Summary
According to Stephen Kelly in "From Sonic the Hedgehog to Star Wars, are fans too entitled?" (2020), after getting negative fan feedbacks, accepting audience wishes and redesigning Sonic the hedgehog character by Jeff Fowler, an American filmmaker, is an obvious sign of fandom's power. The realist appearance of this character was edited to more cartoonish which is similar to the old version in the fan childhood memory. Because of the social media platform, fandoms have abandon spaces to share their opinions which are amplified and effected some directions of movies such as Star Wars and Game of Thorne. Although this phenomenon leads to the participation of the movie fans to shape pop cultures, it also causes new challenges and restrictions for recent filmmakers especially adding diversity concepts.
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Response
Nowadays, strong fandom power results in changing the movie industry with social media platform reinforcing. Not only this power can command the design of the character, but it is also able to ignite rebooting movies which fan do not appreciate, leading to the controversy. Although the participation of everyone to shape pop-culture sounds delightful, if we explore at the derivation of the power of fandom in detail, we will find out lots of battling against contemporary concepts and lacking respect artists and creators.Certain mass media companies have not produced only TV series or movies. They've created the entertainment empires which consist of theme parks, games, resort, streaming media, selling toys, and shopping. One character or movie inspires and is applied to lots of products and services. For example, Jurassic Park, a well-known movie from 1993, appears in the form of one zone in theme parks, playthings, and the inauguration of the franchise movies. The huge conglomerates such as Disney and Universal Pictures use this strategy to generate large amounts of income. Despite being a brilliant plan, it's also a double-edged sword that is stabbing the creative industry; hence, fan backlash on just one movie can damage other involved business sectors, likes a domino effect. Awareness of this kind of backlash obstructs the movie studio to experiment with new things and goes round in circles of cliches plots.
Some many directors and artists attempted to create content that empowers women and increases diversity in media. However, lots of fans were dissatisfied with those contemporary concepts especially in the franchise movies, long-established TV series, and remake movies. Because they usually refer things that exact or similar to childhood versions even though it was composed a long time ago, before our society-mindset improvement. For instance, in the past, the majority proportion of outstanding roles in media were reserved for white straight men.
Many fans dedicate time and attention to their favorites therefore they tend to have an intense sense of ownership which might cause some disrespect to creators. For instance, despite being an intention of JK rowling to give a Hermione role to African American actress in the stage play version, fans against this decision. Moreover, I believe that filmmakers can not carry all of the fans' opinions while they are doing their jobs. Under the business strategy of the media company, creative workers already have had many restrictions.
To conclude, the economic aim might support entitling to fandoms more than creators meanwhile most fans do not accept new emerging ideas, resulting in a challenge for artists and directors.
I believe that everybody has the right to share personal opinions and strong fandom power can force better quality of media as long as fandoms use internet platforms for creative expressions such as writing fan fiction, fan art drawing, and film criticism with an open mind. Film criticism in an aggressive mood should be avoided.
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Question
What is the acceptable limit of fandom power? or it should be free?
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Reference
- Kelly, S (2020, February 14). From Sonic the Hedgehog to Star Wars, are fans too entitled?. BBC News. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200213-from-sonic-the-hedgehog-to-star-wars-are-fans-too-entitled
Phing's summary of the very long article she chose to summarize is one I had seen before, but had not read until Phing forced me to so that I could compare her summary with the source. I'm glad she made me do that work because it there were a few other details I liked that Phing only hints at.
ReplyDeleteI've loved stories since I was in primary school. In fact, probably before then, since my parents used to read to me before I ever started school, and as the enduring popularity of stories shows, they have always been important to human beings. I think every culture, from the most ancient to today, has given stories high priority, and some last for thousands of years without change.
Or as Phing's thoughtful response says, the change is controlled at least in part by the demands of the audience. I liked the memories of some of my favourite modern stories that Phing mentioned, but I have to confess that I really don't like much in the Marvel Universe. I loved Startre back in the 1960s, but when I tried watching that again on NeFFlix recently, I thought it was awful: the acting is bad, the scenery is cheap and crappy, and the stories are just silly. But as a child I loved it. On the other hand, I love the recent film versions that make substantial changes to the characters, and in my opinion tell much stronger stories. But apparently there are a lot of fans out there who disagree with me.
I think it's good to change to old stories. One of my favourite stories is the ancient Greek story of the war in Troy almost 3,000 years ago, and although the film version starrring Brad Pitt changes the story a lot, I think it still captures important elements of why that particular story has been so important in Western civilization for almost 3,000 years.
To very briefly answer Phing's question, I think great literature has also had to listen to the demands of fans. They are, after all, the people who decide whether a work of art, whether a film, a novel, a poem, or whatever, lasts or is forgotten, but there is a difference been being a short term fad and a great work of art. Maybe that makes it hard for artists, who need to attract enough immediate interest to get an audience who can judge the real value of their work. Another problem today is that there is so much competition for our attention, and a lot of really good art is being produced today. I think fans should be free to say what they want, and get creative with works of art. The artist is then free to decide whether to use that influence or not. In the case of Homer, who wrote down the ancient story of Troy, the evidence suggests that he included a lot of ideas from generations of fans when it was only an oral story told in the villages of archaic Greece. I think fandom has a very long tradition.
I didn't mean to write that much, but one idea led to another, as it does.
DeleteYour article reminds me about internet fandom trolling war recently, as in twitter there was a hashtag '#nnevvy' that became the first top hashtags in Thailand. It is a Thai ordinary unknown girl that had become known in the blink of an eye. To summerize for people who did not follow the twitter or the news, the starting point happened among fandom in China, which Chinese fans blaming a Thai teen male actor who acts in Thai gay series that he should apologize to them that he show his fours favorite photos that he took by himself in a different four country with the same concept. One of that picture is HongKong's high rise building photo and he had mention that HK is a country. Later, the heat was started, they found that the Thai actor had a girl friend and they want them to break up because of the girl friend comment under her own personal picture in twitter that the actor admired that she look alike Chinese girl and she refused that she look more like Taiwanese girl. the fan had criticized that the Thai couple racist to China and the stated that HongKong and Taiwan are not the countries, they are China, leading to create the non-stop online trolling against China and the mile tea alliance:Thai, Tiwanese, and HongKong for 3 days.
ReplyDeleteFandom fighting raised sensitive heated issue into an international stage, which a political in Taiwan and the Chinese ambassador had to come out and stand for their right to express their opinion the Taiwanese politician got admiring for his act from Thai and HongKong Fan while the Chinese ambassador Facebook's page got trolling attack from Thai, taiwanese, and HongKong fans.
The fan power is stupid and scary sometimes. They need to learn critical thinking with us a little bit more and they should respect more their favourite actor's personal space.
I can't disagree with Num's suggestion that some people might benefit from joining our class.
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