Mutually Assured Destruction: the shifting dynamics between creators and fans
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| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Mutually Assured Destruction: the shifting dynamics between creators and fans |
| Commentator: | Elizabeth Minkel for "New Statesman" |
| Date(s): | April 10, 2014 |
| Venue: | online |
| Fandom: | many, but a focus on Supernatural |
| External Links: | Mutually Assured Destruction: the shifting dynamics between creators and fans, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Mutually Assured Destruction: the shifting dynamics between creators and fans is a 2014 article by Elizabeth Minkel written for "New Statesman."
Some Topics Discussed
- Dan Harmon (creator of NBC’s Community), and Aaron Sorkin's (West Wing), and Joss Whedon's interaction with fans
- much about Supernatural
- violating the fourth wall
- TPTB
- equal and unequal relationships and power
- three academic books: "Fandom at the Crossroads: Celebration, Shame, and Fan/Producer Relationships," "Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls," and "Convergence Culture"
Excerpts
Harmon is known for putting his foot in his mouth, and the fan had tweeted that he needed to “stop talking”, presumably to save him from himself. When Harmon realised she was at one of his events, she was brought, somewhat reluctantly, onstage to have it out. What followed is an uncomfortable and ultimately unsatisfying dialogue, one founded on a fundamental imbalance of power, because while I’m sure both Harmon and the fan would be as likely as the other to say, “Well, this is my show,” in the end, only one of them is penning the scripts and collecting the cheques. The conversation is enlightening, and awkward, and sad. And it’s Harmon who has the best line, one that underpins so many debates in so many fandoms: “Some of you guys love a television show so much that the guy that created it is an obstacle in its path. And I think that’s a beautiful thing, but it’s an obstacle that’s not going to go away.”
The job of the critic has always been a bit easy, in a way: a safe distance from the object of criticism gives you free rein to let loose. And perhaps things used to be a bit easier for creators, too – no instant feedback, no hate trending on Twitter, no peek into the permutations people are imagining for your characters in fan fiction. But these two groups can now see each other so much more clearly than they could in the past – or, at least, they think they can. The Harmon/frustrated fan incident is a fantastic illustration of the sorts of dynamics that are complicating the way television gets made today. It’s yet another chapter in all of the recent talk about the increasingly blurry barriers between creators and their fans, particularly their “superfans”, as nebulous as that term might be. Interaction between fans and creators on a mass scale isn’t particularly new – it’s as old as the internet, certainly. The early days online saw Joss Whedon and his team popping up on Buffy message boards, toeing these tricky divisions to get a sense of fan reaction (and then working hard to not let it influence their writing). Eulogies for the recently deceased “Television Without Pity” website have dredged up Aaron Sorkin’s unfortunate attempt to wade into the discussion – he was so irate afterwards that he wrote a subplot into an episode of The West Wing about a fan site for one of the main characters, suggesting that people who frequented that site’s forums were “women in muu-muus smoking Parliaments,” which is a beautifully incoherent insult.
But social media has transformed this landscape dramatically. People who create television – and all media, for that matter – have to navigate a sometimes awkward public/private balance when they go online. Many of them are present, and visible, and sometimes they do engage with fans, but just because you can tweet at someone doesn’t mean that it’s a dialogue. It’s the illusion of unfettered access that regularly leads to dissatisfaction, even anger, on both sides. People who create things want to hear what fans think of their work – but they don’t! Or maybe they do! For the fans, the hypothetical direct channel to writers and actors fosters a false sense of intimacy, and the nature of the internet leaves everyone feeling entitled to offer up their opinions on all things ever. But these channels are rarely free and open to begin with – and there is, of course, that total imbalance of power in any exchange, the mismatch that was so clearly on display when Harmon took on his fan up on that stage. However fluid the once-impermeable fan-creator barriers may appear, television is not actually a democracy.
Not to put too bleak a point on it, but maybe it’s best to think of fan/creator relations through the lens of “mutually assured destruction”, in the sense that “they’re allowing me to do what I want, so I’ll enable them through what they want”. Just because we can see each other – and just because we can potentially even talk to each other – doesn’t mean it’s actually a good deal to directly engage with each other. Loving a television show, or a book, or a movie, can be a beautiful thing – and that includes loving a difficult showrunner, or a difficult fan, or a whole fandom of difficult fans. As television funding models and distribution methods shift at an exponentially fast rate and social media continues to transform the way we communicate, it’ll be a good thing to keep in mind: it’s not the historical barriers in place, but perhaps instead the ones we continue to erect, out of mutual respect, that help to keep making television worth getting invested in.