I agree completely and whole-heartedly with this. I actually wrote a fair bit about this sense of entitlement and emotional ownership in my MA thesis - I've always found it fascinating. Because you're right, on one level the fans own nothing and have no say whatsoever.
But on the other, who are they making these shows and movies for if not the fans? I'm not saying that gives fans a right to decide how things should go, but writers/producers also need to recognise that without the fans they wouldn't be making a show or movie at all and that it's all very well making executive decisions about the direction a show/movie goes in, but if the fans voice their objections and vote with their feet there's no audience left and they've effectively killed their own product. And on the flipside, the fans can very often be the difference between survival and cancellation - look at Star Trek, look at Jericho, look at Firefly and Serenity. There are sometimes occasions when the very continued existence of a show is directly as a result of fan action, and when you have a circumstance like that...damn right the fans are allowed to feel a certain level of entitlement.
It's a fine line between artistic integrity and pandering to the fans by giving them exactly what they want - some producers are very good at it (I'd say Kripke is a good example of this) and others (RTD) are not. A devoted fanbase is never ever a bad thing, and pissing them off by deliberating mocking them, disregarding their feelings and stressing their unimportance as RTD has done is usually something that will come back and bite you in the ass in the long run.
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Date: 2009-07-29 06:51 pm (UTC)But on the other, who are they making these shows and movies for if not the fans? I'm not saying that gives fans a right to decide how things should go, but writers/producers also need to recognise that without the fans they wouldn't be making a show or movie at all and that it's all very well making executive decisions about the direction a show/movie goes in, but if the fans voice their objections and vote with their feet there's no audience left and they've effectively killed their own product. And on the flipside, the fans can very often be the difference between survival and cancellation - look at Star Trek, look at Jericho, look at Firefly and Serenity. There are sometimes occasions when the very continued existence of a show is directly as a result of fan action, and when you have a circumstance like that...damn right the fans are allowed to feel a certain level of entitlement.
It's a fine line between artistic integrity and pandering to the fans by giving them exactly what they want - some producers are very good at it (I'd say Kripke is a good example of this) and others (RTD) are not. A devoted fanbase is never ever a bad thing, and pissing them off by deliberating mocking them, disregarding their feelings and stressing their unimportance as RTD has done is usually something that will come back and bite you in the ass in the long run.