establishing any political or controversial statements in order to make
the movie more marketable. The contrasting approach is demonstrated by the Platoon trailer,
where within the first moments there is a direct link to the era and the establishment of the movie
as a first-hand account of the Vietnam War, with voiceover: “In 1967 Oliver Stone was a combat
infantryman in Vietnam” (Kitman Ho, Kopelson and Stone, 1986). The trailer communicates the
message that the movie is THE truthful account of the Vietnam War. As The Tracks of My Tears
(Moore, Robinson, and Tarplin, 1965) fades into voiceover, the following statement is uttered:
“The first casualty of war is innocence. The first real movie about the war in Vietnam is
Platoon” (1986). Close-ups of the soldiers’ faces are onscreen while the voiceover instills in the
audience that innocence is destroyed in war. The connection to the war is immediately embraced
and is established further by utilizing a song from the 1960s that evokes varying layers of
meaning. The era of the song is the 1960s, evoking the time and culture, while the title of the
song also establishes the sorrow and loss of innocence that the movie intends to communicate to
the audience (1965). Where Jarhead steered away from establishing the time and place, along
with not qualifying it as an account by a former marine, Platoon immediately points out that the
award-winning director was an infantryman in the Vietnam War and that this is the first true
movie about the Vietnam War (1986).
The collective result of the methodology will be to shed light on a form of media that in
its construction, packaging, and distribution takes on characteristics of the time in which it is
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released or even provides greater insight into a previous or future era. By examining 30 trailers
from different decades and viewing them multiple times, not only will social norms and social
acceptance of content be gauged, but an analysis of the portrayal of gender, sex, and violence
will be deconstructed. In addition to the overall content and representation of various issues, the
tools of constructing trailers will be examined in order to utilize movie trailers as not only
societal barometers but also as a gauge on the variations in advertising and the messages
communicated over the course of different eras.
PART 4
RESULTS
The representation of sex, gender, and violence has steadily become more and more
commercially packaged with societal issues often used as commodities to market the movie.
Common fears of the public are capitalized on in trailers such as Cloverfield and Invasion of the
Body Snatchers. In one of the major tools of movie trailer construction, voiceover, a male
dominated industry is reflected as only two of the 30 trailers studied used a female announcer,
both minimally too. In addition to the inequalities found in voiceover used, the overt marketing
of sexual content and less diffusion of sexual content was demonstrated in the study. Finally, in
the horror/thriller genre, a shift in the mid-1980s was shown in the marketing of violence and
seemingly pushed the boundaries of utilizing sex and violence as products in advertising the fulllength movie. In Appendix 1, an analysis of each of the 30 trailers in the study demonstrates the
overall findings in the comedy, horror/thriller, and war genres. In the analysis of the genres, this
study examines the construction of the trailer, potential audience interaction, and overall power
of the commercial messages communicated through the images, music and sounds, and onscreen
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text. In addition to examining the overall construction and messages communicated in trailers,
the societal context and attitudes toward the content are evaluated, while also considering any
differences and similarities in trailers from separate eras.
The Cloverfield and Invasion of the Body Snatchers trailers demonstrate the similarities
in trailers of different eras by blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Both utilize firsthand accounts- Cloverfield through the hand-held camera and Invasion of the Body Snatchers
through a character pleading directly to the audience, to market the movie and communicate the
concept of the chaotic violence that will ensue as a component of everyday existence. The
trailers for The Bridge on the River Kwai versus Stop-Loss, however, demonstrate the differences
in trailer construction, representation of acts of violence in war, and how they are marketed.
Where Bridge on the River Kwai proclaims “Columbia Pictures and the management of this
theatre take great pride in announcing one of the finest motion pictures ever made . . .” (Lean and
Spiegel, 1957) with images of war in a foreign land, the Stop-Loss trailer removes any distance
and separation by using Drowning Pool’s Bodies following an exchange between two soldiers
about a picture of one’s girlfriend back home (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal, and Rudin, 2008).
“(whisper) Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the (yelling) FLOOR!” (Goodman,
Pierce, Roybal, and Rudin, 2008). Collectively, the movie trailers studied provided information
and insight into how the commercial message is highlighted, frequently with little regard for the
price of sacrificing well-rounded, whole, non-stereotypical representations of topics such as sex,
gender, and violence.
One of the major findings of the study was the absence of female voiceover artists across
all trailer genres. The gender representations onscreen were not always positive or even more
than one dimensional, but with little more than a brief introduction of actors at the end of the
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Girl 6 trailer and the brief use of female voiceover in the American Pie trailer, which
subsequently is interrupted by a male voiceover to utter the title American Pie, there were no
trailers that used female voiceover artists for the entire trailer. The field is dominated by male
voices. Even in the Girl 6 trailer, when the female voiceover artist is used she communicates
and speaks in a way that is similar to that of a phone sex operator, which is the subject of the
trailer and movie. By utilizing strictly male voiceover artists this acts as a barometer not just for
media but society as well, demonstrating the glaring lack of women in various industries. In
addition to the societal and media aspects of the lack of female voiceover artists, this point also
reinforces an adherence to movie trailer formulae proven to be previously successful and
continually referred back to (Friedman and Vagnoni, 2001).
Across the three separate genres trends emerged and developed, more often from the
1980s trailers and on, that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable regarding the
depictions of sex and violence shown. In the comedy genre there was an increase in the
boundaries being pushed by trailers regarding pornographic content and overt, explicit sexual
situations that became a larger part of trailers from 1980 onward. A heightened sexuality is
present in trailers that broach the subject of sex in those from 1980 onward versus those from
even the 1970s, which was also demonstrated in the horror genre as well.
In the American Pie,
The Girl Next Door and The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailers adult entertainment related content plays
a key part in laying the groundwork, selling the premise, or paying off the set up of the trailers.
Where sex itself was sold in both the comedy and horror/thriller genres across all eras, in the
1990s and 2000s the attitudes and messages of sex became more and more graphic with
emerging media of cable and home video. With the advent of the Internet more and more access
to sexually explicit images become available.
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Two elements of trailers that have become more visible are the previously referenced
overt sexuality, as well as less diffusion of sexually explicit material. This is demonstrated in
contrasting styles in the trailers from Some Like It Hot and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, where
differing approaches, societal attitudes, and perceptions about sex are demonstrated. The Some
Like It Hot trailer separates real life and sex; “You’ve never laughed more at sex. Or a picture
about it” (Wilder, 1959). The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer approaches sex more graphically and
more embarrassingly, bringing the viewer into a life as normal and uncomfortable as their own.
(With Spandau Ballet’s True on the soundtrack) “Over the years Andy Stitzer has lost a lot of
girlfriends. But there’s one thing he never lost.” The Romany Malco character then asks “Are
you a virgin?” (Apatow, Robertson, and Townsend, 2005). The combination of the soundtrack,
voiceover, and dialogue from the movie separate it and demonstrate the different eras of society
between the Some Like It Hot trailer and The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer. However, the images
shown in The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer are reflective of a more overtly sexual society than that
of the 1950s while the images shown in the Some Like It Hot trailer communicate sex as playful
but taboo. Two brief shots shown in The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer include a man kissing a
woman on a bed, trying to unhook her bra, and a woman licking a man’s toe during foreplay
(2005). The construction of trailers utilizes similar tools throughout each genre and era but the
working parts are more directly aimed at the audience today as the music, images, onscreen text,
inclusion of the website, running time, etc., impacts the audience’s interaction and acceptance of
the messages being communicated. An audience becomes inundated with the images, concepts,
messages, representations, and constructions that are increasingly directed toward specific
audiences.
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The results of the study found variations on the trailer construction, content, and how the
tools were used but also did find some similarities in movie trailers’ approaches and the tools
used to communicate the commercial message, such as voiceover and music. However, how the
tools were used varied across different eras. The content throughout the comedy and horror
genres became more sexual and violent while the approach to portraying violence in the war
genre varied greatly from the 1950s to the 2000s. As a whole, the results demonstrated trailers
as communicators and represented shifts in societal attitudes toward gender, sex, and violence.
Comedy Genre
Sex.
Trailers in the comedy genre intentionally approach the topic of sex and gender more
than violence, perhaps due to the nature of the genre which intends to lampoon various topics.
Consistently though comedy is utilized as a means of addressing topics that if approached in
other genres may seem trivial, out of place, or inappropriate. If a wink and a nod come with
some substance in a trailer, such as the trailers for Annie Hall, The Graduate, or even The 40
Year-Old Virgin, then that content becomes easier to digest and makes the comedy genre more
likely to approach social issues of sex and gender with a heart and some bit of conscience.
One example of how sex is addressed in the comedy genre and the mainstreaming of
sexual content as a product is the acknowledgment of adult entertainment’s existence, and even
some social acceptance of this, but not without an “uncomfortableness.” The acknowledgement
of pornography is reflected in the trailers for The Girl Next Door and The 40 Year-Old. Adult
entertainment, with the concept of the neighbor being an adult film actress, is featured more
predominantly in The Girl Next Door trailer. In The 40 Year-Old Virgin trailer the essential
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punch line of the trailer occurs when the Steve Carell character refuses a large “box of porn” that
the Paul Rudd character has brought over to encourage his friend to use to pleasure himself
(Apatow, Robertson and Townsend, 2005). These references to adult entertainment found in
trailers show pornography as taboo, but yet also as a subject which audiences are comfortable
enough with to laugh about. These two trailers reflect a general acknowledgment of adult
entertainment and some of its stars being seen in mainstream, accessible programming. Two
specific examples of the mainstreaming of adult film actors are Ron Jeremy’s appearance as a
cast member in season two of the basic cable VH1 reality television series The Surreal Life
(Abrego, 2004) and adult film actress Jenna Jameson’s 2008 appearance on The View discussing
her transition to mainstream entertainment (Geddie).
Gender.
Movie trailers do not only reflect society and act as barometers of attitudes toward sexual
content but they are also forms of communication that present different messages regarding
gender roles based on how a movie is marketed. More specifically, throughout the study, women
are often objectified in the comedy genre. However, women do use sexuality as a tool of
empowerment and manipulation of men, as demonstrated in the trailers for Girl 6 and The
Graduate. Where women are frequently objectified in the comedy genre, demonstrated to some
degree in all the trailers, men are portrayed with paper thin characterizations as well. In the
Annie Hall trailer when one woman is being objectified by a male character a statement on both
women and men is made and trailers act as a reflective piece of media and societal barometer
and voiceover from character dialogue follows: The Tony Roberts character stares at a woman
and clarifies for the Woody Allen character which woman he is looking at; “The one with the
VPL” The Woody Allen characters asks “The VPL?” and the response he receives is “The
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visible panty line.” The brief segment of the trailer is ended with the Woody Allen character
stating: “Yeah, she’s a 10 Max, which is great for you. You’re used to twos aren’t you?” (Allen,
Joffe, and Rolllins, 1977).
Along with the content of the trailer depicting varying degrees of men and women, the
construction of the trailer also provides a lens through which societal inequalities between men
and women can be examined. The American Pie trailer, references a Movieline Magazine article
that addresses the top movies to see after the release of, at the time, the new Star Wars movie.
Through announcer voiceover, by a female voiceover artist, the list is run down and interrupted
by a male announcer twice, once to reference American Pie and the second time to take over the
announcing for the rest of the trailer (Moore, Perry, Weitz, C., Weitz, P., and Zide, 1999).
Although brief and virtually unrecognizable, Princess Monoke is also on the list, the only other
blatant connection to anything else female within this brief reference to the Movieline article.
However, the female announcer does not say Princess Monoke but instead goes directly to Eyes
Wide Shut and is then interrupted by the main, male announcer for the remainder of the trailer
(1999).
The Absence of Violence.
Where the comedy genre provides numerous examples of images, sounds, and text that
address sex and gender, it generally lacks a large amount of violent content. There are only a
few examples of violence, and one portrayal is shown in a comedic manner. In the Some Like It
Hot trailer, the violence is shown as the Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis characters witness a
murder and is used as a device to lead into the voiceover which states “Not since Scarface, so
much action. (Gunshots and a shot of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed as women) Not
since the Marx brothers so much comedy. (Cut to Marilyn Monroe walking hurriedly and as she
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passes both men staring at her) Not since The Seven year Itch, so much Marilyn” (Wilder,
1959). Because of the subject matter of most comedies, any violence shown is often little more
than a tool in the trailer to drive the promotional message or act as comedic relief.
Commercial Appeal.
The combination of both sex and gender fall into how they are used as a product to
promote the commercial message by adhering to a proven formula such as the use of appealing
stars and music. The Some Like It Hot trailer goes as far as to plug the soundtrack with the pitch
“Hear Marilyn sing the fabulous songs of the roaring twenties on the United Artists soundtrack
album” (Wilder, 1959). That statement is followed by what becomes a 35-second, music videolike portion of the trailer as Marilyn Monroe dances and performs a song (Wilder, 1959), which
essentially puts an exclamation point on the end of the trailer.
In the comedy genre the emphasis is often on the awkwardness of relationships between
men and women with gender roles and sexual situations demonstrating that awkwardness and
tying back to the concept of sex and gender as products in movie trailers. In trailers, of all
genres, women are often objectified as little more than sexual beings that exist to please men, i.e.
the Bachelor Party or Porky’s trailers. Again, even though the groundwork for objectifying
women who survived on little more than their sexual power was laid in the trailer for Some Like
It Hot, as a whole the modern trailers represent on-going attitudes that objectify women while
men are represented as powerful, focused on little more than sex, and simple by nature. In this
way movie trailers communicate and reflect societal issues of gender and sex with each as a
commodity needed to sell the studio’s product.
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Horror/Thriller Genre
Sex.
Where the comedy genre’s objectification of women was diffused to a certain degree
with humor, the horror genre demonstrates a more harsh contrast in the use of sex as a
commercial product, in addition to the more prominent commercialization of violence. In the
Scream trailer it is announced “You can never have sex” (Craven, Konrad, and Woods, 1996),
followed by a shot of a couple having sex (1996), implying sex equals doom. The shot is
included in order to market the movie as one that includes sex. Two images in the Nightmare on
Elm Street trailer demonstrate an increased sexuality beneath the surface of more modern trailers
with images of Freddy Krueger’s tongue coming through the phone terrorizing a teenage girl and
his hand with blades on it coming up from the water in a bath tub, directly in between the same
girl’s legs (Craven and Shaye, 1984). Neither is meant to be overtly sexual but a sexual
connotation is linked to both images in the trailer.
Sexual connotation is used more often in the horror/thriller genre from 1980 onward.
Violence was readily depicted in trailers of the 1950s through the 1980s but the shift in sexual
connotation in horror films begins in the Nightmare on Elm Street trailer, and peaks in the Friday
the 13th trailer with sex reeling in the audience and violence acting as the pay off in the second
half of the trailer. For example, there are four sexually related images before the first victim is
killed onscreen: a female dancing seductively as the camera is fixed on her from behind, which
leads to the song on the soundtrack that then uses the word “ass;” a male and a female kissing
presumably just before sex; a female skiing topless; and a naked male and a female that have
been interrupted by something outside the tent (Bay, Form, Fuller, and Nispel, 2009). In the
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horror genre sex and violence go hand-in-hand, feeding and fueling each other in order to
increase studio profits.
Gender.
Again, as demonstrated in the comedy genre, women are more often little more than
objects of sexuality and less powerful than men when meeting their fate, i.e. the Nightmare on
Elm Street, Psycho, and Scream trailers. In a reversal of the victimization, The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre trailer only shows men meeting their fate, and a female character surviving.
Nevertheless, the overwhelming trend in this genre is demonstrated with another image from the
Scream trailer, indicating that the image is a known trait of the genre. A female character with
large breasts and nipples clearly visible through her shirt walks alone into a garage where the
door slams behind her. Her implied demise is followed by the announcement of “Because, you
won’t be back” (Craven, Konrad, and Woods, 1996). The first victim in the Nightmare on Elm
Street trailer is a young woman dragged on the ceiling by Freddy Krueger (Craven and Shaye,
1984).
Along with the Scream trailer, the Psycho trailer includes a female victim of an attack at
the end of the six minute trailer (Hitchcock, 1960), as do The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
although it also does includes men being victimized; The Exorcist; and 2009’s Friday the 13th.
Within the first 40 seconds of the Friday the 13th trailer a female is shown in a close-up in short
shorts dancing seductively, a female on top of a male before they have sex, and a female (shown
from the back) topless while water skiing (Bay, Form, Fuller, and Nispel, 2009). Frequently, the
trailers adhere to the patterns of the genre with women as victims and sexual objects, while the
men are just victims.
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Violence.
As a whole the horror/thriller genre has gradually increased the mayhem and depictions
of violence as a blueprint for what can be expected, with some exceptions, i.e. 2008’s
Cloverfield. Increasingly prominent with trailers of the 1990s and 2000s, the blueprint of the
movie itself is presented: a pile-up of violent acts mashed together in the trailer, such as the
Friday the 13th trailer. In addition to the more recent trailers demonstrating the blueprint of
violence to be expected, the red band trailer for 1990s Child’s Play 2 represents a shift across the
genres where what was seen before, in this case the previous Child’s Play movie, very much
influences and dictates what is being shown in the trailer. In the Child’s Play 2 trailer, the
framework of Chucky’s terror is laid down early with a Jack-in-the-box playing music and
Chucky crushing it with his foot and shouting, ”Sorry Jack! Chucky’s back” (Kirschner and
Lafia, 1990). Taking an often proven genre formula through plot, demonstrated in the trailers for
Scream, Child’s Play 2, and Friday the 13th, studios create a greatest hits version of an
unreleased movie. The reference point, with viewer reference to sex and violence based on
genre tendencies, comes through previous genre experiences in viewing the Scream trailer,
previous consumption of the first Child’s Play movie or knowledge of the Chucky character with
the Child’s Play 2 trailer, or previous consumption of the original product and established brand
of Jason Voorhees, peppered with sex, and lathered in violence, with the Friday the 13th trailer.
Commercial Appeal.
Along with the increase in violent content being marketed over other aspects of the
movie, the overall length of trailers has decreased, demonstrated most effectively in the Psycho
trailer’s running time of 6:30 (Hitchcock, 1960). Comparatively, the Cloverfield teaser trailer is
1:51. This point demonstrates the immediacy and need to penetrate the saturated marketplace
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with a consumable product in today’s movie market. According to the Motion Picture
Association of America, the worldwide box office revenue in 2008 was 28.1 billion dollars. The
domestic box office revenue in 2008 was 9.29 billion dollars and 610 movies were released
domestically in 2008 (Research and Statistics, 2009).
War Genre
Sex.
In the war genre the two topics of sex and gender make up a smaller portion of the
analysis due to the heavy emphasis on the communicated messages about violence and the
subject matter that generally looks at male storylines. One brief example of some type of sexual
content in the war genre comes from the Full Metal Jacket. Sex is briefly brought into the war
genre with the inclusion of a Vietnamese woman walking across the street in a short skirt with
her hips swaying and an officer is instructed, through voiceover, that “inside of every gook is an
American trying to get out” (Kubrick, 1987) in the Full Metal Jacket trailer.
Gender.
Gender representation is approached in the plot of Courage Under Fire. In creating an
intended balance, the trailer shows the Meg Ryan character as a soldier in combat, and as a
mother. Another aspect of gender was the many depictions of the soldiers where gender seemed
secondary or nearly devoid, with the exception of the brief portion involving the Robert Duvall
character’s presentation of war in the Apocalypse Now trailer. The soldiers’ gender is not one of
being male or female but a primitive existence in the Apocalypse Now trailer as the characters do
not fall into typical male roles but as stripped down, broken individuals.
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Violence.
The war genre proved to have the most differing representations of violence and acts of
war across the span of trailers from the 1950s through the 2000s. Where other genres had some
similarities in the representation of the prominent societal topics, the war genre differed greatly
in its representation of violence in a trailer from the 1950s versus a trailer from the 2000s. For
example, a slap across the face of a soldier in The Bridge on the River Kwai trailer (Lean and
Spiegel, 1957) pales in comparison to the beginning of the Stop-Loss (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal,
and Rudin, 2008) trailer with Drowning Pool’s Bodies on the soundtrack as enemies shoot a
rocket launcher at American transportation within the first 25 seconds.
In today’s trailers any romanticism of the violence in war is virtually non-existent. The
romanticism of adventure and war being completely separate from everyday life was presented
in trailers of the 1950s and 1960s. Narration from a voiceover artist is used in the Bridge on the
River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia (Lean and Spiegel, 1962) trailers, in direct contrast to the
Stop-Loss or Jarhead (Fisher, Harris, Wick, and Mendes, 2005) trailers. The use of voiceover
demonstrates a more movie experience approach versus some semblance of reality. Trailers of
the 2000s, however, both released during a time of war, present much different depictions of
violence. The Stop-Loss trailer places violence at the forefront.
Not only did the trailers of the 1950s and 1960s present different approaches to the
marketing of violence and its place in war, but the trailers from the 1980s did as well. Where
those trailers utilized good versus evil and right and wrong, a look at the Vietnam War such as
the Platoon trailer is critical, but at the same time boastful in its place in the war genre as the
definitive account of the Vietnam War (1986). The Platoon trailer demonstrates a time of fewer
media outlets and less immediate feedback, media coverage and saturation. If the Stop-Loss
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trailer or Jarhead trailer define themselves as the definitive accounts of the Iraq War or Persian
Gulf War there would be individuals disagreeing with that statement on various message boards
and forums, more than likely some online buzz or coverage within the niche websites, and
seemingly guaranteed negative feedback as the movies set themselves up for failure. The
Platoon trailer existed outside of a time of war during its release in 1986 and a separation of over
15 years from the time it is depicting in the late 1960s while both the Jarhead and Stop-Loss
trailers were released during the Iraq War with direct connections to the events occurring at the
time of the release, reflected in the approaches taken in marketing and addressing war and
violence.
Commercial Appeal.
In addition to the variation in images and violence, star-power was featured more
prominently in the Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia trailers. Both reflect a preVietnam War approach to the war genre, demonstrating a reflection of societal shifts and
awareness of the images from a war, although Lawrence of Arabia’s release comes after the
beginning of the Vietnam War. Star power is utilized in the trailers of the 1990s and 2000s, but
a more overt message, whether addressing World War II in Saving Private Ryan, the first Gulf
War in Courage Under Fire and Jarhead, or the Iraq War in Stop-Loss, are at the forefront with
the commercial appeal secondarily communicated. Societal context makes an impact as images
from the Vietnam War would seem to change the landscape of numerous fronts in society,
trickling down to movie making, and even in the representation of violence and war itself in a
movie trailer, i.e. The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. In the marketing of war movies,
specifically with a movie about the Vietnam War, violence has become depicted as more
personal and violent, not just externally but internally affecting the psyche of the audience. For
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example, “The Deer Hunter did not simply represent a historical past-it was animating a war that
had never really ended for America” (Chong, 2005, p. 90).
PART 5
DISCUSSION
In approaching which movie trailers to examine, 30 trailers from six separate decades
may have been too broad an approach for this study. However, it can be argued that by
presenting a trailer from the 1950s or 1960s this contrasts the approach studios take with trailers
of today, as well as those of the 1990s and even the 1980s. By presenting an analysis of trailers
from separate decades, this provides for discovery of latent meaning in the analysis as well. The
stark difference in how a horror movie is approached, along with how it is marketed, is evident
in the length alone of the Psycho trailer from 1960 versus the trailer for the 2009 version of
Friday the 13th . If solely focused on trailers of the 1990s and 2000s, then there is less of a stark
contrast in how movies were marketed, paced and edited, how the overall messages were
communicated, and the reflection of societal views on topics such as gender, violence, and sex.
By looking at the representations of topics such as gender, violence, and sex, it could
have benefited a future study if a greater influence was put on the historical context of the
trailers, such as events at the time of the movie’s release or those leading up to the release. By
selecting readily identifiable titles, this often did leave a gap in years between trailers, such as
1959’s Some Like It Hot and 1967’s The Graduate or 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia and 1978’s The
Deer Hunter. The gap between the Lawrence of Arabia trailer and The Deer Hunter trailer,
sixteen years, does allow for the course of events in Vietnam to conclude. The changes within
those 16 years are represented in the contrast between the Lawrence of Arabia trailer and the
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trailers of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. The gap seemed appropriate in order to allow
a significant amount of change and essentially cultural movements to develop. Again, that
timeframe is represented in the contrasting trailers from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s alone,
examining the culture as one in transition, flawed, and differing from that of just 10 to 15 years
previous to the release of such trailers as those for The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre, and even The Graduate in 1967. In trailers, which are at once short movies
and long commercials, communicate and represent everyone throughout various eras, but oddly
enough, remain rooted in similar techniques that have stayed the same over the course of decades
in vying for commercial appeal and success.
PART 6
CONCLUSION
As the lines between media and reality become more and more blurred, an examination
of messages that are typically the most easily digestible media, such as movie trailers, is
necessary to observe what types of communication patterns are being used, what information is
being distributed and how societal issues are addressed and handled within these very
commercialized and consumable products. The examination of movie trailers is necessary as
today’s climate is one where media outlets view the audience as consumers and little else; style
often overcomes substance (Howley, 2007). The study offers analysis of a form of media that
represents today’s world of consumption, technological interaction, and hurried pace. Other
forms of media in their construction, such as television or feature length movies, are longer in
running time and have a larger narrative structure and development and do not generally present
their commercial intentions upfront so frequently. In this study, examining the communication
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patterns of trailers shows the studio’s adherence to proven formulae, audience acceptance and
consumption of the same product, marketing of societal issues for greater studio profit
In utilizing discourse analysis as the primary method of research, a qualitative based
approach lends itself well to examining multiple layers of working parts in movie trailers that
demonstrate not just communicative patterns but also societal patterns, represented in Bell and
Smith’s (2007) reference to qualitative research as a means that “enables the deconstruction of
language to reveal nuances and shades of meaning that go far beyond the benefits of a purely
quantitative approach” (p. 79). Where a reference to the number of times a woman is shown in a
sexual situation could benefit a study such as this, by simply limiting the study to numbers, the
study would not demonstrate the entire communicative side of how the images, sounds, and texts
present cultural topics of sex, gender, and violence, as well as completely eliminating the societal
reflective aspect of movie trailers as the study becomes a shot chart of trailers.
In researching what are essentially extended commercials from movie studios, an
exploration of not only the culture of movie trailers from various eras will be shown, but also
attitudes toward issues that have evolved, regressed, changed, and ebbed and flowed from decade
to decade. “What we read, see and hear should not be taken for granted. We are daily faced
with a complexity of discourse” (Bell and Smith, 2007, p. 81). The study was approached with
that statement in mind to include that what is simply consumed should not be taken for granted
and should be evaluated. In the evaluation and critique of movie trailers, this study found
societal inequalities confirmed and studio adherence to proven formulae. It was also found that
what is communicated to the audience implicitly is that a product is being sold in a packagedand-produced manner, utilizing sex, gender, and violence as tools in the communicating the
promotional message.
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PART 7
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PART 8
APPENDIX 1
Movie trailers from the horror/thriller, comedy, and war genres
1. Some Like It Hot (1959)
With Marilyn Monroe’s face inside of what originally appears to be just a circle, as a
sultry soundtrack plays, the rest of the title for Some Like It comes into frame and the circle
becomes the O in HOT (Wilder, 1959). Marilyn Monroe’s sexuality is established and marketed.
The studio defines its intentions and commercial message of sex sells. The “Some, Like and It”
float away and the rest of the title appears (Wilder, 1959). Another message is established while
providing the title of the movie, Some Like It Hot. The message communicated is that the movie
is sultry, sexy, and prominently featuring Marilyn Monroe in the capacity in which one might
hope to see her, as a sex symbol.
In one of the rare depictions of violence in the comedy genre, the violence is portrayed as
comedic, driven by the shift in music toward a comedic tone and is used as a device to lead into
the voiceover which states “Not since Scarface, so much action. Gunshots-cut to shot of Jack
Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed as women. Not since the Marx brothers so much comedy.
Cut to Marilyn Monroe walking hurriedly and as she passes both men staring at her. Not since
The Seven Year Itch so much Marilyn” (Wilder, 1959). The trailer is constructed to raise
expectations of sexuality and previous images as seen in Scarface, the Marx brothers’ films, and
The Seven Year Itch. In doing so the construction of the trailer references previously viewed
images to establish the intent of the images onscreen.
Along with referencing previously consumed images, voiceover is prominent throughout
the Some Like It Hot trailer. The use of voiceover demonstrates the intended power of studio
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ideology and commercial messages in a 2:17 trailer. At the 1:22 mark the following phrase is
announced in voiceover: “You’ve never laughed more at sex. Or a picture about it” (Wilder,
1959). Two other direct references to sex that reinforce the notion of selling sex is voiceover
that states “Jack may have beaten Tony to the sugar but not for long” as the Tony Curtis
character and Marilyn Monroe characters begin to kiss. Once they begin kissing, Marilyn
Monroe is introduced again with her name on the screen “Marilyn Monroe” followed by “And
her bosom companions,” a pause and then back to the introduction of “Tony Curtis. Jack
Lemmon” (Wilder, 1959).
2. The Graduate (1967)
The tone of The Graduate trailer is established with the title card of “Academy Award
Winner, Best Director Mike Nichols” and a shot of the Oscar ® statue by the text (Nichols and
Turman, 1967). Contrary to the depictions of the majority of males in trailers from 1980
onward, there is not an obsession with sex in The Graduate trailer. There is an infatuation with
sex but not an obsession. In both the Bachelor Party and Porky’s trailers there is an
overwhelming obsession with sex. The Dustin Hoffman character tells Mrs. Robinson at the
2:24 mark, shaking his head, “Mrs. Robinson you’re trying to seduce me,” followed by laughter
from the Anne Bancroft character and the Dustin Hoffman characters’ wilting confidence visible
in his response “Aren’t you?” (Nichols and Turman, 1967). This brief moment is captured with
a shot of the Dustin Hoffman character through the seductively positioned leg of Mrs. Robinson
(1967).
Even with richly drawn characters, The Graduate trailer is not immune to appealing to
the widest possible audience. Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence begins the trailer
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after the title card establishes the movie as a Mike Nichols movie (Nichols and Turman, 1967).
At the 1:42 mark Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair begins (1967), furthering the pace of
the trailer but also promoting the soundtrack again. The final reference to commercial appeal
outside of the content of the movie is driven home in the final 35 seconds of the trailer, as
Scarborough Fair continues on the soundtrack (1967). After the title has appeared onscreen, the
actors and writers are noted and onscreen text reads “SONGS BY PAUL SIMON” and below
that “SONGS PERFORMED BY SIMON AND GARFUNKEL” (Nichols and Turman, 1967).
3. Annie Hall (1977)
A common occurrence in trailers is demonstrated by marketing the movie under the
director’s name and making the director a brand. In addition to this trailer confirming this
pattern, the Annie Hall trailer defies conventions of previous and future trailers. The strategy in
this trailer does not follow the concept of utilizing popular music with a specific message to be
marketed, as demonstrated in the trailers for The Graduate, American Pie, The Girl Next Door,
and The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
Dialogue opens the trailer and the actors have formal introductions (Allen, Joffe, and
Rolllins, 1977), as if attending a party or inviting the audience to this Woody Allen engagement.
Allen traits are utilized while capturing the spirit of the movie, packaging the movie to the
audience. The Tony Roberts character stares at a woman and clarifies for the Woody Allen
character which woman he is looking at; “The one with the VPL” and the Woody Allen
characters asks “The VPL?” and the response he receives is “The visible panty line.” The brief
segment of the trailer is ended with the Woody Allen character stating: “Yeah, she’s a 10 Max,
which is great for you. You’re used to twos aren’t you?” (Allen, Joffe, and Rolllins, 1977). This
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demonstrates a representation of men, at their worst, most neurotic and possibly delusional,
while also providing insight into the marketing strategy of capturing enough Woody Allen traits
to get an audience in the door.
Another example of a Woody Allen trait and a depiction of sex and gender comes in the
trailer through dialogue between the Diane Keaton Woody Allen characters while lying in bed.
She is relaxed, laying on her back looking up at him. He is looking down at her, sitting up and
responds with “What is this? An interview? We’re supposed to be making love.” Then, the title
is shown in the next shot, along with voiceover saying “Annie Hall” (Allen, Joffe, and Rolllins,
1977). Once the title is uttered, the Woody Allen character’s voice is heard as he lies on the bed
along with the Diane Keaton character who is smoking a cigarette and clearly more relaxed after
sex. “That was the most fun I’ve ever had without laughing,” followed by the title, voiceover,
and tagline; “Annie Hall. A Nervous Romance” (Allen, Joffe, and Rolllins, 1977).
4. Animal House (1978)
Shifts in tone and marketing approaches are evident in the trailers across the different
genres and eras. One such shift in marketing is the use of nostalgia as a layer of diffusion for
selling sex and beginning in the 1980s the removal of the diffusion of sexual content. The
Animal House trailer voiceover and music reinforce a time when everyone was young, at a party,
and eager for sex. This nostalgic approach also arises in both the Porky’s and American Pie
trailers; however, both vary in how nostalgia is used to diffuse the sexual content. In viewing the
acts of the trailer through a nostalgic lens, the trailers in three separate decades, the 1970s, 1980s,
and 1990s, all present the female characters as sexual objects with less and less of a filter
between sexual content and the audience.
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In the Animal House trailer, voiceover communicates messages directly through one of
the movie’s characters. The voiceover addresses the audience in a conversational tone, opening
with a formal title of “National Lampoon’s Animal House” shown over a tidy, regal university
(Landis, Reitman, and Simmons, 1978). Once the setting of higher learning is established,
voiceover begins “This is Faber College in 1962. You know . . . 1962 had to be the best year of
my life” (Landis, Reitman, and Simmons, 1978). As that line ends, the shots of the clean, regal
campus cut to the fraternity house, which is in direct contrast to the images shown in the
previous 18 seconds. However, the images are in direct correlation with the comment of “the
best year of my life” (Landis, Reitman, and Simmons, 1978). This shift in the trailer also
establishes the upcoming tone and pace and builds on the commercial aspects of the trailer.
Along with the use of first-person, character voiceover, the establishment of fun and sex
is continually referenced. The use of music is again used to establish the tone of the overall
product as one of a time of fun, i.e., Louie, Louie and Shout (Landis, Reitman, and Simmons,
1978). Continually reestablishing the product as fun is created by multiple references to girls
and images of sexual situations and encounters. Three examples include a shot of female
sorority members through a bedroom window, the character that is acting as narrator kisses a girl
in the backseat of a car, and near the end of the trailer a woman appears in nothing but her
underwear, standing in the street during the chaos of a parade out of control (1978).
5. Porky’s (1982)
Where the Animal House trailer continually referenced the product as fun through
voiceover from a character, the Porky’s trailer uses an omniscient narrator to act as both a guide
and comedian.
The introduction of the character of Meat as “The biggest man on campus” is
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followed by a female character that asks the male character “Why do they call you Meat? Cause
you’re so big?” (Carmody and Clark, 1982). Instead of utilizing songs from the 1950s, generic
music is used that leaves little room for any type of association with a specific era. This
demonstrates the opposite technique of the Animal House trailer. In the Porky’s trailer there is a
remembrance to a time when THESE teenagers were obsessed with sex and fun. In the Animal
House trailer there is a remembrance to a time when YOU were that individual obsessed with sex
and parties.
Innuendo drives the voiceover that includes “Unfortunately we can only show you the
outside of Porky’s” and “We’d like to show you more of the locker room but this kind of
physical education just isn’t taught” (Carmody and Clark, 1982). Voiceover becomes primary
and while images remain secondary as self-induced limitations are placed onscreen. The
voiceover acts as a guide through the trailer while the images present the nostalgia that was
previously driven home in the Animal House trailer through music and character voiceover. In
the Porky’s trailer, sexual innuendo is reiterated through voiceover but any sexually explicit
material is diffused by establishing the movie as one from a previous era and not directly linked
to images of teenagers of the time engaging in similar acts, in 1982.
6. Bachelor Party (1984)
The first 20 seconds of a trailer establish the tone and commercial appeal. By
establishing that first impression, the groundwork for the representation of gender, sex, and
violence, is laid down. In the Bachelor Party trailer a goofy tone is created early by contrasting
the history of 20th Century Fox’s productions with the latest “classic tale” (Israel, Moler, and
Patel, 1984), diffusing the sexual content that follows. “20th Century Fox has brought you stories
of love, war, adventure, (shaking of the 20th Century Fox logo). Now, another classic” (Israel,
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Moler, and Patel, 1984), followed by the introduction of Rick Gasgow, the Tom Hanks character.
The images and music of the Bachelor Party trailer are virtually secondary to the driving force of
the trailer, the voiceover, similar to the Porky’s trailer. The voiceover acts as a guide or
pitchman for the movie more explicitly here.
The Bachelor Party trailer represents and acts as a bridge from the more innuendo and
voiceover driven trailers of the 70s and 80s, i.e. Animal House and Porky’s, to the more explicit
sexual tones of trailers of the 90s and 2000s. The simple introduction of Rick Gasgow captures
the sexual innuendo spirit of the 70s and 80s trailers by adding voiceover of “Rick Gasgow is a
man who lives to love” (Israel, Moler, and Patel, 1984). However, any sort of innocence or
nostalgic take is diffused by the image of Rick Gasgow posing for pictures next to, and leaning
under, a woman with an open shirt exposing her large breasts (covered by her bra) (1984).
Although the Animal House trailer shows women in bras and underwear, those images were of
vulnerability, being watched through a window or exposed in a bra and underwear amid the
chaos at the parade (Landis, Reitman, and Simmons, 1978). The image of the woman in the bra
in the Bachelor Party trailer is one of acceptance, acknowledgment by both the male and female
of the sexual nature of the situation, and a less intrusive nature. The societal reflection of these
images is representative of the emergence of growing technology entering households in their
relative infancy stage, such as cable television and home video. For example, the following
sequence more than likely would not have made it into a trailer from the 1950s, an era with
fewer forms of media; “A night to encounter ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-men (shot of a
man dressed in drag) and excitement” (Israel, Moler, and Patel, 1984). The accompanying image
with the last reference to excitement could only exist in an era emerging with more and more
images of sexuality repeatedly being shown. During the reference to excitement there is a shot
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of a male stripper standing and a woman’s head in the foreground blocking the tray he is holding.
A middle age woman reaches for her drink and grabs what is believed to be the man’s penis,
although unintentional (1984). A more direct and sexual marketing approach is taken. A direct
progression of sexual and gender representations through the Animal House, Porky’s, and
Bachelor Party trailers is evident, as each increases the amount of sexual content sold and the
amount shown or implied.
7. Girl 6 (1996)
Where previous trailers explored sex and gender with men in power, the Girl 6 trailer
demonstrates the power women can hold over men with their sexuality, also demonstrating again
the branding of a director’s name. The approach reflects more commercial tactics to marketing
movie, along with communicating certain expectations of how the content and topics may be
approached. For example, the trailer for Girl 6 opens with “In She’s Gotta Have It, Jungle
Fever, Malcolm X. Director Spike Lee got in your face. Now he’s gonna get in your ear” (Kilik,
Lee, and Nottage, 1996). The voiceover is limited in the trailer but acts as a simple but
informative set-up to the tone and content of the trailer. The voiceover sets up the dialogue of
what is supposed to be interpreted as the act of talking to a phone sex operator; “You’ve just
reached the hottest live talkin’ around” (Kilik, Lee, and Nottage, 1996).
A narrative arises in the trailer that conveys an empowerment in the female characters by
working as phone sex operators. The representations and messages communicated about gender
are actually not superseded by an overpowering commercial message of sex, sex, sex, but a
development of the characters with sex and gender at the center of the story. In creating stronger
portrayals of women, the depictions of men do fall in line with many of the other representations,
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depicting men as continually obsessed with women and sex. However, the difference in the Girl
6 trailer comes in the woman’s response to the men’s obsession. One brief exchange
demonstrates the portrayals. The Isaiah Washington character says “I never knew you was such
a freak” and the Theresa Randle character laughs and replies “I always was. You just never
brought it out in me” (Kilik, Lee, and Nottage, 1996). In embracing her sexuality, the Theresa
Randle character demonstrates a power that she holds over the Isaiah Washington character.
Although her profession in the trailer as a phone sex operator may be perceived as a
marginalization of females, the message communicated is that of a woman comfortable enough
to acknowledge her own sexuality, recognizing and utilizing its power over men.
8. American Pie (1999)
The American Pie trailer represents a shift in the study of a mainstreaming of adult
entertainment and more overt and explicit marketing of sex. Along with this shift, the onscreen
sexual encounters become more upfront and explicit within the guidelines of green band trailers.
The American Pie trailer approaches the subject of sex with outrageous comments and situations
to establish the framework early on. The framework of the American Pie trailer is set up as
legitimizing American Pie through another media source’s reference to the movie. The trailer
begins with the mention of Movieline Magazine’s top summer movies to see after Star Wars in
1999. American Pie is listed at number two and is announced by a male voice. Princess Monoke
is on the list too but the female announcer skips over that title and goes directly to Eyes Wide
Shut. The female voiceover is interrupted by the main, male voiceover that acts a guide through
the trailer. After the interruption, the voiceover poses the following: “Which makes us ask the
question; why American Pie?” (Moore, Perry, Weitz, C., Weitz, P., and Zide, 1999). The
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audience is not given time to answer the question. The question is answered for them as the
trailer’s framework is presented: “Okay, well, one time at band camp I stuck a flute . . .” which is
followed by the Jason Biggs character spitting out his drink (Moore, et al., 1999). Here, the idea
of studio ideology is demonstrated by asking the audience to interact but provide them with the
movie that they want the audience to see and answer the question of “Why American Pie?”
(Moore, et al., 1999).
In stride with the framework of the trailer, the voiceover directs and leads the audience by
the hand. Voiceover leads the audience with “The awkward moments. The infatuation. The
desperation.” (Moore, et al., 1999) This voiceover is followed with the Jason Biggs character
asking his friends “What exactly does it feel like?” followed by the response from the Chris
Klein character of “Like warm apple pie” (Moore, et al., 1999). Immediately following the
character’s response is voiceover uttering “the fascination” (Moore, et al., 1999) and a shot of the
Jason Biggs character looking at an apple pie on the counter curiously (1999). With little time
for the audience to process the image, the Eugene Levy character, the father, walks in and is
shocked at the sight of something, followed then by a shot of both characters sitting at the table
and the Eugene Levy character stating “We’ll just tell your mother we ate it all” (Moore, et al.,
1999).
The overwhelming use of voiceover is just a part of the tools used in establishing certain
tones, messages, and representations of sex. In more of the recent trailers, American Pie, The
Girl Next Door, and The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the music selections become more and more
specific in reiterating a message or are reflective of attitudes toward sexual content. As the Jason
Biggs character has the awkward encounter with the pie, James’ Laid begins to play, reinforcing
the characters’ pursuit of having sex and carries the trailer through the remaining 1:13 (Moore, et
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al., 1999). The initial framework of the Allyson Hannagan character referring to her experience
at band camp and the Jason Biggs character getting caught by his parents watching an adult
movie set up the eventual pay off at the end of the trailer. The Jason Biggs character’s father
tries to talk to him about sex while utilizing adult magazines to aid the discussion (Moore, et al.,
1999).
9. The Girl Next Door (2004)
One of the main findings of the study in the comedy genre is the mainstreaming
acknowledgement and marketing of adult entertainment. Nowhere in the trailers of the 1950s or
1960s are there references directly to adult entertainment or even more explicit material than that
which was onscreen. The Girl Next Door trailer demonstrates a shift toward more of a blasé
attitude to the idea or concept of a potential adult film actress moving into a suburban
neighborhood. The concept is intended to shock and create laughs and is marketed as such.
However, in the presentation, the trailer begins with a seeming yearbook account of the
upcoming events. The beginning of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure starts the trailer
and “I will always remember” is said four times followed by the word “remember” onscreen
(Greenfield, Gittes, Gordon, and Sternberg, 2004). This trend in The Girl Next Door trailer
demonstrates communication of the studio’s ideas through various repeated images.
Reflective of societal representations of sex and gender include the a line from one of the
characters in the movie that is a point of reference for the trailer; “Always know if the juice is
worth the squeeze. So that means don’t steal my girl unless you’re ready to accept the
consequences” (Greenfield, Gittes, Gordon, and Sternberg, 2004). Even when not onscreen the
female character is being sold to the audience as an object of desire and even more so when she
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is onscreen or being referred to throughout the overt commercial messages. The onscreen text is
as follows with rapid inter-cut footage: “This March . . . Is The juice . . . Worth The Squeeze?”
as The Who’s Baba O’Reilly plays (Greenfield, Gittes, Gordon, and Sternberg, 2004). It is of
note that the text is in cursive, as if written in a yearbook, previously established in the first 20
seconds of the trailer as the aesthetic choice of onscreen text. Finally, as the female character
has walked away in her wet clothes, the camera zooms in on an animated version of her lower
back with a tattoo that includes the title, The Girl Next Door. The title sits on top of a heart; a
string of underwear is showing and the top of her jeans is visible as well (2004).
10. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
In the first 10 seconds of the trailer for The 40 Year-Old Virgin “I want you so bad” is
uttered and sets the tone for the trailer (Apatow, Robertson and Townsend, 2005), representing a
shift from the trailers of the 1950s and 1960s and even as recent as the trailers of the 1980s.
Where the Porky’s trailer avoided virtually any direct statements about sex, The 40 Year-Old
Virgin trailer establishes itself as a raunchy comedy and confirms it with a female licking the
Steve Carell character’s toe and him inadvertently kicking her (2005). However, through this
image, the idea of the movie is captured in the awkwardness of the main character’s failed sexual
encounters and again the male neurosis is captured through a depiction involving sex, similar to
the Annie Hall and Animal House trailers’ emphasis on the connection of sex to the male psyche.
In addition to images that are used to create expectations, voiceover is used to act as a set-up
man or closer for the intended jokes. The narrator, Don LaFontaine, a well known voiceover
artist who bridged over to the mainstream with an advertisement for Geico, proclaims “There’s
one thing he never lost” (2005). That line is then followed up by the Steve Carell character’s
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coworkers establishing that he is a virgin. Near the end of the trailer the voiceover moves more
toward innuendo with “And the experiences that touch us” and dialogue between the Steve
Carell and Catherine Keener characters discussing waiting to have sex. LaFontain then states
“like we’ve never been touched before.” This set-up establishes the punch line announced in
voiceover, in this case the title of the film, “The 40 Year-Old Virgin” (2005). In-between the setup of the title of the movie is voiceover free images where the Paul Rudd character is forcing a
box of pornography on the Steve Carell character with resistance (2005) but an acknowledgment
by the filmmakers that the situation may be uncomfortable but not completely be rejected by the
audience.
Clearly establishing the trailer and movie as raunchy through various images, music also
reiterates that which the studio wants the audience to see. Songs including True by Spandau
Ballet, Do Ya by Electric Light Orchestra, and The Waiting by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
and multiple mentions of the Steve Carell character’s lack of sexual experiences are utilized
(Apatow, Robertson, and Townsend, 2005). In addition to that, although not evident until after
viewing the movie, the story arc is summarized in the trailer as the Steve Carell character fails
with sex, is outed as a virgin, and meets a woman, all within just over two minutes.
11. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Reflective of a time in history when paranoia was at a heightened level with fears of
Communism and a perceived impending chaos as a result of that influence; the Invasion of the
Body Snatchers trailer demonstrates an approach in the horror genre that capitalizes on the
audience’s most immediate and real-life fears. Utilizing movie trailers as barometers, it can be
seen that the state of societal affairs has an impact on trailers in their construction and intent,
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such as this trailer from 1956 and Cloverfield in 2008. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers
trailer breaks the fourth wall between the trailer and the audience and communicates directly into
the camera, addressing the audience. The Kevin McCarthy character begins by pleading with the
doctor and then turns directly toward the audience: “Listen to me. Please listen. If you don’t. If
you won’t. If you fail to understand. Then the same incredible terror menacing me will strike in
you” (Siegel and Wanger, 1956). Selling the event of the horror movie and the unknown, with
just an element of real-life terror, is evident in the trailers from the 1950s and the 1960s, shown
in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Psycho. Both trailers present the movies through
elaborate depictions. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers trailer utilizes quotes from magazines
(1956) and an elaborate six minute tour of the Bates Motel makes up the Psycho trailer
(Hitchcock, 1960).
As a communicator, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers trailer promotes the commercial
appeal of the movie-going experience and the content’s relevance to everyday existence. At the
45 second mark there is a promotion of Superscope (Siegel and Wanger, 1956), a movie
technology to draw in the audience. Although the experience of going to the theater is being
touted, the characters’ experience in the movie is summarized with “From city to city an
incredible panic spreads, as the unimaginable becomes real, the impossible comes true” (Siegel
and Wanger, 1956). This type of approach is representative of a time when the lines of reality
between media and the audience were not as blurred as today. In a bookend to the original plea
from the Kevin McCarthy character, the trailer once again breaks the fourth wall and he pleads
“Can’t you see everyone? They’re here already! You’re next!” (Siegel and Wanger, 1956). The
violence and chaos in this trailer had context in the movie and its promotion, but to some degree
in society as well, potentially capitalizing on and capturing fears of Communism during the time
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of the movie’s release in 1956. That fear is shown in previous research such as Anatoli
Rapoport’s 2006 article “Least Known to Americans: Content Materials about the Soviet Union
in the 1940s and 1950s,” in which he notes that “The American general public never trusted the
Soviets” (p. 56). That statement reinforces the messages and techniques utilized in the trailer;
capitalizing and manipulating common fears of the era with real-life terror through the lens of
science-fiction.
12. Psycho (1960)
Where Invasion of the Body Snatchers capitalized on something known, such as a
recognized fear of Communism, the fears explored in the Psycho trailer is that of the unknown
and unseen. By exploring the entire Bates Motel, the trailer looks at a building featured in the
movie, leaving the content of the movie to be communicated through the director, Alfred
Hitchcock. The 6:40 trailer opens with text that reads, with upbeat Leave It To Beaver-esque
music playing, “The fabulous Mr. Alfred Hitchcock is about to escort you . . . on a tour of the
location of his new motion picture, ‘Psycho’” (Hitchcock, 1960). The two major audible items
in the trailer, outside of the soundtrack, are the continual narration and instruction by Alfred
Hitchcock and the scream of Janet Leigh in the shower at the end of the trailer (1960).
Although long in running time, the trailer acts as a teaser trailer, continually throwing
tantalizing bits at the audience, representative of a communication of ideology and marketing
messages; “This picture has great significance . . . because . . . uh . . . let’s go along to cabin
number one” (Hitchcock, 1960). The trailer also acts as one communicates in a way where it is a
clear distribution of what the movie studio only wants the audience to see, guided by the director
that has also became a commodity too.
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13. The Exorcist (1973)
As a bridge between the trailers of the 1970s and 1980s, The Exorcist is constructed with
elements of older, less explosive trailers with content left to the imagination. However, the
trailer also represents a shift toward maniacal, overarching doom and evil in the marketing and
presentation, which also surfaces in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer onward. The first 17
seconds of the trailer consists of no images or voiceover with only an eerie score on the
soundtrack (Blatty and Friedkin, 1973). The violence, chaos, and overall evilness cloak the
trailer in a dark and mysterious tone, oddly enough creating one of the fuller representations of a
woman in the horror/thriller genre. The Ellen Burstyn character, the mother, is conflicted,
scared, and helpless but also often powerful in demanding for answers due to her child’s
circumstances.
The use of voiceover in The Exorcist trailer falls in line with other uses of the tool in
communicating the commercial aspect, however, this time it is used more in the context of the
trailer, forwarding the small narrative. For example, “Somewhere between science and a
superstition, there is another world” The candle being held by the mother flames up. “A world of
darkness” (Blatty and Friedkin, 1973) is voiced after the 17 second introduction with only
sounds and no images. As a child’s screams for her mother are shouted but no images are
shown, the voiceover begins again (1973), forwarding the narrative while communicating the
commercial message. The voiceover of “Nobody expected it. Nobody believed it. And nothing
could stop it” (Blatty and Friedkin, 1973) sets up the arrival of the priest but also the next
opportunity to communicate the commercial message by referencing the title. Through the
chaotic nature of the acts being heard but not shown, the trailer keeps one foot in the past by
including impending doom and unseen acts of violence. In shifting toward modern trailers, it
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presents studio ideology while creating an evilness and relentless terror. At the end of the trailer
the previous point is made as the priest arrives. The mother pleads with the priest and voiceover
follows with “The one hope. The only hope. The Exorcist” (Blatty and Friedkin, 1973).
14. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Cloverfield trailers increase the impending sense of
doom by creating a fear that what is seen is the truth or are actual events that happened. The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer declares within the first five seconds “What happened was
true” (Hooper, 1974). However, no distinction is made that the acts of violence about to be seen
are true. The statement is a generalization and encapsulates what makes a trailer’s message key
to a movie’s marketing campaign. The simple association with truth begins the campaign of all
other avenues for a movie to explore such as DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, merchandising and video
games, although not the intention of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer. The trailer does
demonstrate how it can initiate a marketing campaign though. According to Artisan Home
Entertainment president of sales and marketing, Jeff Fink, the market is evolving in the following
way:
Increasingly, the thought is that DVD revenue can be maximized if the glow of a
theatrical campaign is still strong. Overall the idea is to get as much benefit from
the theatrical campaign as possible. A shorter window is beneficial, because
you’re the benefactor of a huge advertising and promotional campaign (Kipnis,
2003, p.1).
The trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre lays the groundwork in the audience’s mind that
this could happen to them and that “what happened was true” (Hooper, 1974. However, the
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footage in the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not subtle but more brutal and
shocking to the audience, establishing characteristics of Leatherface and his family. The
violence is to be filled in by the audience as no strike or cut is shown.
By utilizing voiceover, the trailer is adding the effect of someone telling the audience
what they may already be feeling or according to Kernan, offering them a safe place of fear and
terror at the movies (2004). With voiceover stating “this is the movie that’s just as real,” “just as
close,” “just as terrifying as being there” (Hooper, 1974), the follows Kernan’s belief of the
audience seeking a safe place of terror and fear at the movies. After the 1:30 mark the voiceover
gives the audience permission to discuss the movie, talk about what they have heard and have
been thinking about for the entire trailer: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: After you stop
screaming, you’ll start talking about it” (Hooper, 1974). What the audience remembers is the
push to discuss the movie and that it is rooted in truth.
15. The Shining (1980)
No voiceover. No actors. However, evil and impending doom literally lurk behind the
elevator doors in The Shining trailer. The tone becomes clear that the movie is being sold as
dark, ominous, and the biggest brand is not blood, guts, and gore, but Stanley Kubrick’s vision.
The first text to appear onscreen after the title is “A STANLEY KUBRICK FILM” (Kubrick,
1980). This point further adds evidence to the notion of renowned directors becoming a brand,
dictating the overall tone and presentation of the trailer. The Shining trailer also reinforces the
finding across the horror genre of violence or an act of violence as always imminent and
impending.
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Although devoid of the usual overpowering commercial messages, there is still marketing
involved in the construction of the trailer. In addition to that, expectations are created and
communicated while violence is still utilized as a product. The trailer establishes the movie as a
Stanley Kubrick film but also states “BASED ON STEPHEN KING’S BEST SELLING
MASTERPIECE OF MODERN HORROR” (Kubrick, 1980). In addition to that reference to
Stephen King, there is another onscreen text showing “THE SHINING” and two more credits to
Stanley Kubrick, one for the screenplay and one as “DIRECTED BY STANLEY KUBRICK”
(Kubrick, 1980). Once it is clearly established who made the movie, branding and marketing the
movie first to Kubrick and King fans, Jack Nicholson fans are addressed with reference to his
name onscreen. Finally, the movie is marketed to horror fans as blood rushes out of the elevator
for 39 seconds to end the trailer (1980).
16. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Shifts in the marketing strategies, presentations, and communication tendencies become
evident with 30 trailers examined and critiqued. That shift often seems to fall at the end of the
1970s to the mid-1980s. One potential reason for a shift could be related back to the notion of
the influence and influx of cable television, providing the opportunity to consume more and
more repetitive, graphic images in households during the early to mid-1980s.
In the Nightmare On Elm Street trailer there are numerous acts of violence against
teenagers. The first victim in the trailer, a young woman, is taken up to the ceiling and dragged
around with her own blood visible, a direct result from being killed in her dream by Freddy
Krueger (Craven and Shaye, 1984). Adding to the violent nature of the images being distributed
is the evil tone of the voiceover, with such comments as “No one knows where it came from or
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who it will visit next” or “She’s the only one who can stop it. If she fails no one will survive”
(Craven and Shaye, 1984). As the voiceover reiterates the message of the images shown, the
trailer continually pushes the commercial aspect of terror, whether through the images of Freddy
Krueger’s tongue coming through the phone trying to attack a young woman or through the
construction of the final 15 seconds of the trailer (1984). The final 15 seconds of the trailer
consists of overt references to the filmmaker’s previous titles. Although Alfred Hitchcock was
present in the Psycho trailer and referred to through onscreen text, none of his other films were
referenced. The last 15 seconds of the Nightmare on Elm Street trailer consists of the following:
as the title in red letters is shown onscreen the voiceover comments “From Wes Craven, director
of The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House On The Left; a new masterpiece in fantasy terror:
Nightmare On Elm Street” (Craven and Shaye, 1984). The use of “fantasy terror” (Craven and
Shaye, 1984) demonstrates a more concerted effort of studios to package trailers into consumable
products by creating a genre that is more digestible, but not free of sex and violence.
Commercially, this trailer also makes the director a brand, packages the violence, and ties
everything together by reclassifying it as “fantasy terror” (Craven and Shaye, 1984).
17. Child’s Play 2 (1990)
The concept of escapism and entertainment is taken one step further with red band
trailers, demonstrated by the content and greatest hits approach of the 1990 Child’s Play 2 trailer.
This trailer offers the best of Chucky’s violent acts and provides the audience with content that
meets the expectations partly created by the first movie. This trailer also demonstrates a shift in
movie marketing, including the saturation of sequels and a quench for violent content in various
forms of media.
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The trailer opens with an image of a Jack-in-the-box playing and then interrupted as
Chucky crushes it with his foot and shouts ”Sorry Jack! Chucky’s back” (Kirschner and Lafia,
1990). Here, two messages are being communicated. The first message communicated is that
Chucky is back in a sequel. The second message communicated is that not only is he returning
for another movie, but the same violent acts can be expected. Along with the initial message,
there is a shift from the imminent and impending terror and violence of trailers from the 1960s,
1970s, and The Shining, but to messages communicated of immediate danger, violence, and body
count. In one six second span Chucky attacks four separate people (1990). The exclamation
point of the greatest hits version of the Child’s Play 2 trailer comes in the form of literally
driving the message of the trailer home. Voiceover declares “Child’s Play 2,” the number two in
red, dripping blood. There is then a pause in the voiceover for a shot of a victim lying on a trap
set by Chucky. As the victim is immobilized the voiceover comes back in and proclaims “Keep
an eye out for it” (Kirschner and Lafia, 1990). The voiceover ends just as two pipes are thrust
down into the victim’s eyes; first from a wide shot and then from a first-person point of view
shot (1990).
18. Scream (1996)
In the study, by 1996 the approach of movie marketing became more and more packaged
and targeted toward specific audiences. Where previous trailers within the horror/thriller genre
approached the issues of gender or violence with little acknowledgment or self-reference to the
acts taking place onscreen, the Scream trailer blurs the lines between marketing, self-referential
promotion, genre analysis, and packaging of violence. Along with the mainstream
acknowledgement of adult entertainment in the comedy genre, the finding of a postmodern shift
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and approach in all genres becomes evident from the Scream trailer on through 2009. The killer
calls the Drew Barrymore character and asks “You like scary movies?” and then a brief glimpse
of the killer is shown as the masked villain jumps through the glass door (Craven, Konrad, and
Woods, 1996).
The genre references are numerous in the trailer and are built upon the assumption that
the audience has been conditioned to know the clichés and rules of the genre. The Jamie
Kennedy character announces “You can never have sex” (Craven, Konrad, and Woods, 1996)
and then there is a shot of a couple having sex (1996). “Never, under any circumstances, say I’ll
be right back.” After that statement there is a shot of the Rose McGowan character, large breasts
emphasized, another cliché addressed in the trailer, walking alone into a garage and the door
slamming behind her. That is followed by more instruction of “Because, you won’t be back”
(Craven, Konrad, and Woods, 1996). Adding to the game within a game is the Matthew Lillard
character announcing, after the instructions, that “I’ll be right back” (Craven, Konrad, and
Woods, 1996). All of this adds up to a more focused and market driven approach in constructing
and distributing the commercial message; acknowledging that the audience has either formed
these rules of the genre or that the studios intend to provide the audience with the rules in order
to see the movie the studio wants them to see.
19. Cloverfield (2008)
“Surprise” is shouted by individuals gathering at the going away party for one of the
main characters, the Michael Stahl-David character Rob, in Cloverfield (Abrams, Burk and
Reeves, 2008). Cloverfield’s trailer capitalizes on the element of surprise and runs with the idea
of terror in the most real yet fictional sense possible. A combination of post 9/11 fear realism
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and monster movie fictionalization, Cloverfield builds anticipation and fear by not showing the
audience anything distinguishable throughout the trailer, not even the title in the teaser trailer
(2008). Sound is essential throughout the trailer. Cloverfield followed tactics of such previous
marketing campaigns as The Blair Witch Project and foreshadowed the approach the late 2008
release Quarantine took in its trailer (Aguero, Culpepper, Davison, Dowdle, Fernandez,
Fernandez, and Lee, 2008).
The first moments of the trailer, the set up of a surprise party, is structurally how the
filmmakers seem to intend the trailer to unfold and keep any violence at bay through surprise and
fear. According to John Penney, a writer-producer who also guest lectures at the University of
Southern California, he points toward Cloverfield’s likeness to a video game and the 9/11 fears
many have: “No matter how you slice it, that post 9/11 intensity people feel, that powerlessness,
is the heart of what a lot of horror is” (Toto, 2008). With added realism by use of the handheld
camera, post 9/11 fears prevalent, and the lack of even a title, the Cloverfield trailer exhibits the
concept of capitalizing, communicating a commercial message through the construction, on not
only what is present onscreen but what is in the back of many individuals’ minds.
20. Friday The 13th (2009)
No other trailer demonstrates the multi-layered societal, media, and advertising aspects of
trailers more so than the 2009 trailer for Friday The 13th (Bay, Form, Fuller, and Nispel), The
commercial message is clearly represented in the trailer not through voiceover but by the tactic
of selling violence, sexuality that only leads to victimization, and overtly tallying the number of
kills throughout the movie. At the 1:39 mark a pretty, white female is killed by Jason Voorhees,
the hockey masked killer. After the kill the number one flashes on the screen (Bay, Form, Fuller,
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and Nispel, 2009). Six seconds later another victim is killed and the number two flashes on the
screen. This tactic goes on until the final kill results in the total, 13, becoming the number in the
title and leading to the final shot of Jason’s hockey mask (2009). Here, the old, identifiable
brand, the hockey mask, converges with the new, expected brand: violence, gore, and body
count.
As the number of deaths pile up to 13, this tactic is used for an interaction with the
audience and demonstrates a tactical construction of ideology and specific messages. The
culmination at 13 demonstrates a studio and trailer’s presentation of power over the audience by
showing the 13 deaths in order to establish the title of Friday the 13th. In addition to the
construction of an individual piece of media, in this case the trailer, part of popular culture is
remade, repackaged, and presented as new, with references to “From Producer Michael Bay” and
“The director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (Bay, Form, Fuller, and Nispel, 2009). Both
refer to the updated versions of horror movies such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Amityville
Horror, and The Hitcher, and reflect past parts of popular culture becoming today’s new,
updated versions for consumption.
21. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The Bridge on the River Kwai demonstrates the pre-Vietnam War trailers’ approach to
violence within the context of war. Through the often utilized tactic of establishing the product
with specific music, the trailer creates and sets the tone like many others have done since the
movie’s release in 1957. However, in using this technique, the trailer explicitly demonstrates the
contrast between the trailers of the 1950s versus those of today. The 2008 critique of the Iraq
War, Stop-Loss, opens with Drowning Pool’s Bodies (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal, and Rudin,
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2008) while The Bridge on the River Kwai trailer begins with the whistling theme of Colonel
Bogey March (Lean and Spiegel, 1957). Even using the same technique, the contrasting
approaches are demonstrated by simple music selection. Even though The Bridge on the River
Kwai trailer a different war than most of the trailers of the 1970s through today, violence is
depicted differently and marketed as more distant from everyday life.
The acts of violence in The Bridge on the River Kwai trailer include a slap across the face
and a bridge being blown up (Lean and Spiegel, 1957). In addition to the contrasting acts of
violence shown and marketed, in the war genre a boastful tone surfaces throughout different
decades. For example, the following onscreen text is shown: “Columbia Pictures and the
management of this theatre take great pride in announcing one of the finest motion pictures ever
made . . .” (Lean and Spiegel, 1957). This type of broad, boastful marketing approach was
utilized in the Platoon trailer as well in 1986. The tactic not only directly connects the studio to
the opinions, representations, and messages communicated, but also helps illuminate the era in
which the trailer was released. The trailers act as a reflection of a time when overt, boastful
statements in a piece of media such as a trailer would be met with little resistance and one in
which a war movie, in the case of Bridge On the River Kwai, was marketed as an event or grand
spectacle.
22. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Opening moments, or essentially the first 20 seconds of trailers, become important in not
only the promotional messages distributed but also in establishing the framework through which
depictions and representations of topics are viewed or perceived. The following quote from
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Winston Churchill, which begins the Lawrence of Arabia trailer, establishes a heroic lens
through which the trailer should be viewed, as established by the studio:
I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time . . . we shall never see his
like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war . . . It
will live in the legends of war -Winston Churchill (Lean and Spiegel, 1962).
The trailer for Lawrence of Arabia opens with a quote, a tool not often utilized across any
genre, but does establish the main message and focus of the trailer. In a PBS like
voiceover, the following is declared: “For over a quarter century controversy has raged
around the name T.E. Lawrence. No man of our time has drawn upon himself so much
praise and so much criticism” (Lean and Spiegel, 1962). In creating such high
expectations for the main character through voiceover, messages about gender are
communicated, although not necessarily intentionally. This man, T.E. Lawrence, is
presented as a product, not through standard marketing or manipulation, but marketed as
male perfection in motion with just the right dash of flaws.
23. The Deer Hunter (1978)
Throughout the study, the shifts in trends and marketing approaches are evident as each
era progresses more and more toward packaging and market driven communication which
impacts the representations of gender, violence, and sex. However, in the war genre the societal
context becomes a greater issue in movie trailers as the Vietnam War creates a shift in media
depictions, marketing of violence and the representations of war and violence too. That
influence moves into movie trailers such as The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Platoon. A
critical but nonetheless commercial approach is taken in The Deer Hunter trailer with brutal acts
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of violence inter-cut within the calmness of home life. However, the studio separates the
commercial appeal and message from the critical tone initially by highlighting Robert De Niro’s
presence, establishing commercial appeal. Any critical tone is created not through voiceover or
direct communication of the movie’s stance on war and violence, but by inserting positive quotes
from reviews and allowing those quotes to establish part of the critical tone. These quotes not
only praise the movie but create a framework through which to see the violence and war. The
reviews begin with positive quotes such as “BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR- N.Y. Film
Critics” (Cimino, Deeley, Peverall and Spikings, 1978). Three other positive reviews separate
home life and war. After the third review there is a shot of Robert De Niro with a flame thrower,
sounds of screams for two seconds followed by a quote from Frank Rich of Time Magazine,
“Powerful . . . a portrait of war that is boundless in terror” (Cimino, Deeley, Peverall and
Spikings, 1978).
The war genre, throughout various trailers, communicates messages and creates varied
depictions of gender. The depictions are not only male, both uber-macho or conflicted, but
deeper, less exploitative representations of females. At the 1:15 second mark there is a moment
when the Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep characters see each other to her surprise, as he
knocks on her front door (Cimino, Deeley, Peverall and Spikings, 1978). The moment is
captured with a conflicted, surprised, and shaken woman. This moment is followed by a walk
that is interrupted, through editing in the trailer, with a quote from a review and images of chaos
among a crowd of Vietnamese people (1978). Although the Meryl Streep character is at home
and not in combat the female character is given a moment to be presented as being shaken by
war and demonstrate how violence can resonate in soldiers and those at home too.
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24. Apocalypse Now (1979)
In the Apocalypse Now trailer music clearly establishes the tone of the violence that
unfolds. “This is the end my friend” (Morrison, 1967) plays on the soundtrack as the title
Apocalypse Now moves toward the screen, eventually overtaking the whole screen (Coppola,
1979). By utilizing The Doors song the trailer automatically creates a framework of the 1960s,
as the combination of artist and song, “The End,” takes the audience to the era. That framework
is magnified by the use of the movie’s title moving toward the screen and the images that follow.
The sounds of a helicopter and images of explosions introduce voiceover from the Martin Sheen
character that proclaims:
I’ve been a soldier since I was 19 and I still haven’t learned how to wait for it. I
wanted a mission for my sins and they gave me one. Nobody’d ever gone on a
mission like it before. And when it was over (shot of Martin Sheen’s character
lying down and now opening his eyes) I’d never want another one” (Coppola,
1979).
Again, the first 20 seconds establish the framework and follow the path of critiquing
violence in the war genre. Where other trailers of the 1990s and 2000s left some
separation between the commercial aspect and criticisms, this trailer, The Deer Hunter,
and Platoon trailer present evaluations of violence first and stories second, but still a
major part of the approach. The Courage Under Fire, Saving Private Ryan, and Jarhead
are presented as stories first and any evaluations secondary or left to the full-length
movie.
Although all of the Robert Duvall character’s actions, and those of the soldiers yelling
and screaming as two women dancing on stage, are testosterone fueled male acts, the previously
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established framework of the end comes into play. What is presented is not males but
individuals that have been so stripped down that they have simply become tribal, outside of
themselves. Demonstrated in the trailer, the soldiers’ gender is not one of being male or female
but one that knows no bounds of human existence, a primitive existence. The Marlon Brando
character asks “Are you an assassin?” The Martin Sheen character replies “I’m a soldier”
Finally, the Marlon Brando character declares “You’re an errand boy . . . sent by grocery clerks .
. . to collect the bill” (Coppola, 1979). The trailer, representation of gender and depiction of
violence, is summarized by that brief exchange and commercially verified with the concluding
“FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA PRESENTS.” Each of the main actors’ names is shown onscreen
with an image of each character, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, and Martin Sheen. The last
reference to the title, which ends the trailer, shows “APOCALYPSE NOW” crashing into the
production credits (1979).
25. Platoon (1986)
The context of societal state of affairs and point in time factors in to that which is
reflected and communicated in a trailer. The beginning of the Platoon trailer identifies Oliver
Stone as a combat infantryman in Vietnam in 1967 (Kitman Ho, Kopelson and Stone, 1986).
The message communicated is one of truth being established and confirmed with reference to the
director of the movie having been in the Vietnam War. Connection to the time of the Vietnam
War, along with expectations created, are established further by utilizing a song from the 1960s
that evokes an intended double meaning, The Tracks of My Tears. The song evokes the time and
culture while also addressing the sorrow and loss through using a song titled The Tracks of My
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Tears (Moore, Robinson, and Tarplin, 1965). Ultimately the trailer intends to reiterate its overall
point and make a statement about war and violence.
Where the Platoon trailer makes direct statements about its place in the war genre and the
truthfulness of product, compared directly to the Jarhead trailer, the Platoon trailer immediately
points out that the award-winning director was an infantryman in the Vietnam War (Kitman Ho,
Kopelson and Stone, 1986). In contrasting the approach of the Jarhead trailer with that of the
Platoon trailer, one of the reflective qualities of all movie trailers is demonstrated. Where the
Jarhead trailer does not make any declarations as a definitive account of the events in the Persian
Gulf, the Platoon trailer proclaims the movie to be “real” (Kitman Ho, Kopelson and Stone,
1986). By taking this approach the trailer defines not the time of its release, 1986, but in this
study, the era in which the Jarhead trailer was released in 2005. With today’s media saturation,
acting as a storyteller boasting its definitive place among the war genre and as an account of
events within a war, a trailer of today’s era would suffer the scrutiny of an audience looking for
details and reasons to discredit a statement such as “The first real movie about the war in
Vietnam is Platoon” (Kitman Ho, Kopelson and Stone, 1986).
26. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Other trailers ease into the combat and violence but the Full Metal Jacket trailer takes a
different approach and establishes a framework where the audience is thrown directly into the
middle of not only combat but the views of those in the battle too. As images of war and
explosions rage, a commanding officer is addressing his troops and providing insight into the
situation at hand with the following: “Charlie’s cut the country in half. Civilian press are about
to wet their pants and we’ve heard even Cronkite’s gonna say now the war’s unwinnable”
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(Kubrick, 1987). Alone, that monologue would resonate with the viewer but by allowing a
response from one of the soldiers the trailer creates a framework again of separation from one’s
self and the atrocities and violence of war. In response to the commanding officer’s speech the
Matthew Modine character asks “Sir. Does this mean Anne Margaret’s not coming?” (Kubrick,
1987).
The use of voiceover is a key tool utilized to the fullest capability by the trailermakers,
through dialogue from the movie. By establishing messages of incessant violence, resistance,
justification and providing one of the few visual references to sexuality in the war genre, the Full
Metal Jacket trailer shows a wide ranging view of violence and war, along with a depiction of
gender and sex. As a Vietnamese woman in a short skirt walks across a city street, pulling her
hair up, another commanding officer gives advice on the reasons for American forces being in
Vietnam: “We are here to help the Vietnam-ese. Because inside of every gook is an American
trying to get out” (Kubrick, 1987). This instruction has followed “Son, all I’ve ever asked of my
Marines is to obey my orders as they would the word of God” (Kubrick, 1987). That statement
creates a smaller framework within the already established framework of the trailer, as now the
“word of God” comes down and advises that “inside of every gook is an American trying to get
out” (Kubrick, 1987). At the end of the trailer, which runs only 1:27, the director’s name hovers
over the title FULL METAL JACKET (1987), communicating the overt commercial message
and the continual message of Kubrick’s hands being not only all over the trailer but the movie
too.
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27. Courage Under Fire (1996)
The first 20 seconds of the Courage Under Fire trailer include the 20th Century Fox logo,
direct reference to the time and place through onscreen text “DESERT STORM – 1991,” and the
plot of the movie, communicating the commercial message through voiceover by the Denzel
Washington character; “My job is to complete the inquiry in the awarding of the medal of honor
to Captain Karen Walden. I intend to do it.” (Davis, Friendly, Singer, Zwick, 1996). In the first
20 seconds the movie is summarized and packaged. The Denzel Washington voiceover is
followed by shots of a tank moving in the dark, dissolving into a shot of the Medal of Honor and
then to a shot of the Denzel Washington character and finally a tank firing (1996). The shots are
constructed to create the necessary framework for the audience to receive the plot of the movie
but packaged enough as to not create any tremendously divisive feelings. The studio does make
it a point to connect the female soldier to her family with shots of her with her daughter at home
in the “WHAT IS TRUTH” section of the trailer (1996).
The Courage Under Fire trailer takes the technique of posing questions to communicate
specific messages while creating an interaction with the audience. The trailer is constructed with
questions of “WHAT IS COURAGE? WHAT IS HONOR? WHAT IS TRUTH?” (Davis,
Friendly, Singer, Zwick, 1996). This allows the audience time to question themselves about
what they may think these three subjects of courage, honor, and truth to be. Also, the trailer
becomes a storyteller and reference point for the audience to draw upon their own ideas of what
the answers are to these questions. Answers are gently provided to the audience through images
of a helicopter rising up to rescue fallen soldiers and the Denzel Washington character probing
for answers and confronting a soldier for the “truth” (Davis, Friendly, Singer, Zwick, 1996).
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28. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Trailers from the 1990s can even prove be reflective of a time previous to their own, a
trend in the study where trailers from one decade comment more about another decade than the
time of the movie’s release. The Saving Private Ryan trailer utilizes a combination of still
images of letters and images from the movie (Bryce, Gordon, Levinsohn, Spielberg, 1998) to
evoke specific emotions and a sense of time and place. The choice of voiceover also elicits a
response in the audience to reference newscasts or radio programs informing the audience of
information. Half of the trailer contains images and voiceover while the remaining half contains
parts of the actual movie and promotion of the stars within it (1998), similar to trailers of the
1950s and 1960s. This tactic creates the framework for the trailer to exist with the plot in mind.
The violence shown and represented is one that is not exploitative or necessarily evaluative but
one of a memorial nature and remembrance.
In the Saving Private Ryan trailer the story is the product. Steven Spielberg’s presence
seems to dictate the direction of the trailer with the story marketed first and the actors promoted
secondarily and not until the final moments of the trailer is there a quiet reference to Steven
Spielberg; “a film by Steven Spielberg” (Bryce, Gordon, Levinsohn, Spielberg, 1998). Utilizing
another technique of trailers is not only the branding of the director, although minimally in this
case, but the use of voiceover to guide the audience through the images. In this case, the images
are still frames when the music is somber and the references are to the Ryan family’s losses
(1998). Pointing toward how direct and specific the images, music, and voiceover are in
directing and guiding the audience, consider the images onscreen after the tonal shift half-way
through the trailer. There is a shift from still images and “That boy is alive, we’re going to send
somebody to find him and we’re going to get him the hell out of there” (Bryce, Gordon,
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Levinsohn, Spielberg, 1998) to the promotion of the actors. After the shot of the Tom Hanks
character looking up and a classical score has begun, the text on an entirely black screen reads
“In the last great invasion . . .,” still image of two soldiers walking through a city’s ruins, “Of the
last great war . . .,” still image of multiple soldiers in a city’s ruins, “The greatest danger for eight
men,” still image of soldiers together, in combat, “Was saving . . . one,” and finally a still image
of battle shifting to footage from the movie (Bryce, Gordon, Levinsohn, Spielberg, 1998). The
violence shown represents the calmness of home life through the receipt of the letters,
communicating an underlying message and depiction of violence as harsh and unforgiving, while
demonstrating the shock to the senses battle and violence elicits with the shift from still image to
footage. All of this occurs while lying in the middle of summarizing the plot and the commercial
message of “The greatest danger for eight men was saving one” (Bryce, Gordon, Levinsohn,
Spielberg, 1998), which appears as the mission but acts primarily as the tagline of the movie.
29. Jarhead (2005)
The trailer for Jarhead depicts the build up to battle, conflict among troops, mundane
acts, and the waiting that a soldier can experience (Fisher, Harris, Wick, and Mendes, 2005).
The images in the trailer and a brief mention of “Desert Shield” (Fisher, Harris, Wick, and
Mendes, 2005) indicate the time of the movie but little else is referenced to indicate that this
movie is taking place nearly 15 years prior to the movie’s release in 2005. The trailer is not
presenting the idea that the audience should be aware of the time and place other than a brief
speech by the Chris Cooper character to the troops (Fisher, et al., 2005). Kanye West’s Jesus
Walks establishes any criticisms of violence and war with the lines “we at war with terrorism.
Racism. But most of all, we at war with ourselves” (Smith and West, 2004). Separation
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between the studio and any overt critiques is evident, which could potentially harm the
commercial appeal, as the studio does not proclaim the movie as an achievement or proud
presentation like previous trailers have. The packaging, through the use of Jesus Walks,
establishes the intentions of the trailer to appeal to a large audience and for any criticisms of
violence to take place upon consuming of the full-length movie.
30. Stop-Loss (2008)
With little regard to appealing to all audiences, the Stop-Loss trailer presents numerous
messages that are shaped through the use of music and quick edits. In the trailer there is a
blending of commercial appeal and critical, evaluative messages communicated about the effects
of war and violence. The studio logos are shown at the beginning of the trailer, but unlike
Bridge On the River Kwai trailer there is not an explicit connection between the studio and the
messages communicated. In addition to that, any connection that might have been established is
pushed aside with the beginning of Drowning Pool’s Bodies following a friendly exchange
between two soldiers about a picture of one’s girlfriend back home (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal,
and Rudin, 2008). By using a song titled Bodies and choosing the portion of the song they did,
the filmmakers establish views on violence, war, and specifically the Iraq War. The movie’s
release came five years after the war in Iraq began in 2003. The trailer acts as a barometer of the
societal climate, much like The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now trailers, demonstrating a time
in which promotion and marketing of a movie that is critical of the of the Iraq War’s causalities
could be possible.
Multiple examples throughout the Stop-Loss trailer communicate and present the
messages both commercial and critical. One brief segment includes five onscreen texts that read
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“YOU FOUGHT FOR AMERICA. YOU FOUGHT FOR FAMILY. YOU FOUGHT FOR
FREEDOM. YOU GAVE EVERYTHING. THEY WANT MORE” (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal,
and Rudin, 2008). These five onscreen texts are followed by a shift in music to Snow Patrol’s
Open Your Eyes and a large American flag on a crane, with the camera on the ground looking
directly up at it (2008). In addition to the explicit framing utilized with these five statements, the
images between each statement elicit a response, although just momentarily creating an
interaction with the audience. For example, after the first statement of “YOU FOUGHT FOR
AMERICA” (Goodman, Pierce, Roybal, and Rudin, 2008) there are images of a welcome home
troops sign hung across a small town’s street. A soldier behind a gun with ammunition fed into
the gun. A woman with a tiny American flag in her back pocket with her flat stomach exposed.
A soldier hunched over crying with his hand rested upon what appears to be a memorial for a
fallen soldier, a gun with the soldier’s helmet resting on top of it. Two young children holding lit
sparklers. A close-up of a soldier looking into his gun’s sight and a soldier’s face in the
foreground; in the background a soldier lowering his gun as an object burns behind that soldier
(2008). All of these still images are onscreen in the span of three seconds. Although not a great
length of time, the trailer has stimulated reference points and images in the audience’s mind.
This tactic is coupled with the rapid fire editing and construction of this portion of the trailer,
leading into the more commercial section of the trailer that presents the packaged and market
specific approach. The actors are introduced beginning at the 2:01 mark with Ryan Phillippe’s
name shown in red and blue text followed by a shot of him shirtless with a cowboy hat on,
presumably on a farm performing some type of manual labor (2008). The choice of that brief
shot demonstrates the fine line trailers walk between any semblance of plot, societal awareness,
and commercial appeal. The choice of the image accompanying the mention of Ryan Phillipe is
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not one of him in his uniform or in combat but shirtless. Again, the blending of any type of
societal topic is eventually washed away by the purpose of movie trailers, to provide the
audience with a long commercial disguised as a short movie acting as a studio’s storyteller for
two minutes.
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PART 9
APPENDIX 2
Trailer Listings and Web Addresses
Comedy Genre
1. Some Like It Hot (1959)
http://www.alltrailers.net/some-like-it-hot.html
2. The Graduate (1967)
http://www.alltrailers.net/the-graduate.html
3. Annie Hall (1977)
http://www.trailerfan.com/movie/annie_hall/trailer
4. Animal House (1978)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3505652505/
5. Porky’s (1982) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1773076761/
6. Bachelor Party (1984)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Llfql8Qc4
7. Girl 6 (1996) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1420427545/
8. American Pie (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3622961945/
9. The Girl Next Door (2004) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi797770009/
10. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/the40yearoldvirgin/
Horror/Thriller Genre
11. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3014131993/
12. Psycho (1960) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1492452121/
13. The Exorcist (1973)
http://theexorcist.warnerbros.com/cmp/videobottom.html
14. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) http://www.movie-list.com/t/texas-chainsawmassacre.html
15. The Shining (1980) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1660224281/
16. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) http://www.spike.com/video/nightmare-on-elmst/3020554
17. Child’s Play 2 (1990) http://video.aol.com/video-detail/childs-play-2-trailer/1612447324
18. Scream (1996) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1418068249/
19. Cloverfield (2008)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/cloverfield/ (Teaser)
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20. Friday the 13 (2009) http://www.fridaythe13thmovie.com/
War Genre
21. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
http://www.spout.com/films/The_Bridge_on_the_River_Kwai/4445/4578/trailers.aspx
22. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/trailers-screenplayE14611-10-2
23. The Deer Hunter (1978)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3045785881/
24. Apocalypse Now (1979) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFJq7WrgZyU
25. Platoon (1986) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2275148057/
26. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi229179673/
27. Courage Under Fire (1996) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1994523417/
28. Saving Private Ryan (1998) http://www.movie-list.com/s/saving-private-ryan.html
29. Jarhead (2005) http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/jarhead/index.html
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30. Stop-Loss (2008)
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/stoploss/sl_large.html
Miscellaneous Trailers
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2247295769/
The Blair Witch Project (1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM
The Brave One (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6NO8svBSvE
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