They dedicate their lives to writing fictional stories (instead of “more serious” careers like medicine, neurobiology, astrophysics or human rights law).
They risk their financial futures for a shaky career in entertainment because they supposedly love being that kind of artist.
They can’t turn around and treat fans like basement-dwelling losers when we take their work seriously.
We are either BOTH some kind of loser or neither.
Either it’s art and important enough to dedicate your life to or it isn’t.
If it IS art then there’s no reason why it can’t be examined, discussed and criticized just like every other form of art has been for centuries.
You don’t to get to tell people “only enjoy this enough so that I have job security and can feed myself and my children every day… but not so much that I feel any responsibility to do a good and consistent job.”
TV used to be shit. It was full of actors and writers who “couldn’t make it on the bug screen”. It was the mass-produced tasteless frozen chicken nugget of the art world. Few people respected it. You could pump out crap shows because there weren’t a whole lot of options and viewers would just watch to fill the time.
But we’re not in that Era anymore. Actors and writers have gotten better and more diverse. There are more viewing options (cable and international shows and webseries). Viewers are more discriminating.
The fact that fans of a show like Sleepy Hollow are still around and vocal when writers consistently try to turn this free-range, farm fresh, organic chicken of a show into a stale frozen nugget is something that should be celebrated and appreciated… not treated with derision.
The extra cooks wouldn’t be all up in your kitchen if they weren’t sick from what you’d been serving.
Do better.
“Either it’s art and important enough to dedicate your life to or it isn’t.”
^^^This. Also, as an artist, wouldn’t you be proud that your work has resonated with so many people that they actively engage with you? Why would you mock fans love for something you (supposedly) worked so hard to create?
Answer: We’re not saying things they want to hear.
This is my first experience with fandom. Are other showrunners/writers this horrible to their fans?
I know Stephen Moffat (Doctor Who, Sherlock) has been this much of a dick to fans in the past. I haven’t been involved in any other fandoms enough to know of any others.
It depends on the fandom. I think a lot of TV show writers are just now (within the last ten years)catching on to the fact that fans want to do more than watch the show.
Social media has changed the interaction so much. Best believe these days fans will take into account whether the writers, actors, etc, respect their fans or just want the fans to sit down, shut up and watch what they give you.
Yeah it really depends a lot on the personalities behind the show and their personal knack for public relations and their personal way of thinking about their fans. Because to a certain extent that direct contact with fans used to not really happen; there were a lot more intermediaries (who are generally a lot better at pretending to appreciate fans even when they don’t, because PR is their job). Now with so many writers, producers, showrunners, and other people involved in the production side interacting directly with – or simply speaking within view of – their fans, it’s a lot more obvious when they have a shitty attitude.
I guess what I’m saying is that probably this attitude has always been pretty prevalent (and let’s be real, the majority of people with power in the industry are fairly privileged white guys without a lot of perspective but an abundance of unearned ego). It’s just now you can SEE it a lot easier. And they can see us a lot easier too… fandom in a lot of ways used to be very underground, particularly slash fandom, and now we’re very visible, and we like transforming things in various ways and for the most part these writers and producers and actors and whoever else can SEE what we’re doing but they don’t have even the most rudimentary understanding of WHY we’re doing it or who exactly we think we are to be commenting on their supposed great work of staggering genius or whatever.
I think the production folks have yet to catch up with the fact that they are now as much a public face of their product as the actors are. (It’s always been pretty much a given that actors, especially when they’re doing press or public events, are expected to behave in a certain way toward their fan base and are in some ways an extension of the studio’s public relations.) They think the things they say won’t necessarily matter or be spread around or whatever.
It’s a shame, too, because look at what a difference that attitude can make. Moffat’s a great example because not only does he regularly say revolting things about his fans (and women, and god knows who else), but those values are reflected in the quality of his work. I never thought I’d stop watching Doctor Who, but I have. If I hear about a new project that he’s executive producer on I’m not going to watch it, because I know even if it starts off strong it’ll eventually turn to shit because the same ego that makes him such a dick to his fans also makes him produce work that’s just as shitty and dismissive.
Then on the other hand you’ve got people like Bryan Fuller… I’ve watched and really enjoyed some of his previous work, like Pushing Daisies, but I haven’t watched Hannibal because cannibals make me go eeeeugh. But I actually want to watch this series now because Bryan Fuller is so consistently cool with and enthusiastic about his fans, and they are in turn completely stoked about the thing he and his team have made.
I think that some creators see the relationship of their works and their fans as symbiotic… that doesn’t mean fans dictate what the work is, but it does mean the creator understands that we’re an essential part of the process and the work depends on us, too. Other creators seem to see fans as parasitic, some sort of unavoidable and uncomfortable infestation they just have to put up with.
TV writers can’t have it both ways…
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