Catholic World News News Feature

Marketing Outrage November 01, 2003

The phone rang, and I picked it up.

“Hello. This is Lori Johnson from Miramax. Is this Ignatius Press?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Can I talk to you about a movie we have showing in your area? It’s a really beautiful film about faith and Catholic culture in Ireland.”

“OK.”

“We can send you passes to a press screening of the film. It’s about a convent of nuns in the 1960s…”

“What’s the name?”

“The Magdalene Sisters.”

STARK THEMES

A quick online search showed that The Magdalene Sisters is a movie directed by Peter Mullan, a self-professed Marxist. After opening to critical acclaim in England it has been picked up for distribution in the United States by Miramax, a division of Disney. It garnered the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice Film Festival in 2002. A few more clicks and I read that the movie had been “condemned” by the Vatican for its depiction of religious life. From what I had heard from the woman on the phone, it seemed that the last distinction was what Miramax was after: nothing sells like controversy.

I attended the press screening with a friend. We filed into the theater, a hip San Francisco spot known for showing independent movies, especially ones with gay/lesbian themes. We sat down and the movie began.

The Magdalene Sisters, set in the 1960s, depicts the Magdalene laundries in Ireland where fallen women were sent to work. The opening of the film shows a wall with names, looking much like the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. “Brigid… Therese… Mary… Charlotte…” is the background upon which the words “BASED ON TRUE EVENTS” are superimposed. Subtle.

We see three girls. One is raped at a wedding. When she tells her sister about it, she is promptly sent away. “Where is Margaret goin’?” her young brother cries. He gets no answer.

The second girl has just given birth to an illegitimate child. A priest arrives at the hospital and bullies her into giving the baby away. The sorrowful mother is led away to the laundries.

The third girl is an orphan. A pretty teenager, she flirts with some boys through the iron fence of the orphanage. Branded a temptress, she is also hustled away to the workhouse.

The director, Peter Mullan, is outraged. And he makes damned sure everyone else is, too.

The remainder of the film is designed to provoke gasps of horror, sighs of sympathy, and cries of rage. The mother superior, played by Geraldine McEwan, seems to have been based on equal parts Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby and Scrooge McDuck. Her day consists of beating girls with canes, belts, and whatnot, and cackling over the hoards of money brought in from their work. The camera lingers over the crisp paper notes as the nun lovingly packs them away in cookie tins.

The other nuns range from sadistic to sadistic. Scenes in the movie show them feasting on sausages and bacon as the girls eat colorless gruel, and forcing the girls to strip and parade for them as the nuns make cruel jibes about their bodies. The three priests portrayed aren’t any better. Two are cruel monsters who have a puritanical zeal to rival any 19th century Calvinist, and the third a sexual pervert who preys on a simple-minded girl at the laundry. When the girl finally accuses him, shouting “You’re not a man of God!” she is hauled away to the insane asylum.

REDEEMING SPIRITUAL VALUE?

Movie critic James Bowman, in giving a negative review of the film, asked about this black-and-white treatment of the main characters when he wrote:

Was there among them not the faintest whiff of sanctity, nor a single soul to protest at the scandalous treatment of the girls? To believe that there was not, you would have to be quite as naïve as someone who believed that such things as this film represents never happened at all. But the anti-religious sensibility in our time always tends to overstate its case—perhaps because at some level it must know what a powerful force for good it is trying to portray as unremittingly bad.

The audience reaction was something to behold. Everyone was deeply moved; a movie critic behind me murmured “What a powerful film!” as I rose to leave. It appeared that no one seemed to mind that there was no alternative provided to counterbalance the evil nuns in the movie. No committed Catholic is shown to be anything less than a sadist, and the conclusion Peter Mullan has come to is that the horror of the laundries is something that is not just natural, but essential to the Catholic faith.

A comparison, which has been made many times by Catholic conservatives, is that no one would dare make such a movie about Muslims or Jews. That may be true, but it misses a point. Jews and Muslims do not include a large number of prominent people who claim to be Muslims or Jews but deride anything traditional about those religions. The Catholics most influential in the media in this country would like nothing more than to see the Vatican’s authority demolished. Their social perspective on such products as The Magdalene Sisters is naturally going to be skewed in favor of the anti-Catholic view. This makes it possible for such films or books to be created without widespread condemnation from the American Catholic elite.

CYNICAL MARKETING

What is especially reprehensible about this Miramax production is not the film itself, but the way it has been marketed. The original poster reads, “Based on true events.” But as Mullan explained in an interview, he didn’t do any research other than watching a BBC documentary about the Magdalene laundries before he sat down to write the screenplay for his movie.

Furthermore, Miramax specifically approached traditionally minded Catholic publications, attempting to shock and outrage them by presenting the movie as a “heartwarming story of faith.” Here in San Francisco, Miramax handed out free passes for a screening of the film by taking out ads in local newspapers. To qualify for the free tickets, one had to answer a series of questions correctly—questions that could be readily answered by devout Catholics, such as biographical information about saints and details about Church dogma. It seems Miramax wanted not just a campaign of outrage from the orthodox Catholic media, but a word-of-mouth condemnation as well.

And it has worked. William Donohue of the Catholic League played into the Miramax trap, and his organization was widely cited in an embarrassingly naïve statement; newspaper accounts recorded that “a spokesman for the US-based Catholic League quickly defended the asylums as appropriate to the social standards of their day.” Other Catholic groups will surely follow, and build up a storm of controversy that will only lead more people to see the film. There is a sort of genius on display here, really, and it is a marketing strategy that only works by exploiting Catholics. This campaign leaves orthodox Catholics between a rock and a hard place. We are forced either to condemn something that you know is wrong, and thereby provide more publicity for it, or to remain silent and give it a free pass.

Companies like Miramax know this, which makes their marketing of outrage a sure thing—a strategy that they can utilize time and again. Don’t bother trying to shame them in order to stop this cynical strategy. As everyone knows, Hollywood lost its sense of shame as soon as it could walk.

[AUTHOR ID] John Herreid works in the marketing department of Ignatius Press. Among his other duties, he is subscription manager for Catholic World Report.