What can I say? I like it when my existence is acknowledged.
I've been thinking about this whole "interactive storytelling" thing TV's trying these days, and the difference, for some shows, between what it says on the label and what's actually in the can.
Heroes, in particular, has always been high on its interactive extras, the side-narratives told in comic book form, or as games, or in webisodes accessed through the show's official site. The thing about those extras, though, is that they're not designed to allow the audience to interact with the show's stories as much as with the network's marketing department: the entire purpose of those extras is to get people to spend a lot of time on the official site, because in this new age of downloads and PVRs that can skip past aired commercials, that's where the show's/network's advertisers can have a captive audience. Think about the Sprint ads Heroes is doing this year, the ones (badly) disguised as a side-plot about Lydia the carnie: they air a "minisode" commercial during each episode that not only features loving closeups of Sprint phones and dialogue about features offered by Sprint's service, but also directs the viewer to the website to "interact" with the story through various games...while being exposed on all sides to the Sprint logo, as well as a few others. NBC's even using Sprint to provide "Interactive SMS", in which "mobile users can play along with the show as it airs" by getting quizzes, polls and behind-the-scenes info on their cellphones during the show.
While it may look fan-friendly and -engaging on the surface--because if you're a fan of a show, wouldn't you be interested in "interactive questions and messages that'll take you deeper inside the broadcast than ever"?--really, this sort of "interactive extra" is the network interacting with its audience on a marketing level. Despite having dressed up their ads in Heroes clothing to catch the eyes of the people who care enough about the show to want more related content than the weekly episode provides, under the clothing, most of those extras have less to do with appealing to the audience's fondness for the show than with exploiting it to sell more ad space. (And then there's the way the "Interactive SMS" thing, by sending its content out during each new episode, seems designed to take your attention away from the show--or at least from your experience of the show as an episodic/serialised narrative. As a tactic for distracting the audience from the inanity and ridiculousness that tends to make up an episode of Heroes these days, it's probably a solid plan; on the other hand, to my fannish mind, there's something incredibly counterintuitive about an extra that purports to "take you deeper inside the broadcast" by making you look away from said broadcast every few minutes to answer your phone.) This, to my mind, is not "interactive storytelling"--it's interactive marketing.
Contrast that with Castle's recent Halloween episode, which featured numerous nods-and-winks to certain castmembers' roles on other shows. Or with what Supernatural's been doing since--well, since 'Hollywood Babylon', really, but more pointedly since 'The Monster At The End Of This Book' and its fourth wall-chinking revelation that the show exists within its own universe as a book series that is an object of zealous fannish attention. Castle's been described as "a show by geeks for geeks"; SPN, meanwhile, has won a lot of flak from parts of fandom for lampshading its status as fangirl bait--not to mention the way it hung a spotlight on certain types of fans with the canonical inclusion of Becky the slash-writing Samgirl. Regardless of whether you're pro- or anti-SPN's meta commentary on its fandom, however, it seems obvious that "a show by geeks for geeks" describes SPN as well, even beyond its many throwaway-dialogue references to things like Star Trek and Batman: what equates it to Castle's (admittedly gentler) acknowledgement of the nerdcore demographic is the way each show has embraced interactive storytelling--by which I mean storytelling designed to interact with its audience.
By having Rick Castle dress up as Mal Reynolds for Halloween, Castle's writers spoke directly to the viewers who followed Nathan Fillion from Firefly: "You enjoyed FF, we enjoyed FF, Fillion enjoyed FF, Rick Castle enjoyed FF. We understand your fannishness, and we want to encourage it." It doesn't matter that the fannishness the Castle PTB want to encourage isn't as much for FF as it is for their own show; what matters is that they chose to go about courting that level of diehard fannish love by using their show--their character--to acknowledge the existence of the fannish spirit in their audience and appeal to it directly. (Because, frankly, is there a FF fan in existence who didn't find herself filled to the brim with goodwill towards Castle after that scene?) Where Heroes' interactivities a) are accessed extra-episodically through new media technology designed more to generate revenue than to provide narrative entertainment, and b) seem to have less and less to do with the actual show or any desire on the PTB's part to court fannish engagement with the actual show, Castle's PTB seem willing to use the show itself as the medium for direct communication--direct interaction--with their audience. They spoke to us through their main character and his story; they expect us to speak back through our loyalty to and enthusiasm for their product.
Which brings me back to SPN. The SPN PTB also spoke directly to their fannish audience when, using the device of a fictional book series in which each book equates to an episode of the TV show, they had the Winchesters discover fandom and fanfic, then meet a Sam/Dean slashfic writer. Certainly, SPN's acknowledgement of keen fannish interest is both more direct and more pointed than Castle's, and we could argue for days over whether the SPN PTB intended their message to be a loving poke at their fangirls or an annoyed and vindictive one. (We could argue that, but we won't in my comments, right? :) In any event, the basic technique is the same: rather than try to woo their audience('s disposable income) with technically-interactive material external to and separate from the audience's experience of the show-qua-the show, the SPN PTB recognised the emotional connection between their audience and their show, and made deliberate use of SPN's actual content to provoke a response from their fans. (Positive or negative doesn't matter; what matters is that the response is strong enough to keep the show at the forefront of the audience's attention. [Storytellers trying to tell stories that will get a reaction from people?? Why, I never! Whatever will they think of next?!? *g*]) If that's not interactive storytelling, I don't know what is.
There is a difference between SPN's use of the technique and Castle's, however: in SPN's case, TPTB didn't initiate the interactivity. Rather, their creation of the Supernatural book series and Becky the Fangirl was their response to their fans, to the oodles of fic fanwriters have produced about the show, the high levels of passion in online debates, and the discomforting behaviour occasionally displayed. Historically, the fans of a particular source have laid unofficial claim to its narrative through fic and vids and discussion--what Henry Jenkins calls "textual poaching"; historically, the PTB responsible for those sources have had mixed reactions to the appropriation of their work into a "participatory culture" that may have little to do with the PTB's intentions and/or wishes. Because of this, there's been a pretty firm divide between the fannish world and the source's world: a source's PTB wouldn't even speak of their more fervent fans unless it was to disavow knowledge of their products (ie, those PTB who've said they don't read fanfic because they want to avoid any whiff of plot or character contamination), disallow their activities (Anne Rice), or deride their very existence (Aaron Sorkin); the fans, meanwhile, fearing legal reprisals based on issues of copyright, maintained their own general policy of non-engagement with anyone professionally involved in the making of the source material. Therefore, historically, the relationship between the makers of a show and the people in its audience has been either nonexistent, or structured around a rather pervasive sense of "us versus them". This is why the SPN PTB's decision to engage their fandom--to give a specific, knowledgeable, and direct response to the ways in which the fans have been making their own interactions with the show for years--is so interesting, and so important: it's an example of PTB who are willing not only to share their show with their audience (as Castle's PTB seem to want to do), but to have a dialogue about it--show and fandom--as well. Rather than simply creating a product, throwing it to the wolves that comprise the viewing public, and going home with a cheque, these PTB are using interactive storytelling to acknowledge (perhaps, if we stretch a bit, even validate) the fannish view of TV shows as experiences to be invested in, appreciated, and above all, shared.
By geeks, for geeks. (See? I told you it applied. Took me a bit to bring it all home, but I got to it eventually. *g*)
*
By referencing a long-cancelled genre show from another network, the Castle PTB admitted to the fannish types in their audience that they shared the fannish experience of Firefly--and, moreover, that they were open to creating and sharing new fannish experiences with Castle.
By creating in-canon characters to comment on the existence, society and creativity of fandom, the Supernatural PTB turned one-sided fannish appropriation of a source into a two-sided dialogue about the source and its fannish audience.
By offering gameplay, trivia and behind-the-scenes tidbits, all of which are extraneous to the experience of the show as a narrative entity, the Heroes PTB lured their audience to their website and counted the minutes each person spent there, exposed to the ads splashed hither and yon, so the bean counters would know how much more they could charge for that ad space when their current contract comes up.
...one of these interactive storytellers is not like the others. Personally, I think a large part of the difference between the way Heroes has embraced audience interactivity and the way Castle/Supernatural have can be explained by a difference in the PTB's and/or the network's concept of television as a medium: I suspect Heroes is seen by its higher-ups in the traditional view of television programmes--as vehicles for selling soap--while Castle and SPN are being treated as salable products in and of themselves.
Isn't it amazing how much difference a little change in perspective can make?
*~*~*
It has been...many years since last I wrote an essay.
I have been staring at this thing for hours.
I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense to somebody, somewhere. Somehow.
It's bedtime.
*faceplant*
Heroes, in particular, has always been high on its interactive extras, the side-narratives told in comic book form, or as games, or in webisodes accessed through the show's official site. The thing about those extras, though, is that they're not designed to allow the audience to interact with the show's stories as much as with the network's marketing department: the entire purpose of those extras is to get people to spend a lot of time on the official site, because in this new age of downloads and PVRs that can skip past aired commercials, that's where the show's/network's advertisers can have a captive audience. Think about the Sprint ads Heroes is doing this year, the ones (badly) disguised as a side-plot about Lydia the carnie: they air a "minisode" commercial during each episode that not only features loving closeups of Sprint phones and dialogue about features offered by Sprint's service, but also directs the viewer to the website to "interact" with the story through various games...while being exposed on all sides to the Sprint logo, as well as a few others. NBC's even using Sprint to provide "Interactive SMS", in which "mobile users can play along with the show as it airs" by getting quizzes, polls and behind-the-scenes info on their cellphones during the show.
While it may look fan-friendly and -engaging on the surface--because if you're a fan of a show, wouldn't you be interested in "interactive questions and messages that'll take you deeper inside the broadcast than ever"?--really, this sort of "interactive extra" is the network interacting with its audience on a marketing level. Despite having dressed up their ads in Heroes clothing to catch the eyes of the people who care enough about the show to want more related content than the weekly episode provides, under the clothing, most of those extras have less to do with appealing to the audience's fondness for the show than with exploiting it to sell more ad space. (And then there's the way the "Interactive SMS" thing, by sending its content out during each new episode, seems designed to take your attention away from the show--or at least from your experience of the show as an episodic/serialised narrative. As a tactic for distracting the audience from the inanity and ridiculousness that tends to make up an episode of Heroes these days, it's probably a solid plan; on the other hand, to my fannish mind, there's something incredibly counterintuitive about an extra that purports to "take you deeper inside the broadcast" by making you look away from said broadcast every few minutes to answer your phone.) This, to my mind, is not "interactive storytelling"--it's interactive marketing.
Contrast that with Castle's recent Halloween episode, which featured numerous nods-and-winks to certain castmembers' roles on other shows. Or with what Supernatural's been doing since--well, since 'Hollywood Babylon', really, but more pointedly since 'The Monster At The End Of This Book' and its fourth wall-chinking revelation that the show exists within its own universe as a book series that is an object of zealous fannish attention. Castle's been described as "a show by geeks for geeks"; SPN, meanwhile, has won a lot of flak from parts of fandom for lampshading its status as fangirl bait--not to mention the way it hung a spotlight on certain types of fans with the canonical inclusion of Becky the slash-writing Samgirl. Regardless of whether you're pro- or anti-SPN's meta commentary on its fandom, however, it seems obvious that "a show by geeks for geeks" describes SPN as well, even beyond its many throwaway-dialogue references to things like Star Trek and Batman: what equates it to Castle's (admittedly gentler) acknowledgement of the nerdcore demographic is the way each show has embraced interactive storytelling--by which I mean storytelling designed to interact with its audience.
By having Rick Castle dress up as Mal Reynolds for Halloween, Castle's writers spoke directly to the viewers who followed Nathan Fillion from Firefly: "You enjoyed FF, we enjoyed FF, Fillion enjoyed FF, Rick Castle enjoyed FF. We understand your fannishness, and we want to encourage it." It doesn't matter that the fannishness the Castle PTB want to encourage isn't as much for FF as it is for their own show; what matters is that they chose to go about courting that level of diehard fannish love by using their show--their character--to acknowledge the existence of the fannish spirit in their audience and appeal to it directly. (Because, frankly, is there a FF fan in existence who didn't find herself filled to the brim with goodwill towards Castle after that scene?) Where Heroes' interactivities a) are accessed extra-episodically through new media technology designed more to generate revenue than to provide narrative entertainment, and b) seem to have less and less to do with the actual show or any desire on the PTB's part to court fannish engagement with the actual show, Castle's PTB seem willing to use the show itself as the medium for direct communication--direct interaction--with their audience. They spoke to us through their main character and his story; they expect us to speak back through our loyalty to and enthusiasm for their product.
Which brings me back to SPN. The SPN PTB also spoke directly to their fannish audience when, using the device of a fictional book series in which each book equates to an episode of the TV show, they had the Winchesters discover fandom and fanfic, then meet a Sam/Dean slashfic writer. Certainly, SPN's acknowledgement of keen fannish interest is both more direct and more pointed than Castle's, and we could argue for days over whether the SPN PTB intended their message to be a loving poke at their fangirls or an annoyed and vindictive one. (We could argue that, but we won't in my comments, right? :) In any event, the basic technique is the same: rather than try to woo their audience('s disposable income) with technically-interactive material external to and separate from the audience's experience of the show-qua-the show, the SPN PTB recognised the emotional connection between their audience and their show, and made deliberate use of SPN's actual content to provoke a response from their fans. (Positive or negative doesn't matter; what matters is that the response is strong enough to keep the show at the forefront of the audience's attention. [Storytellers trying to tell stories that will get a reaction from people?? Why, I never! Whatever will they think of next?!? *g*]) If that's not interactive storytelling, I don't know what is.
There is a difference between SPN's use of the technique and Castle's, however: in SPN's case, TPTB didn't initiate the interactivity. Rather, their creation of the Supernatural book series and Becky the Fangirl was their response to their fans, to the oodles of fic fanwriters have produced about the show, the high levels of passion in online debates, and the discomforting behaviour occasionally displayed. Historically, the fans of a particular source have laid unofficial claim to its narrative through fic and vids and discussion--what Henry Jenkins calls "textual poaching"; historically, the PTB responsible for those sources have had mixed reactions to the appropriation of their work into a "participatory culture" that may have little to do with the PTB's intentions and/or wishes. Because of this, there's been a pretty firm divide between the fannish world and the source's world: a source's PTB wouldn't even speak of their more fervent fans unless it was to disavow knowledge of their products (ie, those PTB who've said they don't read fanfic because they want to avoid any whiff of plot or character contamination), disallow their activities (Anne Rice), or deride their very existence (Aaron Sorkin); the fans, meanwhile, fearing legal reprisals based on issues of copyright, maintained their own general policy of non-engagement with anyone professionally involved in the making of the source material. Therefore, historically, the relationship between the makers of a show and the people in its audience has been either nonexistent, or structured around a rather pervasive sense of "us versus them". This is why the SPN PTB's decision to engage their fandom--to give a specific, knowledgeable, and direct response to the ways in which the fans have been making their own interactions with the show for years--is so interesting, and so important: it's an example of PTB who are willing not only to share their show with their audience (as Castle's PTB seem to want to do), but to have a dialogue about it--show and fandom--as well. Rather than simply creating a product, throwing it to the wolves that comprise the viewing public, and going home with a cheque, these PTB are using interactive storytelling to acknowledge (perhaps, if we stretch a bit, even validate) the fannish view of TV shows as experiences to be invested in, appreciated, and above all, shared.
By geeks, for geeks. (See? I told you it applied. Took me a bit to bring it all home, but I got to it eventually. *g*)
*
By referencing a long-cancelled genre show from another network, the Castle PTB admitted to the fannish types in their audience that they shared the fannish experience of Firefly--and, moreover, that they were open to creating and sharing new fannish experiences with Castle.
By creating in-canon characters to comment on the existence, society and creativity of fandom, the Supernatural PTB turned one-sided fannish appropriation of a source into a two-sided dialogue about the source and its fannish audience.
By offering gameplay, trivia and behind-the-scenes tidbits, all of which are extraneous to the experience of the show as a narrative entity, the Heroes PTB lured their audience to their website and counted the minutes each person spent there, exposed to the ads splashed hither and yon, so the bean counters would know how much more they could charge for that ad space when their current contract comes up.
...one of these interactive storytellers is not like the others. Personally, I think a large part of the difference between the way Heroes has embraced audience interactivity and the way Castle/Supernatural have can be explained by a difference in the PTB's and/or the network's concept of television as a medium: I suspect Heroes is seen by its higher-ups in the traditional view of television programmes--as vehicles for selling soap--while Castle and SPN are being treated as salable products in and of themselves.
Isn't it amazing how much difference a little change in perspective can make?
*~*~*
It has been...many years since last I wrote an essay.
I have been staring at this thing for hours.
I hope it makes at least a little bit of sense to somebody, somewhere. Somehow.
It's bedtime.
*faceplant*