Problematic Movie Ad Placement

The squatters' camps are located all over California. Let us see what a typical one is like ... From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built. You can see a litter of dirty rags and scrap iron, of houses built of weeds, of flattened cans or of paper. It is only on close approach that it can be seen that these are homes.

This is what the man in the tent will be in six months; what the man in the paper house with its peaked roof will be in a year, after his house has washed down and his children have sickened or died, after the loss of dignity and spirit have cut him down to a kind of subhumanity.

The information is taken down and filed. That is that. It has been done so often, and so little has come of it. - Excerpts from John Steinbeck's account of visiting migrant labor camps (in preparation for writing The Grapes of Wrath).

Imagine being a child in a migrant labor camp being told a movie about their lives is too graphic for children to see. Were real farmers horrified or elated to see their nightmarish existence being sold as just that - an atrocity for people to marvel at, and be entertained by?

Marketing Executives at 20th Century Fox seemed to view The Grapes of Wrath in a manner similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: capitalizing on the social hysteria purportedly caused by the novel's popularity. Kristine Yee, also makes the connection, stating:

"Not since Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle had a work of American fiction made such a political statement as did the publication of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. While Sinclair’s text revealed the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago meatpacking industry, Steinbeck’s novel showcased the other side of the coin: the people who remain behind the scenes while the public benefits from the fruits of their labor, literally".

Yet, while Sinclair's novel led to tangible changes such as the FDA (and an oddly prosperous but ultimately failed political career for the author) - migrant camps with deplorable conditions cleary remained throughout the West. 

IMDB references a fact about the film marked as a bit of "fun" Trivia:

"Prior to filming, producer Darryl F. Zanuck sent undercover investigators out to the migrant camps to see if John Steinbeck had been exaggerating about the squalor and unfair treatment meted out there. He was horrified to discover that, if anything, Steinbeck had actually downplayed what went on in the camps".

https://www.youtube.com/5ayi81QMuak

The trailer for the film mirrors the promotional taglines, dedicating much of the ad to describing the novel as a social phenomenon - and praising themselves for fearlessly producing such a controversial and culturally poignant piece. However, one woners just how much progression stemmed from such representations.

Another "fun" fact from IMDB:

"Darryl F. Zanuck paid $100,000 for the rights to John Steinbeck's novel - a staggering amount of money at the time. Steinbeck only allowed the rights to be sold under the proviso that the filmmakers should show the material due reverence and treat the project responsibly".

While Steinbeck can be commended for bringing the tribulations of migrant farmers to light, were they bitter that outsiders could monetarily capitalize on their plight? What were farmers to make of a man receiving such an exorbitant amount of money to expose their story when conditions remained the same?

Steinbeck's narrative goes to great lengths to inform, to make heroes of the exploited, and to denounce the cyclical forms of oppression and greed that have consistently blemished societies. The Grapes of Wrath was certainly written with good intentions in mind. However, the uproar caused by its release, the controversial indictments from the Associated Farmers of America (denouncing the book as a "pack of lies"), and the book burnings likely meant little to the authentic dispossessed. This artifact serves as a sad reminder that publicity does not always lead to immediate reform.