“Couples Retreat” poster into Race controversy

Posted on November 20, 2009
Filed Under East meets West, MOVIES | Leave a Comment

‘Couples Retreat‘, Oscar-winning- music director A R Rahman‘s first Hollywood venture after ‘Slumdog Millionaire is causing quite the stir in the U.K. The controversy has more to do with the placement of the actors on the posters. Couples Retreat is about four couples, three white and one black. In the American poster for the film, all eight stars’ pictures and names are shown. In the U.K. poster, however, one couple is omitted. Any guesses which one? We will give you the details of the sizzling story.
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Faizon Love and Kali Hawk are missing from the poster used in the U.K. , Universal Pictures says they just wanted to “simplify” the poster for foreign release, to focus on “actors who are most recognizable in international markets.” Nonetheless, after getting complaints about racism from British viewers, the studio has apologized and scrapped plans to use the revised poster in other countries.

It’s certainly true that Love and Hawk are less famous in other countries than they are in the United States. (Heck, they’re not that famous here, either.) Their characters are fourth in importance in the story; even in the American poster, they’re all the way in the back. They are hardly noticeable.  If you had to remove a couple from the poster, they’d be the logical choice.

Ah, but there’s the problem — why did Universal think they had to remove a couple? The poster with all eight characters did fine in America. Why change it? Do international audiences reject movies that appear to have too many characters? Is “clutter” a big complaint among British poster aficionados? If nothing else, someone at Universal should have realized that removing the black couple — even if race had nothing to do with it — would at least look sketchy. You’d think that as bad as the movie is, they’d be extra careful not to turn off any potential viewers with their marketing. Live and learn!

The studio apologized for causing offense and has promised to use the original poster for promotional use in other countries. Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch-UK, said: “I think this was an ill-conceived move. We celebrate diversity in Britain and we could have coped with seeing the same poster used in America.”

unfortunately, racism still exists in the west.

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