SoaP Opera

“But it turned out when they said this movie was ‘shitty,’ they didn’t mean it ironically. They just thought it would be a piece of shit.”
-New Line marketing president Russell Swartz (from Dateline Hollywood)

Snakes on a Plane was marketed to be a crappy B movie, so crappy that it creates a following, so notorious that people would want to go to a movie theater, shell out some $s and see for themselves how crappy it could be. The very concept of the whole movie, from the crappy title to the crappy marketing strategy (or marketing strategy based on the crappiness of it all) ultimately did not spell out success in terms of revenues. If we were talking about fodder for sarcasm, then perhaps, the movie could be said to be a huge success.

Maybe the producers relied so much on the internet as a revolutionary form of media. The film itself created a strong following in terms of web content. Googling up “Snakes on a Plane” yielded 65,300,000 hits. Did the avant garde marketing successfully relegate “Snakes on a Plane” within the happy bounds of pop-culture? I guess so. But does that mean the New Line Cinema Executives can retire early and buy an island or two off the coast of Fiji? Hehe. I don't think so.

If you think about it, based on the premise of their marketing strategy, the ploy worked well, So well in fact, that maybe people started thinking that the movie was so crappy it wasn't worth spending $10 on. Looking at it another way, maybe it wouldn't have done so well were it not for the online publicity. In the end, what the producers achieved was just another topic for discussion. But then again, is it JUST another topic for discussion? Incorporating bloggers into their marketing strategy created an online macarena/ketchup song monster.

Look again at the figure above. 65 million hits!!! Try typing “Nacho Libre” in the search field and you'll get only 11 million results. Nacho Libre is a seriously funny movie, although it probably didn't gross as well as its producers hoped. What about “Austin Powers?” (who doesn't like Austin Powers?) Only 7.3 million hits.

Wow. That is brilliant marketing strategy. Perhaps if they venture into merchandise, they'd make a killing in sales.

asl?

'The internet is a vast and confusing place, where is a little girl to go?"- Major Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell

The internet is a virtual world which transcends boundaries of culture, religion, countries and thought. It is a parallel universe where each transaction, each reality has its virtual counterpart. In this virtual sphere of existence, rules and and norms applicable to the material world may not necessarily be efficiently operationalized in online transactions or inter-relations.

Electronic commerce laws try to establish rules and norms to govern online transactions, but despite the attempt to create a virtual government, the long arm of the law cannot reach every nook and cranny in this infinite universe of 1s and 0s. The concept of government and its functions cannot easily be constituted in a realm where everything is virtual. Who will be governed, how will they be governed and most importantly, who will govern them? Personas over the internet are represented by a mere succession of numbers (IP addresses). These IP addresses can easily be masked and merely point to a general location. Any attempt to discover the identities behind IP addresses tread dangerously on the right to privacy. Existing as it does in the virtual sphere, there are no clear cut territorial lines delineating jurisdiction.

Take one of the 3 inherent powers of any sovereign --- taxation. In ordinary transactions, especially transactions involving services, the situs of the transaction is paramount. The tax situs is the place where the service is rendered. What is the "place" where service is rendered in purely internet-based transactions? Sections 23 of the e-commerce act and Section 33 of its implementing rules try to address this virtual dilemma by pointing to the originator/addressee's "place of business" or usual/habitual residence. But this again begs the question, "Which address?" "Places" in the internet are merely represented by numbers. These numbers are easily masked. Not all businesses have brick and mortar offices and a lot merely exist unregistered in virtual space. Another issue would be the source principle of taxation. How does one tax a resident German national who sells webpage templates through a website whose domain name is registered in Tanzania? If the BIR cannot even efficiently collect taxes in the real world, the possibility of taxing online transactions proves to be a herculean task.