As a marketing stunt for the Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder, Paramount has licensed a fake energy drink that appears in the movie, Booty Sweat, to go into actual production. Reports AdAge:

Riffing on Hollywood’s often ham-handed product-placement deals, Booty Sweat also appears sporadically throughout “Tropic Thunder,” which tells the story of an out-of-control, over-budget action movie of the same name that’s shut down by a cost-conscious studio chief. In order to finish his epic, the auteur director takes his churlish and unmanageable cast of fake soldiers into an actual war zone without their knowledge.

Now, in an unusual move for a movie studio, Paramount Pictures (maker of the actual “Tropic Thunder”) is licensing the fictional brand as a real beverage available nationwide to help promote “Tropic Thunder” in advance of its Aug. 15 wide release.

Fair enough. That seems like a totally harmless promotion, until it becomes A DANGEROUS WEB OF RACISM AND LIES.

“Not to my knowledge has this ever been done before,” said Michael Corcoran, president of consumer products at Paramount Pictures. “We’re very excited, because it has the potential to live for quite a while, well beyond the film.”

Never been done before? OH REALLY, MR. CORCORAN? And what about THIS:

There is no Brawndo [an imaginary energy drink in Mike Judge's Idiocracy]. Or there wasn’t until last November, when this instrument of consumer-culture satire joined actual consumer culture: 10,000 cases and counting of Brawndo have sold online or via convenience stores in the Northeast and other regions.

Apparently you’ve never heard of THE NEW YORK TIMES. Shame, sir. You have brought shame on your family by claiming that your fake energy drink movie tie-in was the first, and you have brought shame on your family by using your fake energy drink movie tie-in to widen the racial divide in this country:

The can’s label will be customized for “urban” and “rural” markets. Metropolitan stores will carry the description of the concoction as a “delicious and bump up struttin’ energy drink that will pump up a brotha’s ass right-pronto. This swill will crank yo’ metabolism up skippin’ right over jiggy to straight G-pimp level, word to your mutha. Brothas will be layin’ down the 2-3 on the wiggy jig focusing the energy flow into cold-face benjamins that will fill yo’ pimp pockets to burstin’. Damn straight! Booty Sweat will keep a brotha pitchin’ straight game all night to the baby-dolls.”

Rural stores will get a can that simply has the Booty Sweat moniker, but no street slang.

HOLY SHIT.

Read that again.

Seriously.

Did you read that again?

Fuuuuuuuuck. I really would have thought that the grossest thing about a fake energy drink from a Ben Stiller movie would have been the way it tasted, not the flagrant racism in its “urban” marketing. I’m pretty sure that whole last paragraph of Booty Sweat “street slang” is the most offensive thing that I’ve ever read, and I read Tuesdays with Morrie.

Previously: Brawndo Has the Electrolytes Your Nerd Collector Craves