Toxic Fans?
Recently I have seen a trend in the media I consume. I briefly mentioned the shows I liked in my other post but in general I'm a fan of Scifi and Fantasy as well as many other.
This trend seems to mainly effect these genres which have been growing in popularity since the 80s.
The trend is as follows:
- you take a popular IP
- you "update" the IP for the current year
- you add a lighting rod character
- you twist any criticism of the show into criticism of the lighting rod character
- you tell fans their criticism is invalid or all negative reviews are review bombing
Lighting Rod Characters
An easy character to start with is the female Doctor Who, I was really excited for this show, I like Jodie Whittaker from Broadchurch and I like Doctor Who but season 11 fell flat with fans most because of boring story and poor execution.
On Rotten Tomatoes Season 10 of Doctor Who sits at 69% from viewer and drops at 20% in Season 11.
This is not good PR for the show and instead of the criticism that the majority of fans have being reporting, the articles were focused on sexist comments related to the first women doctor.
The "diverse" character was being used as a lighting rod
away from the actually problems of the season and a new criticism (such as sexist, racist or anti LGBTQTS+) as inserted into the conversation that wouldn't be automatically dismissed by modern culture values.
This pattern can be seen again and again and again, mostly recently in the latest star wars show Obi Wan (TV) in which sexist and racist comments about Reva surfaced, after a middle of the road reception of episode 4, despite the fact she is not the first black or strong female character in the series.
Here is a short list of recent shows that fit this pattern: Doctor Who (season 11 ~) Captain America (TV), Batwomen (TV), Ghostbusters (2016), Starwars Sequels, Obi Wan (TV), Santa's Inc, Cowboy Bebop, Masters of Universe, Charlie’s Angels (2019), Terminator: Dark Fate, Captain Marvel, Moon Knight (TV)
Consume Next Product
while this phase has become a meme, I can't help but feel this way with the current discourse. Show after show follows this fomula and when fans speak out they are labeled an ism
What really got to me was the Cowboy Bebop Actress insulting fans on social media. I was just blown away. I didn't even care that they changed her outfit. The condersending mockery showed me a complete disrespect for viewers.
- I can insult you
- I can patronize you
- you will watch whatever slop I make
I felt resistant to the idea of the lead female character being gratuitous or overtly sexualized ~ Jane Holland, the costume designer
Clearly Jane hadn't read the script because Faye is naked and overtly sexualized a few eps in! Which comes to the crutch of the issue; by the way they reacted it seems like the people involved didn't care about the source material so including things like an easter eggs or nods to the original was unthinkable and they go straight to attacking fans.
It's clearly and issue with the meta of movies and film; for example could you imagine going to a coffee shop and saying "The coffee is fine, but I didn't love the carrot cake" and the owner going "well your a little piece of shit then"; who would go back to that cafe! no one.
Building Trust
Take for example Captain America Civil War, they purposely recreated an old comic box cover as a nod to the fans. Totally unnecessary and normal people won't notice but it builds trust and love with this rendition of the characters.
From Netflix's Witcher:
“Henry was so unhappy with the line,” she recalls. “Finally I said, ‘You know what, you come up with something. I trust you, you know this material so well, you know the book so well, you don’t even have to pitch it to me.’ And he came back the next day with a beautiful speech that’s at the end of Sword of Destiny when Geralt is facing death and it’s such a pitch perfect moment.”
Conclusion
This feels like a symptom of the erosion of choice in the media we consume. The more subscription services we consume the less individual evaluation power we have, because you are no longer evaluating the worth or quality of a product by buying it(or refunding it), you are evaluating the worth of a service by how many shows are on it and whether having access to all of those shows is worth it.
after looking back at my watch history on Netflix, I could see that each month I watched about 1 season of a show. Comparing this to Google Play TV Shows rental fee, the Netflix membership fee is about same. This means Netflix seems like its better for the customer but in reality your money is spread over all the shows and companies, even the ones you don't like and the evaluation process is obscured by internal evaluation logic at Netflix.
This leads to quantity over quality and the adoption of namesake IPs so people can make a list to evaluate the streaming service instead of the shows.