The Boxer Rebellion Goes The Distance?

I’m not usually much of a rom-com fan (as some readers might already know…), so it came as a pleasant surprise when I sat down to watch the 2010 film Going The Distance with Justin Long and Drew Barrymore and really enjoyed it. But besides the excellently-orchestrated and tremendously awkward situations dreams up by the filmmakers (sex on the dining room table, anyone?), there was also the fantastic cameo appearance of the band The Boxer Rebellion midway through the film—with another rousing appearance towards the end.

It’s always funny to see “real” bands appear in films. So much of the time, music in mainstream films is in the realm of fictional singers or bands. In fact, the bulk of live music seen in films is probably played by fictional bands. That’s not, however, to say that it’s bad; the music in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, for instance, was composed by Beck, Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew (from Broken Social Scene), and Metric.

Another example is the film Crazy Heart, in which Jeff Bridges stars as “Bad” Blake, a faded country star; Blake’s music was written largely by T Bone Burnett, with a key contribution from New Mexico singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham, “The Weary Kind,” which snagged an Oscar for Best Song. Bingham, however, also appears in the film, as “Tony,” lead guitarist of Blake’s backing band during a bowling alley performance towards the beginning of the film. But seeing Bingham up there on the fictional stage as Tony was more like spotting an extra who happens to be a friend of yours—nothing like seeing The Boxer Rebellion onstage in Going The Distance and the band actually being The Boxer Rebellion in the film.

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Maybe this isn’t so hard to stomach for some of you out there. But the band’s presence in that film raises some interesting questions—firstly, of a highly theoretical nature and, secondly, of a pragmatic one. We’ll tend to the second tack for now.

Pragmatically, I question whether or not this kind of appearance (another notable one would be that of the British band McFly in the 2006 film Just My Luck [another Lohan flop]) helps the band in terms of both selling albums and popularity. Whether or not McFly sold more albums thanks to their appearance in the film is hard to say.

According to Billboard.com, the only real bump in sales that resulted from the film was the sales of the soundtrack itself, which features entirely music by McFly. The soundtrack, however, lingered at #25 on the Heatseekers chart. In fact, while McFly began their career with two #1 albums in their native U.K., since 2006—coincidentally, the same year as the release of Just My Luck—the chart numbers have tipped back downward from #6 (Motion In The Ocean) to #8 (Radio:Active) to #20 (Above The Noise). Might it not seem that the film, at least, did nothing for them?

What about The Boxer Rebellion?

Although Billboard chart numbers are really no less conclusive than with McFly, there is a helpful article on the Wall Street Journal online that helps illuminate some of the effects felt by the band thanks to their appearance in the film. According to the band, the number of friends they had on Facebook experienced a drastic rise. But other than that, it would seem that the only real benefit of their appearance in the film was a good opportunity for exposure. Has it set them on a track to success? Perhaps…although thanks to digital downloads, it’s hard to say with certainty what kind of success the band has seen with the release of its 2011 album The Cold Still.

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that while this sort of appearance can undoubtedly do a find job of spreading the word about a band, it may not be the best way to shift more units or push for more downloads.

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And…how about some theory?

The theoretical issue, of course, is that when bands go through this sort of experience, they cast themselves in an interesting way: fictionally. Whether or not they really parse through what’s happening, when The Boxer Rebellion appears on screen in Going The Distance, we cannot help but understand them as fictional. Neither Justin Long nor his fictional counterpart is actually The Boxer Rebellion’s manager. (Their manager is the Embargo Management Company.)

You can play with these ideas as a variation of what has been called “celebrity paradox.” This paradox starts with the notion that, famously (I’m not sure why…), Tom Hanks doesn’t “exist” in Tom Hanks films. Meaning, of course, that in the Forrest Gump film circa 1990, Gump could not meet Hanks… What shifts in the case of musical acts being themselves in films is that once we are faced with McFly in a film we assume it must be the real McFly, right?

In Just My Luck—that unfortunate film—Jake (Chris Pine) is the erstwhile manager for McFly and is doing his best throughout the film to find them a producer…but doesn’t the “real” McFly already have a producer and two #1 albums in the U.K.? It makes sense that the real band isn’t actually looking for a producer. By virtue of this inconsistency, the McFly of the film necessarily pegs itself as a “fake” McFly. All of a sudden the McFly in the film is not the “real” McFly…so then what is it? Is it a rough approximation of the band? Sort of McFly but not really? To a lesser extent, we can ask the same questions of The Boxer Rebellion in Going The Distance.