Fandom and the Entertainment Industry: Where to Divide the Line Between Fun and Fury

I remember distinctly when I first considered the insidious nature of consumerism. At 13 years old, a teacher had laid out before my eyes the simple notion that a company’s main goal is to sell, sell, sell. I was dumbfounded. I asked myself, how could the creators behind Star Wars, behind Batman, behind Super Mario Bros., only be concerned with making money? Why don’t they focus on making fans happy by providing them with the best product? As I’ve grown older, I’ve accepted that the entertainment industry is just that: an industry. I’ve come to terms with the fact that every single decision gets made based on the likelihood a profit will arise from it; if a product or deeper message comes out of this endeavor, that’s merely a secondary bonus. But as someone who continues to consume this content and finds less consistent quality, I find myself wondering if complaining about quality is even worth the effort.

It’s the responsibility of the consumer to support the quality products put out by the entertainment industry. If you enjoy Marvel’s consistently entertaining, well-made films, you need to support them with the billions they expect to see in order to ensure more films will follow. If you love the superhero TV shows on the CW, you need to tune in every night and let the network know that you’re willing to sit through all the advertisements for the sake of watching the action. These companies that produce this programming can’t do what they do without the support of your time and dollar. That’s all they care about. But they also know that they need to keep people returning in order to ensure consistent profit and revenue. This is what incentivizes the production team to make good content. This is all information any fan should be aware of by now.

This system, unfortunately, is an inherent conflict of interest. Artists tend to choose a life of having the opportunity to hold a mirror up to contemporary society and ask the question, “How can you do better?” They weave stories of horrible characters waging social, political, and economic conflicts that will often mirror what real people have done, or are doing. These stories are the face-value sales pitch, though. The real depth comes from the characters trapped in these conflicts. The characters are often the strength of the story, and the stronger the character, the better the whole idea. So, what does one do when a character acts differently to how they should in real life? While suspension of disbelief needs to be a procured skill when experiencing these stories, how far should the audience member be willing to allow it? When a piece of programming offers eye-dazzling special effects or stunning choreographed fight sequences, it’s easy for the viewer to be whisked away into a world beyond their own. Seeing the characters engage in such a fantasy sells the story as being just as fantastical, thus allowing my personal suspension of disbelief. To keep my interest, you need to keep the rules of your story within the boundaries of which you have set.

When the entertainment begins to break those rules – whether with the suspension of disbelief, with character motivation, with the actual storytelling – the analyst and the cynic inside me rears his ugly head, spilling profanities over freaking stories. Underneath all of the rage stems the reasoning: whatever I’m investing my time in, whatever I’m taking the effort to spend on, I’d like to have a return on that. I’d like the story to be engrossing, the gameplay to be challenging but fair, the characters to be enjoyable to watch. When I don’t get that, I get cranky. I get pouty. I get upset. And why shouldn’t I? Artistically, it’s the responsibility of these creators to keep a story coherent, a character realistic within the rules of the world, and offer the overall product (if possible) the ability to have the audience connect the conflicts within the story to the conflicts the world around them faces.

So, why is it that I don’t have the right to be complaining? Well, for starters, it’s a fantasy: it’s not worth the effort or the attention. These costumed heroes, these human legends, these characters are all no different than the gods of the old world that symbolize life lessons humans carry with them. Perhaps it’s because these characters have had so much more depth and development than those old fables that we treat them so much more seriously. And perhaps it’s because we expect more as an audience that we end up getting disappointed so seriously. After all, Arrow is only a TV show, why get so worked up about it? X-Men: The Last Stand is only a dumb action movie, why do you care if it’s good or not? I’d argue that, if you’re going to make something dumb, you need to at least make character motivations either consistent or believable. X-Men suffers when current-Mystique is always a human, despite what the previous 5 movies of her “proud mutant” stand suggest. Arrow’s Thea can learn to be a competent fighter in one summer, despite Oliver having to train 5 years in severe, stressful environments, to be competent enough to take on mercenaries and militia of all kinds. In my opinion, fans can allow much to slip through the cracks, so long as those cracks aren’t so wide as to contradict what came before.

I don’t like to be analytical when it comes to my films, my TV, and my video games. These forms of entertainment give me joy because they offer ways for me to escape the mundane, everyday life that I live. I have a blast traveling to a post-Apocalyptic world, shooting down radiation monsters. I’m entranced by the tale of an introvert as he begins to experience the woes of true claustrophobia. I’m engrossed by a man’s journey to do good by others with the gifts that he has, despite having suffered great losses. But as one spends so much considerable time in these worlds, the stories they tell and the conflicts that arise begin to overlap one another. And as someone who likes to experience different ways of escape, that sucks. Maybe all I need to do is expand my horizons. Maybe all I need to do is accept the reality and change myself based on it. Maybe what I need to do is adjust my expectations for entertainment. For 18 years, I never had to do that, because quality entertainment was consistent, and I didn’t know that things could be better. But now I do. And I hate it.