Not all product placement is out of order.

I mean, should anything be forbidden when it comes to art?

Product placement can meet material where it resides, a conscious provocation to expand the bounds of the art’s commentary.

Yes, I’m talking about the Linie-Aquavit onstage branding during the intermission for the current Broadway revival of An Enemy of the People.

As distasteful as artistically-bankrupt product placement can be, is it difficult to consider intentionality here? Obvious product placement. . . marketing a company from Ibsen’s homeland. . . which sells liquid comfort to the public at large. . . in a play about how financial interests infiltrate — or is it pollute? — all areas of social life. . .

The meta-logic checks out, even if it risks the ick.

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This decision seems of a pair with the QR code that replaces the closing-credits scroll in The Beast (now in theaters!); how does this technology-allowed switcheroni coalesce with the movie’s themes?