I wanted to work on two long posts this past weekend – one Red Sox related, the other music. I had a mission to accomplish first though; I had to read Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before my brother and some friends went to see it last night. I succeeded in my mission (the book was good, but not great) and saw the movie (also good, but not great), and it all paid off because I got to see the worst product placement I have ever seen.
WARNING: I AM GOING TO DISCUSS ARGUABLY THE MOST CRITICAL AND REVEALING SCENE OF THE BOOK/MOVIE AFTER THE JUMP SO DO NOT READ PAST THIS IF YOU ARE PLANNING ON SEEING THE MOVIE OR READING THE BOOK
Okay, so when it got to the scene where…
THIS IS A SECOND SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WERE TOO LAZY AND/OR STUPID TO READ THE FIRST ONE – YOU’VE BEEN WARNED, BUT I’M STILL GOING TO KEEP MY DESCRIPTION VAGUE BECAUSE I THINK SOME OF YOU ARE GOING TO READ THIS REGARDLESS AND THEN GO SEE THE MOVIE ANYWAY. YOU’RE WELCOME.
The entire story builds up to this big reveal, where we find out that the disappearance of a character may not be an isolated act, but instead is just another notch on the belt of a serial rapist/murderer. Our protagonist is entangled with said lunatic, who has him noosed up in his rape dungeon (try to come up with a nicer way to say rape dungeon…I just spent ten minutes on it and came up empty). While he has the lead character bonded, he’s doing your typical bad-guy-revealing-himself-at-the-end-of-the-movie monologue. Somehow tied into that is the absolute worst use of product placement I have seen to date. Here’s how it goes down:
Serial Rapist: I’ve never touched a man before, oh, except
those times my Dad had my sister and I touch him. It was kind of a family thing, you know how that goes.
Protagonist: <muffled noises>
SR: Whoops! Silly me, I almost forgot to Purell before I tried cut off your ding-dong.
<Camera pans to an angle that gives us about 20% of the screen filled with a Purell dispenser, and the rest filled with the serial rapist, pressing down on the dispenser to cleanse his filthy rape hands>
I may have taken some liberty with those quotes (he doesn’t actually mention Purell), but that’s essentially how it goes down. It’s not that easy to be identified as the sponsor of an entire demographic, but a tip of the hat to the good folks at Purell – you are now the official sponsor of serial rapists everywhere!