Hollywood Is Turning Brands Into Modern Myths

[00:00:03][music] If you are anything like me, you may find yourself accidentally watching short form content on your various social media platforms, including YouTube. [cheering and screaming] Even as I try to fight back against the brain [music] rot that is short form content, I find it completely inescapable no matter what the platform I use. But thankfully, YouTube shorts are relatively better than what I see on Instagram. Of all the short form content that I am unwillingly exposed [music] to, the one I don't mind seeing is clips from movies that I would never otherwise be interested in watching. These range from weird old British movies from the ' 50s to biopics about historical figures that I'm not necessarily interested in.

[00:00:59]And recently the shorts algorithm is locked in on these like corporate biopic movie things. You know what I'm talking about, right? Those movies that are like super mega dramatized versions of company origin stories or like events that took place within the company.

[00:01:18]Probably the most famous was that movie The Social Network back from 2010 that made the founding of Facebook look like one of the craziest things you've ever seen. But, you know, in reality, it was probably kind of boring. Well, that's the thing about these movies. They are dramatizations of uh do you call these historical events? Events in a company's history that no one really asked to learn more about. You know, like the origins of Amazon and Facebook can be summed up by saying they were founded in a garage or a dorm room. And that's all people really care to know and what most people want to know. Generally, no one asked for a movie about Mark Zuckerberg in 2010, [music] but hey, we got it.

[00:02:03]Anyways, recently for me, I've been getting these shorts about a different corporate slot movie. In fact, it's a corporate slot movie about slopchow made by a slop company. Oh boy, it's like the slop parade over here. It's a movie about hot Cheetos. Aside from Hot Cheetos being styrofoam with red 40 sprayed on them, what's the deal with the movie? Why is it so important that Hot Cheetos needed a movie? Why did we make Why did we make a movie about Hot Cheetos? Well, in 2023, the Cheeto movie, which is actually called Flaming Hot, would tell us all why we should care about hot Cheetos. It follows the alleged true story of Richard Montanaz, [music] a Mexican American man who grows up in poverty and struggles with crime in his youth, but is eventually saved by landing a corporate job at Fredo Lelay factory as a janitor. Richard being the great man he is ab he absolutely dreams of leaving his low-level position at the factory and rising through the corporate ranks. He dedicates himself to the company, learning the ins and outs of every part of the factory, how the [music] chips are made, the markets they appeal to, how it how it works, and how everything is flavored. Fast forward a few years and well, Fredo Lei it's it's starting to face some declining sales.

[00:03:28]And in this moment, Richard sees his opportunity to shine. He takes home some Cheetos. Side note, that's stealing from the company. Richard, I'm going to have to report you to HR. And while he seasons these stolen Cheetos with some spicy chili powder that were that was inspired by his Mexican heritage.

[00:03:47]Ultimately, he creates the prototype for a spicy chip that would be marketed to Hispanic customers across the United States, which at the time was a largely overlooked demographic.

[00:03:59]Richard, who had no business experience [music] at all, somehow manages to find a way to get in direct contact with the CEO of Fredo Lelay and pitch his spicy chip idea directly to him. Well, hey, big CEO man loves the janitor's spicy chip so much that they started producing it. And this spicy chip would end up becoming hot Cheetos. At the end of the movie, Richard gets a call from big cool CEO man and he gets promoted to corporate and he comes out of the phone booth to all the staff from his factory cheering cheering for him and [screaming] they all go, "Yay, Richard." And everyone lived happily ever after. Wow, what an amazing story about the American dream and someone becoming something out of nothing and being able to climb the corporate ladder. It's so cool and real and neat. Okay, well maybe it's not all real. When I'd see these shorts for this movie, all of the comments referred to the fact that this was essentially a madeup story. Now, the movie is largely based off of the real Montana's memoir.

[00:05:04]But what is true about Richard is that he did manage to climb through the corporate [music] ranks from janitor to an executive level marketing officer in within the Fredo company. But what is not true about Richard is that he did not invent the hot Cheeto. Fredo has actively disputed Richard's claim and the entire plot of this movie on record since its release. [music] In an official statement from the company in reference to Richard, they stated, "We value Richard's many contributions to our company, especially his insights to Hispanic consumers, but we do not give him credit for the creation of the Flamin' Hot Cheetos or any of our Flamin' Hot products.

[00:05:43]And further investigations from several newspapers and magazines point out that a lot of Richard's alleged timeline didn't actually align with real events.

[00:05:52]The most glaring issue in his timeline being the CEO that he allegedly pitched to in 1990 actually wasn't even hired until 1991. Internal records from the company show that they were already testing spicy chips in select markets years prior to Richard's alleged invention. In fact, it wasn't even a singular person that came up with the flavoring. It was the spice manufacturing company McCormick that initially provided seasoning samples to the Fredo Corporation. Now, as for Richard, as I said, he did become a marketing executive for the company with one focus, expanding the Hispanic market and customer group. So, good for him. In all honesty, a lot of these corporate movie biopic things were made in the same year, 2023. There was a Blackberry movie. There was also a Tetris movie and a Nike movie and the Cheeto movie all in one year. But there's other pretty notable ones like the affforementioned Facebook movie and there's a McDonald's movie. But, you know, I didn't come here to nitpick one movie and one guy who ended up being a phony liar. I came here to nitpick why do these movies even exist at all? And even though the companies aren't paying for them to be made, why are they still wildly beneficial to an everinccreasingly evil business world that envelops our culture today? The general name of this genre of movie is called the corporate mythology movie, but to me they feel more like corporate propaganda. All of these movies have something in common. They all choose to misrepresent the actual history of the companies in order to shape public perception of the respective brand. Firstly, they compress generally dozens of people who contributed to the creation of these brands into one or two main visionary protagonists for the sake of the narrative. They dramatize these Eureka moments into something that in many cases never even happened. and they simplify dozens of messy business transactions into one moral victory with the payoff of the movie always being that the product [music] or brand succeeds. In essence, the ultimate protagonist may not even be the character in the film, but rather the company or the product that the main character is working on and its success.

[00:07:56]And this raises questions as to the level of influence that corporations and these founders have over shaping public memory and mythos with the short answer being they have a little bit too much.

[00:08:07]If you were to tell the story of America in the first half of the 20th century, what would these stories be about? We could point to movies that are largely mythological retellings of major events that reflect America's national history or elements of which the nation had become prideful that shaped our national identity. These are things like a war movie. The events and characters may be made up and fictionalized, but the mythos of war is presented to the viewer through the medium of film as a means to gain a level of understanding into these historical events. But since it is a movie, it still has to be entertaining.

[00:08:40]The same can be said about many other aspects of early 20th century history and culture. A movie about the civil rights movement, a movie about the creation of NASA, a movie about a president, [music] or even on a cultural level, a movie about a famous or very influential artist or musician. They all reflect aspects of our cultural mythos. Hell, you could go even further back and say that western films are what created the mythos of cowboys for the Wild West.

[00:09:04]Films depicting the history of all these topics contribute to the cultural mythos of American society and its [music] recent history. In many cases, the stories are certainly interesting by themselves, but the issue of presenting them in a motion picture format with a limited time frame inevitably leads to the creative liberty that filmmakers take portraying these generally true events. And I can't blame them. They're not historians. A historian would ask, "What actually happened?" But a screenwriter doesn't have to ask that question. A screenwriter has to ask, "What's [music] the best story I can tell?" This leads to the idea of a mythology around historical events, which can even be equated to vast dramatized generalizations of what actually happened. [music] Now, fast forward a bit into the late 20th century and to this era of corporate biopic movies. What do they do to the mythos of history? [music] Well, in short, they turn it into advertising. By portraying these movies as historical retellings of important events, [music] they are interweaving themselves with the cultural mythos of American society. On a higher level, this reflects a shift of what people deem to be recognizable. The shared cultural touchstones of institutions, civil movements, or major historical events are instead replaced with global brands. But the cultivation of a mythos doesn't stop at just the brand. It extends to the chosen protagonist, which is in many cases the founder of these companies. The structure of many of these films share the same narrative beats you'll find in the mythos surrounding historical inventors that are more closely associated with inventions that pushed a technological breakthrough or even just an overall achievement for mankind. I'm talking about people like the Wright brothers or Thomas Edison or Nicola Tesla. All of which invented things that could be seen as gifts [music] to the human race. But that same style of myth is applied to a guy who created Facebook. I mean, for [ __ ] sake, he didn't even make social media. He just made it more widespread and more addictive for people. [music] And if you ask anyone on the street today, that's not a gift to humanity.

[00:11:03]What's weird about these films is that the companies they tell the story of don't generally sponsor them directly either, but they will never oppose them to the point of preventing their creation. In order to make one of these corporate slot propaganda films, the company or product being discussed has to be something that is culturally relevant. And it ends up being a win-win for both the studio producing the movie and the company the story [music] is about. For the studio, creating a movie about McDonald's will be inherently engaging to a wide spectrum of potential viewers by brand association alone. The marketing comes naturally of the company they are discussing. But on the flip side, companies love these movies for all the affforementioned reasons. They interweave their company's history into the cultural story of history, and they set the emotional payoff as the product or the company itself becoming successful. But mostly, they humanize the wall of corporate agents that went into the creation of these meticulously curated products that they produce into one simple protagonist that you as the viewer is rooting for. And when it's all said and done, anyone who watches one of these movies from start to finish has just willingly sat through a 90-minute advertisement that is embedded the idea that the company is represented by one person and that their product is good since [music] it was the protagonist of the movie and his success was a form of emotional payoff at the very end of the film. People probably left the Nike movie thinking about how dope Nike was.

[00:12:29]Now, whether or not they bought Nike shoes immediately following that, it doesn't matter. what they were doing was thinking about the product and they were thinking [music] about the brand by themselves and that's all marketing really needs you to do. Overall, these movies being produced and received the way they are sort of represent a cultural shift that I alluded to before.

[00:12:49]It's no coincidence that through the rise of lifestyle advertising, we would also see the personification of a brand.

[00:12:55]People in the past shared cultural mythos that centered around cultural touchstones. The stuff I talked about before were more akin to wars or social movements or music or political issues etc. Beyond the fact that these were all historical events or causes, these touchstones also were deeply embedded into an individual's identity. And prior to the invention of lifestyle advertising, brands were not associated with identity. Ultimately, the shift in marketing tactics would change this.

[00:13:22][music] There becomes a change when a brand represents a lifestyle. Before, if someone was an outdoorsman, the brand of equipment they use didn't necessarily matter as long as it had good quality.

[00:13:32]But enter lifestyle marketing and all of a sudden this changes. No matter what brand of backpack [music] one buys, ultimately at the end of the day, it's still a backpack. But each outdoorsman brand carries a different identity associated with it. After several decades of lifestyle advertising being the premier method used, its effects have infiltrated our cultural mythos and our cultural identity. Since brands no longer exist solely as a product or service that they sell, but rather a representation or in some cases the embodiment of an idea or a lifestyle, they have inadvertently become shared cultural touch points, which leads brands to become [music] a part of an individual's identity. It's only natural that these brands that people have embedded so deeply into their lives and are also shared cultural touch points for many end up developing mythos around them, including a creation mythos.

[00:14:20]Movies about historical events inherently function as a form of the modern-day [music] myth. The general purpose of a myth is to attempt to explain the world around us and why things are the way they are or to tell a version of history. In the case of our modern information apparatus, it would be very easy for someone to access a history book about a topic such as World War II. There there are vast amounts of historical records that are easy to access that accurately recount the events from World War II. [music] But to process every single piece of detail from this knowledge base is extremely [music] timeconuming. Now on the other hand, a World War II movie recounts events from the conflict as well and it recounts aspects of the conflict that did occur but in a form that is more akin to the idea of a myth.

[00:15:07]It explains the war, but in a way that would be more of a historical fiction fashion. But nonetheless, provides insight into history, just in a dramatized mythological way. As companies and brands have integrated themselves into our cultural identity, the same need for an origin myth arises.

[00:15:26]Just like any other aspect of history, there are many more accurate sources that would retell the events of these companies origins in detail, but they are difficult to consume. So just as a war movie creates a myth of history around a conflict, these biopic corporate movies create a myth of origin around these new cultural touchstones that have embedded themselves into our society. At the end of the day, I understand that the retelling of cutthroat sociopathic origin stories can be interesting and the origin stories of a lot of companies can are very interesting in their own unique ways.

[00:16:01]The problem lies not in the telling of these stories, but rather that these companies end up being weaved into the cultural mythos of the modern era. Nike or Tetris or Blackberry, they're not aspects of our culture. They are brands.

[00:16:14]McDonald's isn't something that should be interwoven with cultural mythos. They are a burger factory. But these movies would leave you with an opinion that would differ. I generally don't think these movies should exist because at the end of the day, I can tell you that Apple was founded in the garage. We don't need a featurelength film that is actually a featurelength advertisement in disguise to tell us that. And ultimately, it blows me away that our cultural mythos has become so compromised by corporations that Hot Cheetos have become something that was worthy of an entire origin story.

[00:16:53]Anyways, what do you think? Do you like corporate slot movies? What do you think about uh your favorite corporate slot?

[00:17:00]What corporate slot movie would you make a movie about? I would love to hear about it all below. [music] Um, like usual. Oh, that was a weak burp. Like usual, if you would like to support me further, please consider buying a sticker. Um, I also have a Patreon where I post newsletters and additional content. If you're also still here, consider liking and subscribing. It really helps my channel a lot. Um, also leave a comment because that also helps my channel a lot. I have nothing more to say now.

[00:17:29]Thank you for watching. I hope you go eat [music] corporate slop and watch corporate slop movie. Have fun. Bye-bye.