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Ghostbusters, Frozen, and the strange entitlement of fan culture

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Tova:
A thoughtful article about fan culture. This touches on topics that have appeared in more than one place on these forums, but I settled on posting it here.

http://www.avclub.com/article/ghostbusters-frozen-and-strange-entitlement-fan-cu-237139

Here is my favourite quote:

Fans don’t need to get what they want, and much of the time, they probably shouldn’t. Sometimes, they will; it’s unrealistic to expect that every piece of art or pop culture with any kind of dedicated following can find a way to satisfyingly sidestep or subvert the expectations of every person in that following. But the more often that can happen—the more often movies can assert themselves as creative works made by directors and writers and editors and actors and cinematographers, not in service of fans—the better.

In the Star Wars thread, I have a couple of times expressed a hope that the most frequently expressed predictions and wishes about what will happen next turn out to be off the mark. It makes me happy to read an article that expresses my feelings on the topic so well.

BenRG:
It's not as simple as that, of course. Producers, especially when working with a property with an existing fan base, have to be very careful to appease said fan base. Most of the predicted revenue from the piece will come from said fan-base and, if they're not happy, revenue could go way down. You could double-down and hope that positive word-of-mouth will create a new and unique fan-base for this latest work but that's always a gamble.

Tova:
Yes, of course, the aim is to please the existing fans (and hopefully attract new ones). But that does not equate to simply giving them exactly what they ask for. The creator must be more creative than that - and surely must be, seeing as they've attracted that fan base to begin with.

The best way for the artist to continue to appeal to their fans is to carry on doing exactly what they did to appeal to those fans in the first place. Simple fan service does not great art make. If they start doing something different, even if that's doing what fans ask for, they will lose the spark that gave them their popularity. They must stay true to themselves.

In the words of Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Creating new art is always a gamble. That's art.

Thrillho:
As an art creator myself, I think listening to your fans can be death for many artists, not that I have any fans. It isn't always though.

The truly pathetic relationship Metallica had with its fans throughout the 90s until they just backslid into making a rehash of their old albums on Death Magnetic depresses me.

Anyway the reason I say this is because when I write, I don't really feel like I am choosing what happens with it, I feel like it just sort of... occurs based on what naturally should happen.

Neko_Ali:
An important detail is the fact that you cant please all of your fans. Unless your fan base is an extremely small group of like minded individuals, you are going to run into differences of opinion which will make it impossible to cater to everyone. And the larger a fan base is, the more fractured they are going to be over details. Let us consider one small recent example in a popular movie, The Force Awakens. Specifically Poe and Finn. Broadly speaking fans of the movie and Star Wars in general like these characters. Yet there is a big schism in that group over whether there should be a romantic sub-plot between the two. There is quite literally no way to make both sides of this divide in the fan base happy. Including doing nothing and just trying to drop hints that maybe, maybe not there is something there and having neither of them have a real romantic plot line. That would only mildly irritate both group because no definitive answer was given.

Even if they dropped hints throughout the next two movies and then gave a definitive answer in interviews afterwards people would still be upset. Look at the Korra/Asami relationship from Legend of Korra. There were plenty of strong hints the two were growing closer together through the third and fourth seasons, and to many people's minds the finale left no doubt about it many other people said no, it didn't mean anything. Even when the creators after then end said clearly 'Yes, they have been falling in love and started dating at this moment' people still resisted and refused to believe, because it didn't match what they wanted.

So the short answer is that you can't please all of the people all of the time. You can stick to your vision and hope enough people appreciate what you wanted to make. You can try to focus group your way through a piece of art, but then it tends to come out bland and lifeless. Most creators try to find a happy medium between the two, weighted somewhat heavier towards vision. While a lot of big producers would rather go the safe route most of the time. Whatever will make them the most money.

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