That signal that you can't stop? It's already started
On the heels of an "erm, this is SERIOUSLY WEIRD coming from her" post comes a second one. This one may also floor those of you who know me - but sociology and personal taste ain't exactly the same thing...
I had an epiphanous realisation late last night. It came in a conversation with my DB, after we'd watched a downloaded programme that made me shiver and cry (what it was matters not). And what it was was this:
There's a huge, important cultural shift** going on in the world of commercial media and entertainment, and it's every bit as powerful and world-changing to First World society as its predecessor was. See, some fifty years ago, there was a vast c-shift, and it was the coming of the youth market. Teenagers - teenagers with opinions and cash, a demographic that had never existed before in our society - changed the landscape.
So what is it this time?
Fandom.
No, really.
I don't mean the squee-squee-squee and let's-slash-everything fandoms, although they certainly play a part; I mean the larger picture. I mean the ever-growing groundswell towards direct communication between artists and audience, and between the ideas of artists and production teams and the wallets of their potential consumers.
It's already breaking the recording industry. It's going to break the networks and film studios. It's changing the entire model of popular art for sale. And I think that this is a good thing, but far more importantly, it is a thing that's already started to happen. The old way, in which Big Media decided - via caprice, office politics, and the often ill-informed influence of advertisers - whether or not film X or telly series Y would be made and shown (and for how long) is foundering now. Sure, the Big Six and the networks still largely hold the power, because they're the ones who can do the old "you'll never work in this town again" thing to production companies, but they're foundering. Their day is coming to a natural close.
Go look for Sanctuary, Amanda Tapping's download-only eight-part miniseries (which is damned decent BTW; we bought the HD version a few months ago), and consider the business model and the fact that many of the technical aspects of films and telly are getting easier and cheaper to do at independent level.
There's a lot of money out there in our society. A lot. Even if most of us only have small bits of it available to us. And fandom, that slow but waking beast with its ever-increasing muscle power and cultural nous, can and will organise and use that money, transform it into power, transform it into We the Viewers getting what we want to see rather than what some boardroom OBN gits decide to let us see.
We'll control the horizontal. We'll control the vertical. Do touch that dial.
Can't stop the signal...
** I refuse to use the p-word here, even though it's appropriate, because it's been so devalued. Curse you, Halls of Macadamia! May your spiritual arse be forever filled with angry bull-ants.
I had an epiphanous realisation late last night. It came in a conversation with my DB, after we'd watched a downloaded programme that made me shiver and cry (what it was matters not). And what it was was this:
There's a huge, important cultural shift** going on in the world of commercial media and entertainment, and it's every bit as powerful and world-changing to First World society as its predecessor was. See, some fifty years ago, there was a vast c-shift, and it was the coming of the youth market. Teenagers - teenagers with opinions and cash, a demographic that had never existed before in our society - changed the landscape.
So what is it this time?
Fandom.
No, really.
I don't mean the squee-squee-squee and let's-slash-everything fandoms, although they certainly play a part; I mean the larger picture. I mean the ever-growing groundswell towards direct communication between artists and audience, and between the ideas of artists and production teams and the wallets of their potential consumers.
It's already breaking the recording industry. It's going to break the networks and film studios. It's changing the entire model of popular art for sale. And I think that this is a good thing, but far more importantly, it is a thing that's already started to happen. The old way, in which Big Media decided - via caprice, office politics, and the often ill-informed influence of advertisers - whether or not film X or telly series Y would be made and shown (and for how long) is foundering now. Sure, the Big Six and the networks still largely hold the power, because they're the ones who can do the old "you'll never work in this town again" thing to production companies, but they're foundering. Their day is coming to a natural close.
Go look for Sanctuary, Amanda Tapping's download-only eight-part miniseries (which is damned decent BTW; we bought the HD version a few months ago), and consider the business model and the fact that many of the technical aspects of films and telly are getting easier and cheaper to do at independent level.
There's a lot of money out there in our society. A lot. Even if most of us only have small bits of it available to us. And fandom, that slow but waking beast with its ever-increasing muscle power and cultural nous, can and will organise and use that money, transform it into power, transform it into We the Viewers getting what we want to see rather than what some boardroom OBN gits decide to let us see.
We'll control the horizontal. We'll control the vertical. Do touch that dial.
Can't stop the signal...
** I refuse to use the p-word here, even though it's appropriate, because it's been so devalued. Curse you, Halls of Macadamia! May your spiritual arse be forever filled with angry bull-ants.