crossing the streams
So I was thinking this morning about the Democratic primaries and why I'm supporting who I'm supporting, like you do when you're half awake and it takes most of your brainpower to remember which bottle is body wash and which bottle is shampoo. (I totally got it right on the first try today!)
I got to thinking about some of the cool, spontaneous, people-generated things I've seen on the internet on the pro-Obama side, and the sort of resounding lack of same on the pro-Clinton side, and it occurred to me that, like everything else in my life, I can probably explain my response to primary politics by comparison to fandom.
The Clinton campaign is like a critically-acclaimed show on HBO. I've got some friends who watch it religiously, it's directed by some big name and stars somebody whose movies I've really liked, and I would totally be watching it if I got HBO and remembered to turn on my TV on Sundays at 10 on a weekly basis. People keep telling me it's brilliant and ground-breaking and I completely believe them! It probably is! It's just that no one's, you know, writing porn about it or making really cool vids or anything, so even though I keep Really Meaning To Watch That, the honest truth--which every experienced fangirl knows--is that the only way I will ever actually see this show is if someday I'm recovering from major surgery and iuliamentis shows up with the first season on DVD, takes the remote away from me, and announces this is what's up next. And at that point there would probably be mildly-drug-addled posts to my friends-list about WHY DID NO ONE EVER MAKE ME WATCH THIS BEFORE, OMFG, BRILLIANT.
(As a non-political-analogy aside: Iulia actually is coming to visit me this weekend armed with Doctor Who DVDs, and I am not gonna lie. I'm a little bit scared of what might happen.)
And then there's the Obama campaign, which is like this year's new show on the CW. The premise sounds kind of corny, but the lead actor is hot, and I'm sorta thinking about tuning in sometime--and then somebody on my flist is talking about it actually being pretty good or at least fantastically entertaining, and then two or three people, and suddenly, WHAM. There are vids and more different vids and fun fic and fic that makes you cry a little bit and the BNFs are lining up and I am downloading like a crazy person and making a date with my teevee and I am all over that. And then I start trying to tell people that no, really, this show is hitting its stride and it's ACTUALLY BRILLIANT, but of course I just sound like one more fangirl who's drunk the Kool-Aid. And, also of course, because it's got a big, enthusiastic fandom, it's always going to be critically dismissed as a show with a cult following. I mean, how could anything good come out of the CW, right?
So in short, I like to think that I'm not just supporting Barack Obama because his fandom is so much cooler than Hillary Clinton's, but on the other hand, I would say that, wouldn't I?
I got to thinking about some of the cool, spontaneous, people-generated things I've seen on the internet on the pro-Obama side, and the sort of resounding lack of same on the pro-Clinton side, and it occurred to me that, like everything else in my life, I can probably explain my response to primary politics by comparison to fandom.
The Clinton campaign is like a critically-acclaimed show on HBO. I've got some friends who watch it religiously, it's directed by some big name and stars somebody whose movies I've really liked, and I would totally be watching it if I got HBO and remembered to turn on my TV on Sundays at 10 on a weekly basis. People keep telling me it's brilliant and ground-breaking and I completely believe them! It probably is! It's just that no one's, you know, writing porn about it or making really cool vids or anything, so even though I keep Really Meaning To Watch That, the honest truth--which every experienced fangirl knows--is that the only way I will ever actually see this show is if someday I'm recovering from major surgery and iuliamentis shows up with the first season on DVD, takes the remote away from me, and announces this is what's up next. And at that point there would probably be mildly-drug-addled posts to my friends-list about WHY DID NO ONE EVER MAKE ME WATCH THIS BEFORE, OMFG, BRILLIANT.
(As a non-political-analogy aside: Iulia actually is coming to visit me this weekend armed with Doctor Who DVDs, and I am not gonna lie. I'm a little bit scared of what might happen.)
And then there's the Obama campaign, which is like this year's new show on the CW. The premise sounds kind of corny, but the lead actor is hot, and I'm sorta thinking about tuning in sometime--and then somebody on my flist is talking about it actually being pretty good or at least fantastically entertaining, and then two or three people, and suddenly, WHAM. There are vids and more different vids and fun fic and fic that makes you cry a little bit and the BNFs are lining up and I am downloading like a crazy person and making a date with my teevee and I am all over that. And then I start trying to tell people that no, really, this show is hitting its stride and it's ACTUALLY BRILLIANT, but of course I just sound like one more fangirl who's drunk the Kool-Aid. And, also of course, because it's got a big, enthusiastic fandom, it's always going to be critically dismissed as a show with a cult following. I mean, how could anything good come out of the CW, right?
So in short, I like to think that I'm not just supporting Barack Obama because his fandom is so much cooler than Hillary Clinton's, but on the other hand, I would say that, wouldn't I?