I realized recently that my reviews have sort of turned into a very topical outlet for me. There are things about this world that I still struggle to understand and it’s really fun to try and work through those things via reviewing films for all of you. I can only hope that you enjoy the journey as much as I do. This year has been a year that has left me questioning what I should reasonably expect from those properties that I enjoy. Last weekend was SDCC in California. It’s a fantastic time of year for nerdom as all of the producers of geeky stuff roll out the red carpet and use any tactics they can think of to tease and entice us with previews of things to come. There are product previews, movie trailers, and panels with key people who create the stuff that we nerds love. I’ve never actually been to ComiCon, but even I find myself looking at news outlets from time to time searching for the new happening with my favorite properties.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not nearly as plugged into the Internet as I could be. I do the Facebook thing, but don’t follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, or any other such foolishness because I don’t have accounts with most of those sites, and my Twitter has never been used. I don’t really see the appeal, but to each their own. Some people crave attention and those are definitely outlets for attention. Be that as it may, I get a lot of media related news a little bit more slowly because I don’t subscribe to these things, and more importantly, I don’t connect with other people over my fandoms as much because of this fact. I’m going somewhere with this, but first, let’s look at a horror/suspense classic from all the way back in 1990, Stephen King’s Misery.
Misery is the tale of a writer named Paul Sheldon who crashes his car in a blizzard, causing significant injury to himself, and totalling his car. He should have frozen to death and died, but he’s saved by one Annie Wilkes. Prior to his accident, Sheldon had just finished writing a novel based in a series for which Wilkes was a huge fan. Wilkes begins nursing Sheldon back to health, and as a thank you, Sheldon lets Wilkes read his manuscript. It’s all very nice, but takes an abrupt turn south when Wilkes realizes that the character that she adores so is going to die at the end of the book that Sheldon has just written. Wilkes’ demeanor switches from sweet, but kinda creepy to full on homicidal in an instant and she sets Sheldon up with an office insisting that he rewrite the novel according to her liking. This is especially interesting because it happened in real life. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made his fortune writing Sherlock Holmes, but he wanted to move on and so he wrote a piece where Holmes dies. The outrage was so vehement that Doyle very quickly went back to writing Holmes stories, and not happily I should add. Anyway, so as to not spoil every little detail of this cinematic masterpiece, things do eventually resolve in as good a way as can be expected. Sheldon escapes, Wilkes dies, and everyone moves on.
There are a lot of positives to this movie. There’s definitely a reason it’s considered a classic. The script is wonderful. There’s this play between the straightforward and the creepy, foreboding undertones that really lay a good framework for every other aspect of the film. The acting is superb. Kathy Bates walks a fine line between innocent naivete and homicidal monster, and she plays the dichotomy of those two characteristics flawlessly. The immediacy with which she’s able to switch between them is uncanny, and lends itself to the frightening nature of the character. James Caan also does an amazing job in his role. He goes from grateful survivor to plotting survivor sprinkled with a little bit of false Stockholm syndrome very well. The power struggle between the two characters is beyond intense. It’s disturbing at times with outright violence, and then at other times, it’s really subliminal. It’s all very well done.
The pacing of the film is incredible. The movie uses suspense extremely well. One thing that I really appreciated is that the story knows how to ebb and flow with the suspense in order to maximize the impact of that suspense as everything unfolds. That would not have been possible if the pacing hadn’t been as complex and well developed as it is. Again, that all falls back on the well crafted script, but it also says a lot about the director, Rob Reiner. He really handled this project masterfully. This buildup of suspense is also accomplished in part by the music. The score just uses the right type of musical cue at just the right time. This is a movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend without any reservation. It really holds up as a masterwork of cinema.
I could go on singing the praises of this movie, but that’s not why we’re here today. Today, we’re looking at some themes that the film presents for discussion. We’re looking at themes as intended by the writer, and themes that I picked up on because of what’s happening in the world around me. Stephen King has acknowledged that Misery is an allegory for substance abuse and his battle to overcome that. He has said that Annie Wilkes represents that addiction and how it isolates you and saps your will to live. In that light, I don’t think that this movie could ever not be poignant, but like great storytelling, it offers the possibility of someone applying to it their own unique ideas and perspectives. This is where my previous ramblings come to play. The year 2016 has left me questioning just exactly what and how much I should be allowed to expect from my fandoms. I’m not sure I’m coining the use of the word ‘fandom’ as a noun to describe something altogether intrinsic in nature, but it’s the best descriptor that I could come up with. I myself consider Star Trek, Batman, Ghostbusters, most 80s cartoons, and a handful of other sci-fi related franchises to be my fandoms.
I’d prefer to classify myself a moderate fan of most of the aforementioned things, but that really depends on the thing in question. I do, for example, really enjoy my Star Trek, but I only consider myself a casual fan of some of the sci-fi related shows that I watch. This is important because as Misery is about to teach us, there comes a point where someone crosses a line in their fandom. They cease to be a fan, or even a superfan, and they become an extreme superfan. If it’s not obvious why this movie came to mind to talk about this subject, consider yourself shamed and continue reading for further enlightenment. Annie Wilkes represents a fan, and her fandom is the Misery book series by Paul Sheldon. It’s not even veiled. It’s established in the movie that she considers herself his biggest fan. So I’m taking the entire premise a bit literally, but it really works on that level, which again, is the mark of great cinema. The entire progression of the film’s story is an excellent parallel to how fandom has evolved over the last 25 years.
Let’s get more specific. Trouble really starts when Sheldon lets Wilkes read his unpublished manuscript. At that moment, Sheldon has granted Wilkes the perception of a little ownership in his art. In much the same way, when we watch TV shows and movies, play games, and buy related products, we begin to feel a sense of ownership over the franchise that we’re supporting. Once Wilkes realizes that Sheldon intends to end her favorite book series, she goes into a homicidal rage. She makes Sheldon burn his manuscript and rewrite the book, giving feedback the entire time and making him start over whenever there’s something to which she objects. This is definitely akin to the kind of outrage that hits the Internet whenever there’s an announcement that something about a thing with fans is being changed. Case in point, what little online presence that I do have is geared toward Facebook. Saturday at SDCC, it was announced that the new Star Trek show had a name and there was a teaser of test footage of the new ship. It took all of about 0.005 seconds for ‘fans’ to collectively lose their crap over the appearance of the ship. Now, it’s one thing to be aesthetically repulsed by the appearance of a computer generated object, but the levels of hate being spewed were embarrassing. There I said it, at that moment, I was embarrassed for a bunch of Trekkies. There were so many comments pleading with CBS to change the ship, and this was within the first 24 hours of the announcement.
That segues wonderfully into the next aspect of extreme superfandom that Misery demonstrates. Annie Wilkes insinuates in one scene that without the Misery books, she would feel as if she didn’t have a reason to live, and that she might end her own life. Sheldon placates her with some generic platitudes and although she doesn’t indicate for sure that she’ll be okay, she stops alluding to suicide. I think as people in general we have a habit of overvaluing the influence we can have on the world around us. That’s not to say that we can’t influence our world, but when someone is posting to a Facebook group, or to Reddit that such and such corporation needs to make this change to so and so TV show that they really enjoy,and expecting tht their rants will actually accomplish something, then there’s probably some overvaluation going on. The stark truth is that CBS probably will never see your post pleading with them to change the ship design, Marvel probably won’t ever get around to looking at that online petition you started to get Captain America a boyfriend, and here’s why.
James Caan’s performance captures this brilliantly. His relationship with Annie Wilkes goes from grateful and amiable to tense, and then to resentful contempt. The extreme superfan wants to believe that their spewing hate all over the Internet will make a difference. However, the fact remains that unless you work for the company that makes the thing that you’re a fan of, there’s a high probability that as far as they’re concerned, you don’t exist. We live in a world of pseudo connections. Between online social media, and the like, we forget that two people can view the same relationship in very different ways. I think this is most evident on Twitter. A person will send a Twitter to a celebrity, and then get a response, and to most, that’s a cool thing. To the extreme superfan, they’re best friends. Even moderate fans might get a little star struck. However, there are a lot of celebrities who pay social media gurus to keep up their presence on the Face-verse. Ergo, sometimes that dialog that we perceive that we’re having with that person might end up being nothing like that at all. It’s kind of disappointing, but let’s face it, celebrities are busy people too and they don’t typically have the time to answer ten thousand Twits a day. Therefore, our influence on the creators in minimal at best, and that’s assuming that it even exists at all. That’s why it’s fundamentally important to balance our sense of ownership over a fandom with the reality of the real world. Yes we love this thing, and yes we feel like our liking it adds to its uniqueness, but we need to understand that the best way that we can exemplify a fandom is to be like a cheerleader for that thing. We need to channel our passions and excitement into calmly sharing with others reasons to love the thing as well.
Now let’s look at ownership a little further because this is an area where even the moderate fans can get a bit fuzzy. There’s a pervasive attitude that because we watch movies and shows, or buy merchandise, we’ve somehow earned partial ownership of our fandom. We look at the base ideology of consumerism and we think, “Well I bought this CD and so I own it. Surely it works the same way with my show, right?” It’s an interesting discussion because there are two very valid points to be made on two diametrically opposed sides of the aisle. On the one hand, you don’t work for whoever makes your fandom. No one has granted you the keys to that kingdom and told you to create. On the other hand, without fans, a thing ceases to exist. If all of a sudden, every Star Wars fan on the planet suddenly stopped supporting Star Wars and all of the merchandise sat on shelves to collect dust, and no one went and saw any movies, then Star Wars would die a quick death. Obviously that will never happen, but hypothetically speaking, Disney knows this. It’s why they put so much effort into releasing new and exciting Star Wars things. These are two valid points as I said earlier. As an example of crossing a line, I recently learned that Joss Whedon took some major rage hate for his decision to develop a semi-meaningful relationship between Hulk and Black Widow in Age of Ultron. I saw this movie and I thought that the romantic undertones were sweet because I kind of felt like the two characters got each other and they made each other better people. But apparently there were a lot of extreme superfans who disagreed with that point of view. Whedon wound up cancelling his Twitter account and going underground as a direct result. Once again, James Caan’s performance demonstrates some of what’s going on in these situations very well. He writes a new book, but in the end, he winds up resenting all that it represents so much that he burns that manuscript as well. As fans, we have to remember that while we are the consumers, we are not the designated official creators. As consumers, our role is to support our fandoms by giving them attention and money, and that that’s as far as our role extends. We shouldn’t be badgering the creators over petty little points via social media, or in worst case scenarios, making death threats.
That’s not to say that as fans and consumers, that we can’t also create. Misery actually has a scene where Wilkes is explaining to the sheriff that in light of Sheldon’s apparent death, she’s taken it upon herself to pick up that mantle and write her own Misery novel. Fan fiction has been around probably since the dawn of time. Certainly it can be traced back at least to the 1970s when Star Trek fans started publishing their own fanzines and writing their own stories. Star Wars’ expanded universe (RIP) came about because of fan fiction. There are definitely appropriate places and situations to use our own creativity and passion to build up those fandoms that we cherish. What we have to bear in mind is that the creators are doing these things because they find them fun, and they might stop doing these things if doing then ceases to be fun. I will shed a mighty tear the day that a fanbase destroys its own fandom, and I sincerely hope that that never happens. But it could if we continue to live in a world where we debase and hate against decisions made concerning our fandoms one moment only to turn around shortly after and proclaim our undying love for that fandom. That sends a very confusing and frustrating message to those who work tirelessly to feed our fandoms, and it’s not even remotely constructive.
In the last 25 years, it’s become unprecedentedly easy to ‘connect’ with our fandoms. The Internet has given us all a virtual sounding board to share our ideas and our passions. A quarter century ago, we could only look on as spectators of our fandom for the most part. In much the same way, Annie Wilkes was acting as a Paul Sheldon fan. She knew all the little details of his life, but she’d never met him until he crashed. I imagine if this story were adapted to a more contemporary setting, she would be spending most of her days Facebook stalking him and leaving creepy messages on his Twitter feed. She’s probably attend conventions and take awkward pictures with him in order to feed that belief that she mattered in his life. Obviously, she’s an exaggeration of my point, but the point still stands. We need to remember to moderate our words and our actions. Discussing our fandoms rationally, and without malice is a great way to meet like minded people and also expand our thinking, but constantly expressing outrage over every little detail and development might be a sign that we need to seriously rethink whether or not we still take enjoyment from that fandom. Perhaps the answer is to simply live in the good old days of your fandom. That’s certainly possible. There’s no rule written or otherwise that explicitly states that you have to continue to support something if the joy that you used to take from that thing has soured. There are a lot of fans out there and they all love a lot of different things. It’s never our place to sour someone else’s experience simply because we feel that our own experience has been soured by something. It’s fine to not like something, but in a world of absolutes, we need to learn to live less in said absolutes. Only the Sith deal in absolutes and they are most often the losers. Don’t be a loser. Feel free to disagree. Discuss your feelings with those around. But understand that nothing is ever the best, or the worst. Because in 0.005 seconds, something else will come along that’s considered the best, or the worst. Like things, or dislike them, or even hate them, but do so in a way that doesn’t spoil the fun of those around you, and certainly don’t direct your rage at those who work so hard to create new things for your fandom.
I guess to tie it up, I’ll just say that this has been a harrowing exercise for us all. Just take a few moments to think about what that comment, or that Twit is going to accomplish before you throw it out there for the world to read next time, and consider being a force for good within your fandoms rather than a critical voice of dissent. Here’s a sea otter to make you smile…
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