FROM HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE MARKETING DEPARTMENT! IN HATE'S NAME-

Since I wasn't able to show the ending in class, I will not just be showing the Little Shop of Horrors original ending, but also several other nixed endings:



All of these endings are notable in that they were nixed by test audiences. Note that they are all endings where the protagonist loses/fails. Note also that these endings are far more emotionally powerful (Or, in the case of Little Shop of Horrors, far more badass) than what eventually ended up on-screen.

And that's what prompted that tyrade (considering I got a D on that report, it should be called nothing else), the fact that art is destroyed to try and sell it to people who don't like to be challenged, who prefer Hollywood fluff to real, emotional resonance.

And that's not knocking happy endings mind you, that's me knocking those happy endings that reek of copout and contrivance. But who's to argue that the sorts of people they'd get to go to free test screenings, who'd presumably be going on a whim for light entertainment, are exactly searching for that.

And that's why I place the blame solely on marketers. I mean, they have little motivation to individuate their audiences for the tone of said films, even though they do shit like that with every other motherfucking demographic, because the easily-put-off idiots are where they get most of their sales.

And that's what makes me angriest about the entire profession of marketing, they actively make their own product worse to either sell it better too or swindle better from the pockets of stupid people. And while they're so fucking smug about how they are the "bestest most scientificest way" to get people to buy bullshit, they never actually give a shit if their hypotheses about how "we must ruin this to make it sellable" are wrong because nobody holds the fuckers accountable for RUINING EVERYTHING! Just like the fucking Chicago-school economists.

Before you go, keep in mind, meddling for marketability is what almost killed Brazil. And that's why I think most marketers should be locked up in a government bunker beneath the Utah Salt Flats. Or shot into the sun. Either way works for me.