Will of the people
Fan entitlement is nothing new. But with social media, has it gone too far? Creators, consumers ponder changed relationship.
SAN DIEGO — A fan at ComicCon International here had a message for Joss Whedon, creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and director of two “Avengers” movies: We want you back.
In this hyper-connected, social media-driven age, Whedon has been missing in action since spring 2015. That’s when he pulled the plug on his Twitter account.
In discussing the breakup to a roomful of his most dedicated fans on Friday, Whedon had a nuanced, complicated answer, one that speaks to the changing relationship between those who create and those who consume.
The short version: It’s not me, it’s you.
“It could be something lovely,” he said of interacting with fans via social media. “It could be something funny. It could be ‘Hang yourself, here’s a noose. When can I kill you?’ That’s less fun. That’s less interesting. Eventually, it becomes kind of a white noise. You can’t remember what the dialogue was, so you stop having it.”
Whedon clarified that he didn’t leave Twitter because people were mean to him — although, for the record, people were awfully mean to him. Rather, he found himself at the forefront of a new era of fan entitlement that for some creators has raised tricky questions of ownership. Just who deserves a say in the development of pop media — those working to dream it up, or those paying to keep a project afloat?
“I would like always to have a dialogue with the audience, but at the same time you can’t create by committee,” Whedon said.
Increasingly, some can’t bear to
even listen to the committee.
This month, “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones took her own temporary leave from Twitter, writing that she was in “personal hell” after a barrage of racist and misogynist remarks from those upset that the film had been rebooted with a femaleled cast.
And even when not leveling personal attacks, fans today are more apt to make requests — or demands, depending on your view.
Online-driven campaigns have called for changes to the sexuality or race of popular characters. Make Captain America gay, some fans argue. Give Elsa (from Disney’s “Frozen”) a girlfriend, cries another contingent. Of course, when companies or artists do push for more inclusivity in genre entertainment, they are met with a deafening level of resentment (see the anger over “Ghostbusters”).
Other times, it’s specific plot choices, such as Whedon’s decision for a romance in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” or the killing of a character on a popular TV series. Sometimes, fans will just lash out at an author for not finishing a book (see “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin).
While some instances are rooted in a genuine desire to see more diversity in popular entertainment — a greater representation of LGBT characters or minorities, for instance — they’re still illustrative of the growing desire of fans to have a bigger say in their entertainment choices.
“It’s a thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a thing,” said author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman, who was at ComicCon to promote an upcoming adaption of his novel “American Gods.”
“It’s the thing that kept ‘Star Trek’ going. It’s the thing that brought back ‘Doctor Who.’ Fans are still creators. Fans demand and make things happen. Mostly, that’s great. But it can tip, and when it tips, it goes into strange places where people feel that by having watched a TV show or bought a book, they feel that you owe them something huge for having done that. Watching the level of crazy that can sometimes happen is hard.”
It’s a topic being grappled with by creators at this year’s Comic-Con as well as the fans at the convention.
“It is what it is,” said David Ayer, director of Warner Bros.’ upcoming villains-gone-crazy film “Suicide Squad.” “It’s the Roman arena. It’s thumbs up or thumbs down. The crowd votes. Hopefully, my movie doesn’t get executed in the sawdust there. But that’s why the genre has the connection and the power and the audience that it does — because there’s that ownership and there’s that participation.”
Still, he adds, “my hope is that we can just push the envelope a little bit and challenge people.”
If so, he may want to prepare for a backlash.
Just ask Jennifer Hepler, author of “Women in Game Development: Breaking the Glass Level-Cap.”
The game developer previously worked for Electronic Arts-owned BioWare, where she was a writer on such blockbuster games as “Dragon Age: Inquisition” and “Dragon Age II.”
Her home didn’t always have bulletproof windows. That occurred after she contributed to “Dragon Age II.” As one of its core writers, Hepler was singled out for inclusion of LGBT-friendly characters in the game. Some vocal hard-core game fans were not happy.
Hepler was on maternity leave when the harassment started.
“All of a sudden, I started getting strange emails from people offering me support in this difficult time,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ Somebody eventually told me that someone had posted something on [the online forum] Reddit that called me ‘the cancer that was destroying BioWare.’ When i first heard about it, I tried to laugh it off, but it got crazy very quickly.”
Even a hero of the medium isn’t immune.
Whedon came under attack last year for the romance between Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanova/Black Widow and Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner/ Hulk in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Black Widow was viewed by some as wanting a trite, domesticated life.
Whedon reflected on this when spotted in the lobby bar of a San Diego hotel. He said the relationship with fans had changed dramatically from his time on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in the late ’90s and early ’00s.
“Now that everybody can reach you directly, if you happen to be on social media, there is definitely a sense of not just ‘We know better’ but also ‘We should have the right to dictate.’ That’s mean, but I was sent lots and lots of — not death threats — but more just polite inquiries as to why I have not died or killed myself yet, all because of Natasha and Bruce having a romance.”
Whedon said that he was working on something original and that it was “relaxing” to not have to worry about fan opinions. Still, Whedon cautioned against completely tuning out the concerns of the audience.
“You can’t draw a line exactly,” he said. “If we could, we would have. Sometimes, an advocacy group will say, ‘This character has to go through these things, because that’s what we went through.’ Sometimes, that’s stuff you did not know about and that is stuff you need to honor. But sometimes it’s ‘Yes, but I am telling a different story.’ ”
Hepler adds, “There’s a sense of entitlement and ownership that people have of media. The thing that exemplifies it to me is this idea of ‘You’re ruining my childhood.’ Your childhood is over. You can’t retroactively ruin it by going out and making a new piece of media for somebody else’s childhood. That is the battle cry you hear a lot, that somehow by making something new and making something for the next generation is going back and ruining people’s childhood somehow. It’s a huge sense of entitlement. ‘This was important to me. How dare you change it?’ ”
In one sense, fan entitlement is nothing new. Famously, Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes, revisiting the character only after fans wouldn’t let him quit. But experts say the tone has shifted.
“I don’t think a majority of fans of ‘Game of Thrones’ want to kill George R.R. Martin. It’s definitely just a small vocal subset that issue death threats,” said Paul Booth, an associate professor at DePaul University in Chicago who studies fan culture. “But I also find it hard to believe that this sort of mentality happened years ago. I don’t think anyone threatened to kill Conan Doyle if he didn’t bring Sherlock Holmes back.
“We live in a culture of hyperbole. Everything is the most thing or the greatest thing. Everything is exaggerated. The discourse online has followed that. It’s not ‘I like this movie.’ It’s ‘This is the greatest thing I have ever seen and anyone who disagrees is wrong.’ It’s a perversion of the fannish protection of an object.”
On the Comic-Con floor, attendees expressed dismay over fan outrage and harassment. But many still want their voices heard.
“I don’t really see any issue with fans asking, ‘Hey, can we see this?’ or ‘Hey, can we change that?’ So long as it’s not changing the core values of what the character believes in,” said Nicole Andelfinger, 27, of Los Angeles. “If a creator decides they want to pursue what the fans are asking, all the more power to them, but we also can’t necessarily ask every creator to see our vision. They have their own vision.”
When to listen and when to turn off the noise isn’t a science.
“You do see people trying to sort out what is the difference between the people who say, ‘Keep “Ghostbusters” male,’ and the people who say, ‘Give Elsa a girlfriend,’ ” said Hepler. “I think the difference is the ‘or else.’ I think a lot of people would like to see Elsa have a girlfriend or see Captain America have a boyfriend, but that usually isn’t couched in the threatening terms of ‘or else I’ll never see it again and harass everyone who worked on it.’ But it is part of the same sense of ownership over media that people feel.”
Sarah Schechter, an executive producer on CBS’ “Supergirl,” said the solution is more — more diversity, more inclusion and more characters that reflect under-represented groups.
Maybe we can all just talk it out.
“You can express your opinions,” said Chris Hardwick, host of AMC’s “Talking Dead” and architect of the geek lifestyle site Nerdist. “But walking up to someone and telling them rationally why you did or didn’t like something is different than walking up to them and hitting them in the face with a frying pan. Those are two different things.
“We’re culturally addicted to outrage at the moment. We need to be more addicted to conversation.”
Staff writer Josh Rottenberg contributed to this report.