Jason Rothery 15 December 2011 The Product As Plot: Product Placement in the Post-E.T. Era Adjusted for inflation, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is the fourth highest-grossing film of all time. First released in 1982, Steven Spielberg’s paean to the worry and wonder of childhood 1 is renowned not only for its hefty box office haul, but its pioneering use of product placement. Product placement is nothing new. From 1st century Roman billboards to 18th century Japanese literature to Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, art and commerce have been tightly intertwined. From the very inception of the medium, filmmakers set recognizable branded objects within the mise-en-scène. The Lumière brothers featured their brewery-owning father-in- law dispensing beer for patrons (The Card Game, 1896), and hired a Swiss intermediary to facilitate a deal with Lever Brothers, manufactures of Sunlight Soap. Thomas Edison shot shorts for scotch (Dewar’s — It’s Scotch!, 1897), cigarettes (Admiral Cigarette, 1897), clean-burning coal (A Romance of the Rail, 1903), and his own products (Streetcar Chivalry (1905) displayed posters plugging the phonograph). Edison produced fifty-two films featuring trains, the railway, and the purchase of train tickets, “providing promotional services for customers of his industrial business,” and reducing production costs in the bargain. These “efforts to influence audience attitude and behavior became a specialty of Edison’s” (Newell, Salmon, and Chang 589-81). American artists were quick to adopt and develop the practice (Newell, Salmon, and Chang 581; Lehu 18). One of the earliest campaigns was undertaken by Harry Culver, who “donated parcels of land for the construction of film studios, correctly predicting that the on- Box Office Mojo, All Time Box Office; http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted; behind (in ascending order): 1 Star Wars, The Sound of Music, and Gone With the Wind. 1