A Random Rant
One of my buttons got pushed at Writercon - the reputed Whedon quote (now apparently echoed by RTD) that he doesn't give the audience what it wants, he gives it what it needs.
Dear Mr. Whedon, Mr. Davies, and any other purveyor of entertainment who thinks it's clever to quote the Rolling Stones:
You aren't qualified to make that decision.
You're qualified to make decisions about *your* work - what you want to write, what's saleable, what will best deal with the shifting requirements of television, and anything else on your end of creation. You're not only qualified but required to tell your story your way. That's pretty much the point of YOUR telling it.
But you simply do not have the right - much less the ability - to dictate what I "need" to entertain me. That's what *I* tell you.
There's a long list of things that I (and everyone else in the viewing/reading audience) needs. Food. Shelter. Employment. Civil Rights. Entertainment in general, even. But needing one given work of fiction? Not so much. And being told that I need some offensive or upsetting plot wrinkle is as patronizing as being told by some outside party how I need to eat, live, support myself, speak, act... fuck, in the end, you're telling me how I need to think.
Because that phrasing isn't defending your own work (and funny how it's only ever trotted out when said producer is on the defensive). It's never the producer standing up for his own vision - "I wanted to go x place with this story," or "I needed y to happen to support my theme" or even "this is the story I wanted to write, period."
No, this is flipping back to (and flipping off) the audience. It isn't just that the story is sufficient to itself, it's that the audience is somehow defective in being unappreciative. That the audience members have, en masse, some deficiency of character, temperament, or taste needing desperately to be corrected by this outside person, and the only appropriate response is loyalty and appreciation for pointing it out.
That may be a defensible notion in documentaries, news stories, and other works of journalism, but to sit quietly and be patronized and offended by escapist entertainment?
Nobody needs that.
Dear Mr. Whedon, Mr. Davies, and any other purveyor of entertainment who thinks it's clever to quote the Rolling Stones:
You aren't qualified to make that decision.
You're qualified to make decisions about *your* work - what you want to write, what's saleable, what will best deal with the shifting requirements of television, and anything else on your end of creation. You're not only qualified but required to tell your story your way. That's pretty much the point of YOUR telling it.
But you simply do not have the right - much less the ability - to dictate what I "need" to entertain me. That's what *I* tell you.
There's a long list of things that I (and everyone else in the viewing/reading audience) needs. Food. Shelter. Employment. Civil Rights. Entertainment in general, even. But needing one given work of fiction? Not so much. And being told that I need some offensive or upsetting plot wrinkle is as patronizing as being told by some outside party how I need to eat, live, support myself, speak, act... fuck, in the end, you're telling me how I need to think.
Because that phrasing isn't defending your own work (and funny how it's only ever trotted out when said producer is on the defensive). It's never the producer standing up for his own vision - "I wanted to go x place with this story," or "I needed y to happen to support my theme" or even "this is the story I wanted to write, period."
No, this is flipping back to (and flipping off) the audience. It isn't just that the story is sufficient to itself, it's that the audience is somehow defective in being unappreciative. That the audience members have, en masse, some deficiency of character, temperament, or taste needing desperately to be corrected by this outside person, and the only appropriate response is loyalty and appreciation for pointing it out.
That may be a defensible notion in documentaries, news stories, and other works of journalism, but to sit quietly and be patronized and offended by escapist entertainment?
Nobody needs that.