23:53 September 06, 2008 | All news from "Angelina Jolie News"

Angelina (for once) is not Wanted

[WANTED] (source:aintitcool.com)

I became familiar with Angelina Jolie not because of her regular screenings on the media but because the men in my family are obsessed with her. The more they get obsessed, the more I (and I presume other women like me out there) want to rebell against the fact that she is the most beautiful women on earth. I'm really not going to bother going into the topic of beauty and celebrities as it will be highly biased. But what I will go into will be the use of images in recent movies which serves a different purpose than mere entertainment.

I was pressured into watching the film Wanted by my brother who is a huge fan of Angelina. He went to the movies more to see her, I went to see more to the movie than her. I really did try but the women was popping out of everywhere! All credits go to her athleticism and the ability to run around and still have flawless hair and makeup. The question I asked myself in the movies was whether the people sitting across and behind me were watching the film because it had promised to be a great one or because Angelina had the key role. Would my brother and others like him in the cinema have come if the main character was played by, lets say, Renee Zellweger?

To my astonishment I came across an article yesterday about the movie Wanted on spiked-online.com where author Rob Lyons assessed the crimes against freedom of information. The problem was that the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had censured the makers of Wanted because the posters advertising the film "glamorised guns."

The ASA claimed that even though most viewers would understand that the posters reflected the content of an action film, it was because "the ads featured a glamorous actress, action poses, several images of or related to guns and aspirational text which could be seen to glamorise the use of guns and violence." Thus they concluded that the posters could be seen to condone violence by glorifying or glamorising the use of guns.

Lyons describes Wanted as a film where boy meets girl, girl gives boy a gun and several million dollars, violence and adventure ensues. But if the ASA was to censure every movie that has a gun in it, what would happen to the careers of many of my star celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarznegger and Al Pacino?

It is a fact that the advertising industry is heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud and this is well illustrated in the Wanted poster?s depiction of a sexy Hollywood actress with a ?loaded weapon? in her hands. Lyons however finds repulsive the assumption made by the ASA that "we mere mortals cannot distinguish between action-movie erotica and real life. Whatever makes people carry guns and commit murder is highly unlikely to have anything to do with what is on the display at the bus stop." Movie posters having the ability to tip people over the edge is a pretty bold claim by the ASA. Lyons ends his argument by saying loud and clear that such petty censoriousness is not Wanted.

Another way one can look at the issue of viewers being affected by what they watch is not only in terms of violence. Going back to the earlier point raised about the obvious selection of the glamour actress by directors brings about the issue of body image, sexuality and desire. There is no doubt that a young women walking into the theatre to watch Wanted can leave thinking that to be classified as 'hot' she needs to look and act more like the heroine. Similarly, men might leave the theatre thinking it was worth all the money to see Angelina 'move like that' and that it was way better than reading comic books at home.

What is meant by all this is that there are way too many facets of films that people are influenced by. The ASA might have picked out one but there are way too many left out. Having said that, there is not a film in this day and age that is so clean and cleverly directed that it cannot be attacked by anyone...or is there?