Rainbow Capitalism? But Mostly I Just Hate Amazon
Frameline’s new grand sponsor this year is Amazon. When I first saw that Amazon was a grand sponsor, I was a little shocked. I know that Amazon is giant, and Jeff Bezos is a bajillionaire, so sponsoring the film festival was likely not a big deal on Amazon’s end, but it felt a little weird to know that Frameline would be willing to accept them as a sponsor, given how cartoonishly evil the Amazon corporation is. As grand sponsor, Amazon’s name and logo was displayed on the full screen before every event, and they were announced on opening night. Amazon also showed the first two episodes of their new show as a film for opening night. My feelings about the premier are mixed: A League of Their Own looks like a fun and genuinely thoughtful series, and its creators are passionate about diversity and representation. I want to recognize that the issue of funding is a lot more complex than “Amazon is evil so we should avoid them.” Amazon sponsorship is likely the only way for some creators to get their work funded, and its sponsorship of the Frameline film festival gave a platform to lots of seemingly indie queer creators and their best work, and I’m really happy that we got to see so much diversity on screen from so many queer artists and actors. However, this may be petty, but I also think Bezos’s obscene wealth doesn’t need to be supplemented by lesbians. I don’t know how funding a film festival works, but I would dare to suggest anyway that Amazon isn’t the only sponsor out there, and that maybe they could have found one with a few less human rights abuses to their name.
Amazon was also a major sponsor at San Francisco pride this year, which they announced between performances and had displayed everywhere at the event. I’m a little more disappointed by this; I was not expecting this many corporations at Pride, especially in San Francisco, and I did not enjoy so many people there trying to sell something. An article I read before even coming to San Francisco published in NBC News says that Seattle, a city of similar size, held a pride parade this year without Amazon, specifically listing Amazon’s donations to anti-LGBT politicians as a reason to not accept their sponsorship. Amazon is also notorious for its inhumane treatment of workers as well as predatory business practices that shut down small local businesses everywhere it reaches. Just searching online brings up a million reasons Amazon in particular is emblematic of all the nastiest products of capitalism (as well as plenty of Amazon sponsored articles by “real workers” who “love their jobs.”) Looking at pictures, their parade was also pretty huge and fun, and while I can’t make any meaningful comparison between pride in Seattle and San Francisco, I’m a little frustrated to see that it was clearly possible to organize an event like this without Amazon’s sponsorship, and San Francisco organizers chose to let Amazon in anyway.
San Francisco Pride’s website claims that “partnership with corporations leads to the overall benefit and increased visibility of the LGBTQIA+ community,” and while I want to be fair and acknowledge again that sponsorships can go a long way in supporting queer people who otherwise wouldn’t get the funding to share their work, or in this case put together a huge celebration of queer identity, I just really don’t like that it had to be Amazon. I don’t really think any huge corporation is without fault, and I would like it if none of them existed, but I don’t think anything can compare to the scale and magnitude of what Amazon is and what it’s committed. In that article, Seattle Pride organizer Krystal Marx is quoted saying “Pride isn't for sale at any time of the year, but especially the month of June when our community comes together to celebrate,” and I feel like this rings truer for me. If the main concern at Pride is how extravagant and well-funded it is, I think you’re doing Pride wrong. I don’t have anything more to say than that, really. I just feel icky that Amazon sponsored Pride.
As a bit of a funny side note, when checking the sponsors of San Francisco pride on their website, the page showed blank until I turned off my adblocker. Amazon is strangely not listed as a sponsor from what I can see, but I took a picture of their logo being displayed during the performances on stage. Not sure what that’s about.
Article Used: Lavietes, Matt. “Seattle Pride Drops Amazon as a Sponsor of City's LGBTQ Parade.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 23 Mar. 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/seattle-pride-drops-amazon-sponsor-citys-lgbtq-parade-rcna21214.