At a screening of Your Face is a Saxophone Episode 2 last weekend, someone asked me why we had product placement for Lay’s potato chips. He suggested that we use a fake brand name that evokes the same product. This isn’t the first time I’ve had someone bring this up to me — why we litter real brand names and logos all over the place, instead of showing “Zony” TV sets and “Croaka Cola” — so I figured I’d address it once and for all.
The common practice of using fake brand names is to avoid claims of trademark infringement. Production companies will go to great lengths to create fictional products to show on-screen because they fear a lawsuit from the trademark holder. This is because trademark holders will go to great lengths to sue every unapproved appearance of their logo on anything because they fear losing their trademark. Trademark law requires holders to maintain control over their marks, which generally results in them go completely overboard about it.
This cycle of fear results in the censorship of reality. Part of what we’re trying to do with Your Face is a Saxophone is to vehemently point out how pervasive branding, commercialization, and consumerism actually are in our world. We casually refer to “drinking a Coke”, “buying an iPhone”, and “checking Facebook” in everyday conversation. We’re surrounded by our electronics from Audiovox, LG, Sony, and Antec; our office supplies from Scotch, 3M, Bic, and Sharpie; our Kraft macaroni, our Heineken beer, our Hershey’s candy, and our Mott’s fruit. This is what the real world looks like, people.
But the moment we start populating our real-world settings with bizarro-world brands, the impact is gone. We’re no longer satirizing the real world, we’re escaping from it. Perhaps we’re vaguely commenting on the concept of hyper-commercialization in general, but the unreality of drinking a Doke while using a Pineapple uPhone to check on Friendbook neuters it entirely.
I’m chiefly referring to the incidental use of brands there. There are certainly examples of fictional brand names being used to great effect in satire, without lessening the impact very much at all.
So, in Your Face is a Saxophone, I suppose we could structure our plots not around Pepsi, but around Schwepsi; not around Miller Lite beer, but around Schmiller Lite. But it’s those little things in the background — the Apple computers, the Lay’s potato chips on the receptionist’s head, the Motorola/Verizon logos on Leora’s phone — that we can’t ignore. We’re not going to let fear of a trademark claim (which we’d have a very strong fair use argument against) stop us from pointing out that in the real world, real brands and real logos surround us everywhere we go.
Perhaps it’s jarring that all of the characters are decidedly bizarro-world — nobody in the real world has a light bulb for a head — but the brands and logos aren’t. Good. We want you to notice the brands. That’s the point.
In Your Face is a Saxophone, we refuse to make up fake companies* to make fun of. If we want to make fun of Pepsi, then dammit, we’re going to make fun of Pepsi.
*Yes, there was Sqwoogy in the first episode. Sqwoogy was not a parody of Twitter, it was a parody of Silicon Valley startup culture and all of the dumbassery that stems from it.
