The masterpiece Pan’s Labyrinth was advertised as something it’s not. Why does the audience has to be deceived this way?
Although there was very little publicity on Pan’s Labyrinth and most publicity focussed on creator Guillermo Del Toro, viewers were still upset about the way the movie was advertised. In the trailers and posters Pan’s Labyrinth was advertised as a regular English-speaking movie with fantastic elements, but this is not what the movie is about. Pan’s Labyrinth depicts a contrast between the gentile fantasy world of a little girl (Ofelia) and the gruesome, horrific world of the Spanish Civil War (1944). This movie is full of violence and it’s not suitable for children. On top of this, its original name was El Laberinto Del Fauno, it’s a Spanish movie. I wonder how and why such a masterpiece deceived its audience.
When I looked up the official message board of Pan’s Labyrinth I saw one large thread called Why hide the fact this is a subtitled/foriegn film????. This thread was created by an American viewer who was shocked to find out that Pan’s Labyrinth was actually Spanish. He wants his money back, even though he liked the movie. When I got over my initial shock of his radical opinion, I started wondering if the publicity campaign did deceive the American audience. I looked up the trailer at YouTube and was surprised to see the following trailer:
This trailer doesn’t have a Spanish word in it. After watching it, I could understand the reaction of the thread-starter. He thought he was going to an English movie, he was deceived. Yet I also think he could have known, because the entire cast and crew have Spanish names. If he would have thought about that, he would not have been this surprised. But there is another thing missing in the trailer: violence.
I watched Pan’s Labyrinth together with my boyfriend and my mum. My mum watched only half the movie, because she couldn’t bare to watch some of the gruesome scenes. In the fantasy part of the movie there is almost no violence, while the real world of the Spanish Civil War is depicted extremely violent. The movie below shows what Captain Vidal does to some trespassers on his property. This scene is based on the real life experiences of Del Toro: “one of the first things I saw, is that we were in a street fight once and I saw a guy hitting another guy with a bottle and one of the things that impressed me the most is the bottle never broke. Unlike in the movies this bottle just kept going and going and going and then I put that in the movie” (Fischer, 2006). WARNING: it is extremely graphic.
While posters (you can see one on the right of this text) and trailers show an English spoken movie full of fantasy, the reality of Pan’s Labyrinth is very different. It is not suitable for children at all. Although creator Del Toro thinks otherwise: “If my child watches my movies by accident, they will not try to think the world is a safe place, which it's not. Children should know the dangers of the world and not be neurotically isolated from them” (Beacon, 2006). Maybe it’s because of Del Toro’s opinion that this movie was advertised in this way, but I’d like to think it was to attract a broad an large audience. Many people wouldn’t go to a Spanish movie full of violence, while they would go to a movie about fantasy and fairy tales.
Literature
Fischer, P. (September 26, 2006). Exclusive Interview: Guillermo Del Toro for "Pan's Labyrinth". Dark Horizons. Retrieved May 12, 2007.