Sulle petizioni on-line
On fan petitions, two things are simultaneously true: The audience does not control the art, because art is not a democracy. The artist ceases to control the art once it is with the audience, and cannot control the audience’s response, reaction, and handling of that art.
It’s a weird form of adoption. “I had a baby, it took a lot of effort and time and transformation to MAKE this baby, and now you’re going to raise it.” The birth parent cannot time travel and change the gestation, but also doesn’t affect how the baby is raised by the new parents.
Art and story – especially a pop culture fandom sense – ends up in a tricky place, because the audience is invited to become deeply, dearly, personally invested in it. Some of this is natural (our reaction to story!), some of this is driven and desired by the BRAND HOLDER.
“We do this for the fans!” “We’re telling this story for the fans!” “We put that Easter egg in there for THE FANS.” And then the fans don’t like something and the fans are like, “Ah, fuck this, this isn’t what we wanted, change it. We’ll wait.”
And then the artists (or, cynically, the Brand Holders), say, yeah ha ha no fuck you, you don’t actually have a say. You’re not storytellers. We CREATE the story and you RECEIVE the story, and that’s our relationship. Which is… true, to a point.
Because art/story is a wiggly, fiddly thing. You can’t just acquiesce to “fan demands” because fan demands are a herd of hallucinogen-addled cats. They’re running in every goddamn direction, swiping at invisible things, chasing illusory birds, staring at their own paws for hours.
And then come a fan petition to just… remake a thing. They’ve been out for games, for LAST JEDI, now for GoT, probably a lot more. (Hell, I saw them for AFTERMATH.) Which is absurd, because remaking a huge thing like a movie or show is a Sisyphean endeavor.
(Hell, making anything the first time – not even REmaking it! – can be Sisyphean. Particularly the bigger the ‘brand,’ the bigger the fanbase. You literally cannot please everybody because “everybody” is not a superorganism devoted toward a singular narrative goal.)
But but but but BUT – Let’s also not pretend the “fan petitions” are not a natural extension of how brand holders have treated their branded stories. Again: fan input is sought (when it’s convenient). Hell, remember dialing a phone number to decide if Jason Todd lives or dies?
You bet your ass. But let’s also recognize how they got entitled in the first place – because they were sometimes given a false sense of their importance. They have been told they have a voice and a vote, and here they are.
And here I’m sure I’ll get a half-dozen YouTube videos that I hate the consumer and think fans are assholes. I don’t. One’s audience – and the subsection of that audience, the fans – are committed, glorious, wonderful people, and generally speaking, are rad as hell.
I’m just saying, larger corporations creating huge media depots of content have essentially lied to you and created artifice in fan engagement. This is cynical, I know, but it’s what it is. You have less of a voice in this than has been perhaps suggested. Which sucks, but yeah.
Two things can also be simultaneously true: a) fan petitions will do no good, will go nowhere b) we shouldn’t be surprised fan petitions occur; this is how fans are engaging with / responding to content based in part on a false sense of power creator companies have given them
For my mileage, the best form of fan engagement (not entitlement) is through fanfic and fan art – really great ways, I think, to respond to the original work in whatever way you see fit. Though of course YMMV.
There’s no great takeaway here, just: fans, keep loving what you love, while recognizing that the thing you love is not a thing you necessarily control. And creators, understand that things like fan petitions are natural (if misguided) extensions of fan response. Or something.
And for the record, I hated the penultimate GoT episode (YMMV!). Beautifully rendered, dipshittedly narrated. But I’d rather engage with what exists than my own enforced headcanon. Art is interesting because I have to deal with it. More fun to engage with it than overpower it.
Adding here that in addition to the tricky art versus commerce stuff, there’s also an aspect of simply how stories work on our brain, and how the audience and the storyteller are utterly, totally at odds – which is how it’s supposed to be.
What I mean by that is, at its core, the audience takes in protagonists and plotlines and wants to protect them. We want good things for the characters we like, or the characters we respond to – or even see ourselves in. A good protagonist is relatable and empathetic.
And the storyteller’s job is to draw those empathic bridges between the character and the audience – to help us understand them, even if they’re a villain, or a supporting character. So we become experts in those characters. We understand them. We are invested and enjoy them.
But then it’s the storyteller’s job to also fuck that all up. It’s not our job to keep these people safe, but to put them in peril, to challenge them, push them through unfair trials and upheavals – some genres demand this even more than in others.
We’re trying to surprise and delight you and sometimes surprising and delighting you is preceded by, followed by, or accompanied by a knee to the gut. Storytellers are monsters, like @paulGtremblay. We’re bad people. Sinister gods. It’s no wonder we piss off audiences.
Ho trovato molto interessante questo lungo thread di Chuck Wending, uno scrittore che è stato oggetto di diverse petizioni on-line contro i libri di Star Wars Aftermath. Il rapporto autore-fan è davvero un terreno pericolosissimo, ma è indubbio che con l’avvento dei social, il fan si senta in una posizione (illusoria) di potere come non mai.
Personalmente trovo ridicola questa cosa delle petizioni, da quella per rifare Gli Ultimi Jedi a quella su Game of Thrones. (ne ho vista nascere anche una contro Robert Pattison come nuovo Batman, patetico).
Questo thread mi ha fatto venire in mente anche una vecchia intervista del New York Times a George Lucas, nel 2012, l’anno in cui annunciava il suo ritiro dai film blockbusters.
Lucas commentava di come i fanboys si lamentavano delle edizioni speciali dei film di Star War e che pubblicavano loro stessi dei fanedits, con le loro di modifiche:
“On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change, are completely changing the movie,”
“I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’ ”
Lucas prosegue sempre sul fatto di ricevere continuamente le lamentele dei fans sulle scelte che lui stesso ha fatto sui suoi film:
“Why would I make any more [“Star Wars” movies ] when everybody
yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”
E’ una frase che mi ha sempre rattristato tantissimo e che mi fa sempre più storcere il naso quando vedo nascere tutte queste petizioni.
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