Posted in: Movies | Tagged: greece, homophobia, lgbt, me are the millers, newsbomb, village

We Are The Millers, Greece And The Matter Of Homophobia (UPDATE)

Published Thu, 05 Sep 2013 09:30:28 -0500

Last updated Thu, 05 Sep 2013 10:29:26 -0500

Newsbomb is the #1 ranking news website in Greece, with a reputation for being rather outspoken in a certain direction. A few weeks ago it ran an unsigned article openly supporting Putin's anti-gay legislation in Russia and calling for similar laws to be implemented in Greece to "protect our young people from homosexuality like Putin does."

In response, the Greek distributor Village Cinemas made a big gesture of publicly withdrawing their ad campaign for We Are The Millers from the website for "going against their company code of ethics". There was much applause.

But something seems to have been going on behind the scenes and yesterday, Newsbomb posted a new article stating that Newsbomb and Village are working together once more after a "misunderstanding". Official letters that were traded back and forth, appear in the article.

Newsbomb stated that their article had only a few negative comments compared to over two thousand "likes", that it represents the majority opinion in Greece, which is constantly subjected to "racism" by the vocal minority, and that majority is the one who really has need for someone to protect their rights. It asks Village if they really agree with public displays of affection from gay people in public spaces, if they believe in free speech and if they weren't more upset about the events in Syria and Egypt, or the economic crash in Greece.

And then they offered to host their ad campaign for We Are The Millers for free.

In response, Village has apologised to Newsbomb, stated that it is wonderful and objective news site. And… the PR man for Village, the one who spearheaded their original response to Newsbomb was surprisingly fired after eight years at the job, without any given reason.

I think Newsbomb felt they have won this little skirmish. They may have been wrong.

UPDATE:

The hashtag #No_Village_Gr has been constantly trending in Greece since yesterday, with people calling for a full boycott of the Village Roadshow multiplex chains and all movies represented by Village, because of their decision to kowtow.