After a Christmas Day movie? You should see what Hallmark is offering
Idea
At lunch after Christmas, you sat on the couch and turned on the TV.
What great Christmas movie will you and your family watch? I’m looking for a laugh, maybe elf. If you’re looking for nostalgia, then you’ll find it It’s a Wonderful Life. entertain the kids Home Alone (but stay away from sequels).
And if you want a top-notch Christmas movie, you can’t pass Die Hard.
But there are a number of films increasingly capturing our attention (and money) that highlight how art, technology and commerce combine to commercialize Christmas with an intensity that would melt Frosty the Snowman.
Once the epitome of sugary greeting cards, Hallmark has carved out a niche for sickly sweet Christmas movies.
It produces about 40 of these almost every year, so they can be aired on its own channel, on free-to-air stations like Nine (which owns this imprint), or through streaming services.
Hallmark has been running a “countdown to Christmas” on its eponymous channel since October.
This includes TV series and movies with titles such as: Royal Montana Christmas, Christmas on Duty, Finding Mr. Christmas, Three Wise Men And Vote for the World!.
The actors are almost interchangeable. Vote for the World! It features Canadian actor Brooke D’Orsay, who has appeared in 10 Christmas-themed films since 2017. Decorate the Halls on Cherry Lane, nostalgic christmas And Christmas in love.
You can’t describe things as vanilla because that would be an insult to the vanilla bean.
There is almost always a “career-oriented” female lead (normally from a bad metropolitan center like New York) who has to return to an unknown provincial town for some reason.
There, she will most likely be confronted by a large, brooding gentleman (who may also be a widower). They fight, they decide, they fall in love. It’s snowing and Christmas carols are being sung.
These movies are so formulaic that, as an experiment, I used AI to see if I could come up with a Hallmark-style Christmas movie set in an Australian context and featuring a kangaroo.
Here’s the plot of “A Dingo Ate My Christmas Soul”: Chloe Peterson is a “highly successful, driven marketing executive from Sydney” who has “had a stellar career.” UN-Christmas attitude” His boss told him to do a digital detox.
So Chloe begins renting a place in a fictional small town north of Brisbane called “Jingle Bells Bay”. Since the rental is a double booking, she has to share it with a man named Liam O’Connell, described as “an extremely handsome, widowed wildlife park ranger”, and his daughter Daisy.
There’s a kangaroo named Rudolph who causes all kinds of trouble in town (he has a medical condition that causes his nose to be red).
Chloe uses her big city skills to save Liam’s wildlife sanctuary from closure. His boss arrives on Christmas Eve to tell him he’s been promoted, but in order to get the promotion he has to catch the plane to Sydney.
You know what will happen. There is a spare seat on the direct flight from Jingle Bells Bay to Sydney.
I changed my parameters (including a Hitchcock version, a horror, an action adventure, a set at the South Pole, an Agatha Christie version, a set in space) and they all resulted in variations of my dingo movie.
It should come as no surprise that AI can create a series of workable storylines. Creating 40 Christmas-themed movies each year means they will always look and feel the same. Their destiny is not to win an Oscar; they are the movie’s cheap stocking stuffers.
But they work for Hallmark and its viewers.
These movies are watched by tens of millions of people (and consistently score around 5.5 out of 10 on IMDB).
They produce Hallmark, which produces many of these shows in Canada to take advantage of tax breaks and films these shows for hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
They’re so popular that you can take a Hallmark Christmas trip from Florida to the Bahamas next year. Head aboard to meet some of your favorite Hallmark cast members and enjoy the “Silent Night disco” while drinking some eggnog.
Hundreds of actors, who would otherwise have a hard time finding money for the gingerbread man, are making a living by playing on Hallmark’s fake profits.
There’s now an entire industry built around these movies, which extends to social media, where people express their opinions on all aspects of Christmas movies.
You know you’ve reached the peak of popular culture’s importance when it moves into the academic world.
Megan Lauzier, a Canadian university doctoral student, this year thesis titled More Than Meets the Eye: Uncovering the Popularity of Hallmark Movies.
Lauzier argues that Hallmark’s social media strategy is a key element in the popularity of “seemingly unimportant movies.”
Seth MacFarlane’s Hallmark movies are so predictable Family man This year, a parody of Disney’s Hulu’s Family Guy will be released, titled “Hallmark Channel’s Lifetime Familiar Holiday Movie.”
IMDB currently lists 503 Hallmark Christmas movies, the vast majority of which have been released since 2008. This is the year after Netflix launched its streaming service, a year before Twitter (now X), and a few years before Instagram.
Popular culture has always been economically focused. But Hallmark and Christmas movies are on a whole new level, offering economic opportunities unimaginable just a few years ago.
The interplay of technology, tax cuts, streaming services with hours to fill, advertisers seeking specialist markets, real (and artificial) social media influencers is literally happening on our televisions/handheld devices.
This is something to think about this holiday season. So have a Merry Christmas; whether or not Die Hard.
Shane Wright is a senior business reporter.
Get a weekly opinion pack that will challenge, defend and inform your own views. Sign up for our opinion newsletter.
Shane Wright- Shane is the senior economic correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect with: excitement or email.
