F*** The Average Reader

MMMM. Friend of the Blog Radio Eli passes along this juicy bit from this month's issue of The Believer, where Nick Hornby interviews David Simon (Homicide, The Wire)

In fact, I found this so delicious that I just went to The Believer/McSweeney's site and re-upped a sub to both The Believer and McSweeney's. So thanks, Eli. You just cost me money.

Simon Says:

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Beginning with Homicide, the book, I decided to write for the people living the event, the people in that very world. I would reserve some of the exposition, assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out. I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.

Make no mistake—with journalism, this doesn’t mean I want the subjects to agree with every page. Sometimes the adversarial nature of what I am saying requires that I write what the subjects will not like, in terms of content. But in terms of dialogue, vernacular, description, tone—I want a homicide detective, or a drug slinger, or a longshoreman, or a politician anywhere in America to sit up and say, Whoa, that’s how my day is. That’s my goal. It derives not from pride or ambition or any writerly vanity, but from fear. Absolute fear. Like many writers, I live every day with the vague nightmare that at some point, someone more knowledgeable than myself is going to sit up and pen a massive screed indicating exactly where my work is shallow and fraudulent and rooted in lame, half-assed assumptions. I see myself labeled a writer, and I get good reviews, and I have the same doubts buried, latent, even after my successes. I suspect many, many writers feel this way. I think it is rooted in the absolute arrogance that comes with standing up at the community campfire and declaring, essentially, that we have the best story that ought to be told next and that people should fucking listen. Storytelling and storytellers are rooted in pay-attention-to-me onanism. Listen to this! I’m from Baltimore and I’ve got some shit you fucking need to see, people! Put down that CSI shit and pay some heed, motherfuckers! I’m gonna tell it best, and most authentic, and coolest, and… I mean, presenting yourself as the village griot is done, for me, with no more writerly credential than a dozen years as a police reporter in Baltimore and a C-average bachelor’s degree in general studies from a large state university. On paper, why me? But I have a feeling every good writer, regardless of background, doubts his own voice just a little, and his own right to have that voice heard. It’s the simple effrontery of the thing. Who died and made me Storyteller?

Okay...now that's the weekend, folks. Hand me an olive. I'm done.

Mad Men Drops The Hammer

THE EPISODE was called "New Amsterdam." I thought that was a particularly clever title. In this show about advertising and generations, how great to see that old name -- Noo Yawk 1.0. --Much may be made of what this show had to say about the divide between generations, then. (And boy you're going back a few if you reference Dyckman in NYC.) But I'm more firmly convinced than ever that the genius of Weiner is that he's writing about today, not about the past...

This is the episode, to me, where Mad Men reached up and touched that Sopranos crown. It was that good.

Learning more about Peter Campbell's backstory was a fascinating turn that pivots the series on its ear. Nice writing, boys -- take the villain and make him all understandable. Very 21st century...And there's something so interesting in watching the steel magnate, for a company that you know went down in 2001.

In fact, that's the whole amazing, tense thing about Mad Men. You watch knowing that all these people are about to get swept up in something none of them understand, and can't stop. And you don't know how, or if, anyone will come out the other end.

But the beauty, the true beauty of the writing shines through in one scene right near the end. This is so close to subtext becoming text (and by the way, I just almost typed 'sex' rather than 'text' there -- say of that what you will, advertising types) that it's amazing they got away with it. But they did. This is a beautiful scene, in a show that's so good that it makes me feel like the squealiest fangirl ever.

(by the by, this is not script, this is my transcription of the scene.)

Now, this scene comes informed perfectly by the two scenes before it: the chilling meeting with Cooper where we see how Don and his boss both dance to another's tune, and the scene where they convince Pete that it's Don who stuck up for him - Don who saved his job. They are all on the edge, these Mad Men -- always selling the better version, never pausing to think about how precarious it is. Sterling's last line in that scene above....is it provocation? A challenge met? Slattery was neutral in his delivery. It's left for you to fill in.

Also, notice that Peggy is minimal in the ep, and Joan doesn't appear at all. I can't think of a Canadian network person anywhere who'd let you get away with that. Sigh.

I can't even think of really intelligent stuff to say about this ep. It just washed over me. I loved it. For a better analysis, check out this entry on The House Next Door.

If you're not watching Mad Men, then I gotta say, why not? What the hell's wrong with you?

Golick Brings the Babe Ruth-Aaron Pilot Heat

IN MY DESIRE to not be pissy and to try to shovel new content your way as often as I can, yo, yea, I sometimes have to rely on the kindness of, well, not strangers, but maybe those who have been doing this longer than I have and who manage to teach me things.

If you're a spec monkey, a baby writer, or even someone who's mid-career like me, you've got things so crazy good compared to when we scrabbled around in the dirt before the dawn of time, when networks were king and before scribes stalked the internet en masse. I can't even tell you. We've come a long way since the only thing you could count on was Syd Field and Robert McKee's eyebrows.

Never mind Jane Espenson's crazy good blogging on specs....I think you all should give a what-what to scripto-blogging's new Barry Bonds, but without the antisocial behavior and obvious doping: Jill Golick.


Never an * for the Golick's mad skillz, yo.

See, Golick crunches the numbers so you don't have to. I remember laying out for my Ryerson students the nitty-gritty of the whole TV ep breakdown and getting the blank stares of incredulity. Well, Golick breaks down Pilots regular like, and it's an awesome resource to behold.

In her latest post, she lays out what she's a-seein about trends in pilot writing. You could not click through and just read through the cadged material I'm going to quote below, but then you'd also be a very silly, stupid, pig-eating, farty english turdblossom.

(Sorry. I saw Spamalot last week. I'm having Post Traumatic Spam Disorder.)

These are the structural trends emerging from the pilots I've read and watched:

Open long.
A lot of teases are running very long. Or scripts are eschewing teases altogether and leading off with titles followed by a long act one. Once you get the viewer tuned in, why give them a commercial and let them escape. Hang onto them as long as possible without giving them a break.

Act lengths aren't even.
There's usually at least one very short (9 page, for example) act. Sometimes, I see symmetry between the first and second halves of the show with acts 1 and 3 almost exactly the same length and acts 2 and 4 the same lengths. I never see all four acts equal.

State your theme in the third act.
Very often the series theme is spelled out in dialogue just as the conflict is rising to its apex in the third act. Isaac Ho pointed this out in a post on Script Enabler. I've found it too. It usually falls at the thirty minute mark which would be around page 40 in a 60 page script.

Oh, there's more. More. More. Over at Golick's hood. She's got pictures and shit. She's even got a Part Two. I dare you not to click through, bitches. I dare you.

In completely unrelated news, Public Enemy has a new CD out. Deal with it. That single makes my heart palpitate.

Blood Ties Site Up At Citytv

Blood Ties finally makes its Canadian TV debut in the next two weeks. Citytv has responded with their own show site for the show. You can find it here.

So Very Wrong.

I can't help it. She's a powerful woman. And that's hot.

UK TeeVee from Piers & A Bit About HOUSE

PRODUCTION MAKES one a little remiss in checking the fine bloggings of others. But Man-Across-The-Pond Piers Beckley (mug at left) weighs in with this interesting news from Blighty:

ITV TO COMMISSION LONG RUNNING DRAMA SERIES

Michael Grade announced today that ITV are specifically looking for long running series.

To wit, "series that are on 14, 15, 16 weeks a year, on every year for three, four or five years".

Will the new UK standard force a shift to a writers' room model? At the moment, the showrun shows (Doctor Who, Torchwood, Robin Hood) use a model with a head writer commissioning, creating the overall story arc, and (sometimes) rewriting scripts. The main proponent I'm aware of for this writing style in the US is David Shore.

What we're not doing yet is breaking stories in the room. And that's where the heavy lifting goes on in most US shows.

But mainly, the question is this: Will we have a writer in charge of the new breed of shows at ITV?

If so, then this may be the beginning of the end for the old UK model.

Pretty heady stuff. The Brits are doing longer runs, the Canadians are shooting pilots...My God, all we need is the Americans to realize there's a world beyond the Southland and the Island of Manhattan, and it'll be like Dogs and Cats sleeping together.

Again -- woe betide the Canadian producers and channels that, due to economic reasons, rush headlong into six-episode orders. You may be out of step with what the market is saying to you...

By the by -- Piers also had some excellent reportage about a session with David Shore in London a month or so ago. I'm giddy at the thought that I might actually be posting something House-related that wasn't posted or referenced by Diane at Unified Theory of Nothing Much, first. But then again, she's been a bit of a slacker lately.

For those of you too lazy -- or cool -- to click a link, here's some of the juicy stuff Piers wrote about Shore and his process:

David only has about twelve days a year in which the staff are all gathered together to break story, and these are used to break the serial elements of the show.

A writer will come to him with a basic idea, which he'll give a Yea or Nay to. After that, it goes to a 2 page story outline: What's the disease, and who is the person. David will give notes on that, along the lines of "Here's what's good about it, and here's what's not."

When it goes to script, the writer will get two or three drafts. The final draft is then done pair-writing in David's office. This works by having a big computer with two screens. They'll then go through it line-by-line, with the script on-screen, amending as necessary.

Obviously this doesn't happen all the time due to production deadlines - but he does it this way so that the writer will learn more about his writing style, which should ease the writing next time.

David used to set a writing exercise for staffers on a previous series:

• Choose an issue

• Write a paragraph about what you believe on the issue

• Write another paragraph completely disagreeing with you

Regarding notes: If someone doesn't like something, there's probably a problem. It might not be the problem they've identified, and the solution they're offering may be awful... but it's likely that there really is a problem somewhere.

Sometimes you read stuff from great showrunners that makes you happy because you think, "hey! that's how I think too!" and for a brief shining second you get all puffy and, "hey whaddya know I'm on the right track!"

I love the exercise of writing the paragraphs. Sometimes I get the feelings on some of the shows I've worked on that the deck is stacked toward one of the positions a little too much. Making that exercise your starting point means you can't put your finger on the scale by hiding behind character and dialogue.

And his idea about notes and bumps -- hard as they are to deal with sometimes -- is also my philosophy. I tend to say, "you don't have to respect their reasons, but you do have to respect the bump."

But it was this observation that almost made me do the whole Diet Coke-through-the-nose thing:

Finally he passed on some advice he'd received years ago: If you want to teach a junior writer a lesson, shoot their first draft.

Oh man. Amen to that.

Burn Notice and The Takeaway: Not Just For Curry and Chinese Food

I AM really enjoying Burn Notice. It's not just that Jeffrey Donovan gets to play a character that's way better (but still just as dangerous) as the guy he played in Touching Evil; it's that old hybrid juice flowing freely. It's amazing that you can mix and match genres so much, slap on a fresh coat of paint, and come up with something that feels so fresh.

For those who haven't seen the show -- the premise is simple. Donovan plays a spy who finds out that there's a "Burn Notice" out on him; which means he's persona non grata. His accounts are frozen, he's got nothing, and he's dropped in Miami and told he can't go anywhere. In Miami is an old friend who's keeping tabs on him for the FBI (Bruce Campbell) and an ex-IRA ex-Girlfriend (Gabrielle Anwar). To top it all off, he gets to relive and reconnect with his mother (Sharon Gless.) Now he has to pass the time and eke out a living working cases and helping people til he can figure out why he was burned.

Pretty nifty combo of a number of items:

• Light serialization (ie: Veronica Mars style)
• Romantic comedy will-they-or-won't-they stuff
  
• Family Problems
• Spy stuff
• Investigations
• Witty Voiceover
  

Jill Golick's got a great breakdown of the pilot for Burn Notice here.

The mixmaster of story items make for a light and escapist viewing experience. You get a hit of House-like impossible relationship with mom, a bit o' sexy sexy with Fiona (Anwar's character); some buddy-buddy with Campbell, and the episodic investigation plot...

...and it's this plot that gave me a sudden brainwave.

Because what I really liked about it is that about twice during each show there's what I call a couple of "MacGyver Moments." That's where Donovan explains in witty voiceover, some aspect of spycraft using everyday materials...Ie: most 40 dollar garden lights have a pretty good motion sensor, you can shoot through drywall just around the door, etc, etc.

(Someone who's seen the show, if you can come up with more specific examples of what I'm talking about from Burn Notice; put 'em in the comments and I'll do an edit to give more examples here -- I just don't have time to go back and rewatch)

The MacGyver moments aren't just entertaining, they actually send you away with some cool fact or truth you didn't know before. And that's tremendously satisfying.

In fact, it puts me in mind of West Wing (as most good things in TV do.) Because one of my favorite things about watching the early, Sorkin-era episodes was that in every episode you learned a fun, strange little fact about American governance (which way the seal of the U.S. faces, the fact that the government doesn't execute people on the Sabbath, how we built 100 000 airplanes before WWII, etc, etc.)

On XM radio, they're about to launch an all-Presidential Election channel called POTUS. It's worth noting, I think that before West Wing, nobody really knew that acronym. The pilot for West Wing put that out there for everybody.

It was a little something to take away.

The "takeaway," in fact, is something that they were obsessed with in my former life as a (shudder) lifestyle TV writer. All those makeover and design shows, the Holmes on Homes and Debbie Travis'es and Queer Eyes are all about building in "takeaways" -- useful bits of knowledge the audience can take away with them and apply in their own lives. (Or not.)

Now in dramatic terms, not many of us have practical uses for knowing little bits of spycraft. But that doesn't mean it's not cool. And anyway, all those shows on the Travel Channel aren't really so you know the Top Ten Places to Go in Helsinki because they actually think you're going to go there. They know that 90% of us are going to stay with asses firmly planted in couch. But still -- it's nice to learn something new.

USA has actually done a brilliant job of extending this aspect of Burn Notice into its online offerings. They actually have a series of "Spy Tips" on their site. Oh sure, they're less funny than Ask a Ninja...but they're actually...useful. They're fun. Go watch.

And oh yeah, they've got a writers' blog, too.

This can get into dangerous territory with some projects, and some writers, because you can turn into a bit of a research wank. (Well, here's an interesting bit of Tudor-era crockery...) But if the subject is fun and interesting, the nice thing about building in a takeaway is that it a) makes your audience feel like they've learned something (smart) and b) makes your world more realistic and involving (smarter.)

So when you're working up those scripts, ask yourself, is there room to give the audience a little bit of a takeaway?

I'll have chips with mine, please. Yum.

Yessss!

SOMETIMES WHEN you're a writer on a TV show, you get to fulfill terrible parts of your personality that you didn't even know you had, that would otherwise have no outlet.

Like when the playback/art dept calls with a dull idea for a newspaper headline that's supposed to feature in an episode about government ministers and lapdancers, for instance.

Oh sure, you could go with "Strippergate." That's been done. You don't want to go there, do you?

No. No you don't. So suddenly, there it is, your opportunity to fulfill your secret dream of being a trashy, evil, exploitative tabloid headline writer.

With cheap puns and everything.

You know how it feels? It feels good. Not "mansquito" good, maybe. Not "Headless Woman Found In Topless Bar" good [Which is a famous actual New York Post headline] But mmmm, mmmm, good. Real good.

Thank you, Baby Jesus. Thank you for my little career.

Maureen Ryan Talks to Me Through My TeeVee

I LIKE Maureen Ryan because she thinks about TV. A lot. Anybody who thinks about TV is my friend. Anyone who turns up their nose at TV, who's casually dismissive without thinking about the medium, well, I won't say they're my enemy, but let's just say you're not getting a holiday card.

Ryan's been musing on her Chicago Tribune blog over TV storytelling and what kinds of stories work, and what kinds don't. She riffs off a piece that Jane Espenson wrote for the New Republic , dealing with SF narratives, which posits that audiences gravitate toward "The Chosen One," stories...comforting hero narratives. Most of the Sci-Fi that doesn't catch on doesn't catch on because it lacks this dimension. Interesting theory.

Where Ryan takes it further, though, is into the soup of what we who create TV do when we're doing what we do. (Doobie doobie do.)

I'm not sure I've ever heard it described so well:

Many TV shows similarly have an interesting, well-told "cover story" -- and a subtext that's just as intriguing, if not more intriguing.

This "TV disguise" is actually something I've thought about a lot -- many of the cleverest shows on TV use it to great effect.

For instance, I think "Battlestar Galactica" isn't just a satisfying tale of survivors on the run from extermination. It is that, on one level, but wrapped inside that overall structure is a meditation on governing, power, the tension between the military and civilians and an exploration of what human beings will do to each other -- and for each other -- when the "normal" restrictions of human society are taken away.

Likewise, I've always thought "House" is really a weekly ethics seminar. What is moral behavior? What constitutes brutal disregard for others and what constitutes selfless adherence to well-defined ideals? What's the definition of violating a person's individual rights, and when is it OK to ignore those rights in order to save a life? Those kinds of discussions and arguments between House and his staff, or House and Wilson, could be taking place in a graduate philosophy seminar. Lucky for us they take place within a tightly constructed mystery story.

"The Sopranos"? A gangster's tale, to be sure, but also a deeply resonant examination of materialism and what the definition of manhood is in the 21st century.

Would you believe that I think "Deadwood" is, on one level, a treatise on government as well? After all, if you put aside the boozing and the swearing and so forth, the show's really about how people on the edge of a lawless frontier choose to rule themselves.

And way back in the day, I used to think "Grey's Anatomy" was an interesting take on how friendship and ambition collided. Now I'm not sure what it's about, except about how desperate TV writers often seem to be driven by a desire to make their characters as illogical, unlikable and inconsistent as possible.

I've often thought that the smartest TV writers find an idea or a set of challenging ideas that they want to explore, and then find a TV-friendly format that will allow them to do that.

After all, a TV executive who gets a pitch on "a weekly morality seminar" is pretty likely to pass. "A cranky but charismatic doctor saves lives in an unorthodox way" -- sold!

Though I'm in the middle of storybreak hell, I'm also dipping my toe back into development for the first time since Across The River To Motor City got made last year. (It's coming this fall -- I swear to Dog, just waiting for the date...) I took a long break from developing my own projects after that, because 2005-2006 had me juggling three. It was a hard slog, and after all that, the tank was low.

Now, in my copious free time (nights and sleep hours) and those times when I'm banging my head against the wall for my current project, I'm starting to think through two new concepts. I have pitch documents for both, and my agents are putting them out there. There's a lot that's fluid in a concept at that stage. But what's essentially true about what Ryan's written is this: I know, deep down, what I want the shows to be about. I try to put enough of that into the pitch document to intrigue, but not scare people. After that, you really do range a bit to find the best characters, form, storytelling style and format to dramatize those big ideas.

I can't help but think that one of the things that's holding us back in some quarters of Canadian drama is that we don't do enough to make that leap. I've seen a lot of recent shows that were about their underlying ideas -- but...not much else. The characters and storytelling weren't worked through enough to support that underlying framework. I call it "broccoli tv."

I've been seeing a lot of shows where they sell the morality lesson without coming up with Dr. House. That's partly a network thing, and partly a creator thing, and partly a flaw in the development thing. Given a chance, a network person will always want to talk about big things rather than plot or story, because they might not be good about plot and story, but everyone's got an opinion on women's suffrage or preemptive war or rehabilitation vs. incarceration...And it's pretty easy for writers to fall into that trap, too. Because finding the right form and absolutely the right characters -- well, that's the hard part. But it's also the part that the audience expects you to do. They want you to do that work.

Shows where you make the audience do all that work, like, oh, say, John From Cincinatti, well, they may be interesting, and curiosity-sparking. But they won't be loved. I really believe that.

Lost and Gilligan's Island are the same show -- except, of course, they're not. Cause they worked it, and worked it, and worked it. And then they threw in a polar bear, but who's gonna nitpick that?

I think Ryan's words are something that any TV scribe, experienced or non, should keep going back to.

The underlying stuff is great. It's what feeds you as a writer. But it's not the bulk of your work. Craft demands more.

A Little of What I'm Doing

IF YOU'D LIKE to know a bit more about the show I'm currently writing for, Playback, in its latest issue, has a feature story from the set.

The Border was commissioned as an MOW from documentary stalwart White Pine Pictures, but was later reworked. Raymont submitted the first episode of the 13 x 60 series as part of the pubcaster's pilot scheme last December, and received the green light in February.

Episodes will be "informed and inspired" by headline news stories.

The war on terror also makes the job of the agents more taxing. "A lot of it has to do with our relationship with the U.S.," says Raymont.

The Border is set across all major ports and points of entry in Canada, but the shoot is limited to Ontario locales such as Toronto, Ottawa and Oshawa, where recent filming attracted the attention of locals, who reported the mysterious landing of an executive jet on a rural road (a scene from one of the first episodes) to local news outlets.

Creative producers and writers David Barlow (Blue Murder), Janet MacLean (The Murdoch Mysteries), Denis McGrath (Blood Ties) and Sarah Dodd are on board. The ensemble cast includes James McGowan (Warriors of Terra), Graham Abbey (Heartland) and CSI: Miami's Sophia Milos, who stars as a member of U.S. Homeland Security. The Border will run 13 consecutive weeks on CBC in January. Brian Dennis (The Eleventh Hour) is supervising producer, and John Fawcett (DaVinci's Inquest) is among the directors.

The series was the pet project of documentarian Lindalee Tracey, Raymont's wife and business partner, who lost her long battle with cancer during the filming of the pilot episode last October. Her award-winning docs on immigration, The Undefended Border and Invisible Nation, inspired the storylines, though Raymont says this fictionalized version is somewhat more realistic.

"We can work with a team of people now who have insider knowledge on how the border works and who won't allow themselves to be filmed on camera," he says.

Funny thing, um...so Playback published this article in their daily email update. You'll notice, maybe, that there's..ahem..a name missing from the story department. We have a four person story department. They mention three.

Okay. No problem.

What's a little funnier... is that they went back and corrected the piece, added in a few people they'd left out of the original article, including the Producer and one of the Directors...but they still left out...one name.

Sigh. The glamor never stops.

But what do you know? I read it now and there's my name! My name's there!

I am sad and require constant validation.

Mea Culpa.

Can Rescue Me be Rescued, or Should We Call It?

SO SUMMER winds on, and though I'm spending days crunching grey to try and work out a story, everyone's vacations and scarcity makes for some time to catch up on summer TV.

The first thing that surprises me a little is that I might be joining the chorus of those jumping off the Rescue Me bus. I understand critics like Maureen Ryan who've called Rescue Me on its misogyny and for pointing out how ridiculous it is that every hot woman that comes along immediately falls for Tommy Gavin. But that's not why I'm disenchanted.

There's a big tightrope series have to walk -- and season four is generally that gauntlet. If you've conceived your drama well, you can probably get three seasons out of it without breaking a sweat. But Season Four is where the bloom comes off the rose, and unless you've got some real great new tricks in your bag, people are going to start to drift away.

West Wing is a perfect example of this. Season Four was Sorkin's last on the show, and though his swansong featured some really strong, interesting episodes, the grumbles about the show at that time really served to ease his flight out the door.

This fall, we'll see House try to avoid the stink of the fourth season curse. Will introducing new ducklings and shaking up the relationships work? Who knows -- House has kind of always had a problem with ongoing arcs (everything eventually resets to zero.)

I think Rescue Me might just have worn through its concept. I don't find any permutation of the Tommy/Janet relationship interesting anymore. Losing the Chief was a big blow...I agree with the many others who've said that he was one of two characters you actually could root for on the show (John Scurti's Lou being the other one.) Even the things that made Rescue Me audacious aren't working anymore. Those comedy scenes slapped up against the drama -- they were thrilling when they worked, and thrilling when they didn't. For some reason, they're just not working for me this year. Any of them. They just..lie there. I've seen up to episode 5, and I'm not burning to see the rest. I miss the Gavin brothers, too. In so much as that dysfunctional Irish hate/love/filial relationship struck me as something that really got at the core of who Tommy was. I spent a lot of time defending Season 3 to people. I'm a little bit mournful that the show hasn't continued the bold dance. This high wire act of series tv -- it is really, really cruel sometimes. But there you go.

I think the promo image for Season Four -- that ape like rictus from Leary -- says more about the state of the show than anyone intends. I think maybe the life is gone out, leaving an emaciated husk.

I've heard rumors that the episoodes I haven't seen yet get even worse -- and that Rescue Me's patented "shock value" slow burn storytelling might finally have erupted into full, desperate shock-for-shock's sake flame. It's a shame. Three seasons of a very interesting, very different show. Nothing to sneeze at, but man, I would have been happy to see them pull off two or three more.

Manohla Dargis: We're All Geeks Here

MANOHLA DARGIS weighs in in the New York Times today with a lively, lovely, and surprisingly touching essay from last weekend's San Diego Comicon. It's a strange time for those who create and those who consume -- with blurry boundaries and allegiances, and constantly shifting frames of reference. We may disagree on things from time to time, but there's no doubt that something important is happening in the video arts -- and maybe the relationship between comic artist and fan is the leading edge of that. I'm not sure. I just know that reading this article I felt like it was lapping at the shores of something very new in the artist/audience relationship:

The audiences are openly fawning, but you never lose the sense that they could turn against the presenters. The beast is happy as long as it’s fed, but woe to those who don’t feed it.

Such is the nature of fandom, which demands as much as it receives. That seems especially true of comic book fans, who appear to enjoy a more intimate relationship with producers than most pop-culture consumers. Part of this may be rooted in the very nature of the comic book, which is accessible even to young buyers. Comic books fit nicely in your hand, they’re relatively cheap and humbly constructed: just three staples and paper. Just as important — unlike movies, which until the introduction of digital technologies were almost entirely out of reach for most people — comic books are also something that anybody with a pencil and a slip of paper can create. Their seeming modesty is seductive.

At the same time, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out, the elliptical form of the comic book — which forces you to make cognitive leaps from panel to panel, jumping across that stretch of white called the gutter — means you have to fill in more blanks than someone watching a mainstream movie...The wild-eyed, worn-out Comic-Con fans fiercely clutching a cardboard “300” shield in one hand and a plastic bag in the other may not have been thinking about aesthetics and intellectual pursuits. But they were actively engaged in the creation of culture.

So much is changing, so fast, that it's almost painful to try and take a quieter, longer-viewed step back look at the state of fandom and creation today. What I think I loved about Dargis' piece is that it's informed by the truth of our times. She relates earlier in the article her engagement with the underground comix of her youth, when her family ran a bookstore. But the transition that happened in the past -- the "growing up" and "setting aside" of that culture as you aged -- it's not happening anymore. And as much as dumb superhero movies with simple hero narratives does nothing to grow our collective imagination -- I still find myself, when confronted with the old geek or nerd stereotype, feeling like it's a relic of another area. The geeks are not disconnected, they are not marginalized, they have, in fact, won. And Dargis says as much. Again...in a lovely, thoughtful way:

The cliché about fans being losers with no social skills, no friends and no clue is essential to its myths, marketing and even its most loyal readers. In the last few decades the emergence of a geek elite has helped legitimize this outsider culture and helped bring legions of 97-pound weaklings into the sightlines of the industrial entertainment complex. In some respects America is now a country of freaks and geeks, self-professed outsiders who imagine themselves somehow different from the herd, perhaps because they are Americans — radical individuals who are united if only by their increasingly narrow interests and obsessions.

This kind of atomization of the culture has its problems, as we know deep in our bones. Yet for all my worries that we are turning into a nation of iPod people, that’s only part of the big, postmodern, late-capitalism picture. Despite all the plastic and dissembling, events like Comic-Con represent something genuine and true and, yes, powerful about how people live in the modern world. Every day we wake up to navigate through a faceless, inhuman, Made-in-China existence. Some of us escape through literature, some of us burrow deep into movies. And some of us find sweet relief in what, to the outside world, looks entirely disposable, useless and — here’s that word again — childish. They find happiness in Hot Wheels, wonderment in Wonder Woman. Superman teaches them how to fly, and they do.