When I wrote last week’s post, about how it it’s okay to form opinions on things you haven’t seen yet, and even to not change those opinions in the face of opposition from people who have seen those things, many people pointed out the perilous downside to this. Which is that, just as we have all (or most of us have) been faced by an angry fan snarling out, “How can you judge it if you haven’t even seen it?”…we have also all been on the receiving end of dripping disdain wielded by someone who read about a casting rumor on io9 that shows that the movie is totally going to suck because the gay cowboy from ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is playing the Joker and there’s no point in even watching it now.
Those people are absolutely right. (The people who point out the perilous downside, not the people who refused to watch ‘The Dark Knight’ because Heath Ledger was in it.) There’s no question that fans can be obnoxious, and that any creative decision that’s daring and unconventional will attract a crowd of people not just ready but eager to jump on it with hobnailed boots before they have a chance to really judge it. The impulse to see a truly spectacular failure in progress is an old one, and there are many who will say that it resulted in a lot of brilliant stories never getting a fair shake. (Even now, ‘Heaven’s Gate’ has its defenders, and I’ve met someone who will insist that ‘Sucker Punch’ is a Brechtian masterpiece.)
We all have a responsibility not to be that fan. It is okay not to like things. It is even okay to not like things irrationally, based on little to no evidence. If you are wrong, the only thing you’re hurting is you, after all. And yes, it is okay to tell people that you’re not interested in something when it comes up in conversation (like, say, a discussion of “Things You Irrationally Dislike Based On Almost No Evidence”.) But what isn’t okay is to be aggressive. Going into a comics forum to tell everyone that you’re not even going to pick up ‘Avengers Vs. X-Men’ because it’s s obvious it’s going to suck…not cool. Sitting in on a DC panel just so you can tell everyone that ‘Flashpoint’ was the last DC comic you’re ever reading…why bother? Clearly nobody there will agree with you, because they’re all there to hear about the new comics coming out of DC, so why do you want to start an argument? It’s okay to let people disagree with you. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever say you didn’t like something, or even to have a friendly argument about the relative merits of a film/book/TV show/comic/play. It’s good to discuss things, and and even to have wildly differing opinions. The point at which you start getting upset at people for liking things you have no interest in, though, is the point at which you need to just take a step back, relax, and remember that just as nobody can make you watch ‘Green Lantern’, you don’t have to make a pre-emptive strike on their enjoyment in order to stop them from forcing it down your throat.
If for no other reason than someday, you might change your mind. And when you do, the last thing you want is for all your friends to remind you of the time you said you wouldn’t watch ‘Buffy’ because you weren’t a thirteen-year-old girl.
Related Articles
25 users responded in this post
“jump on it with hobnailed boots”
Was that a Mighty Mouse reference? 🙂
“Even now, Heaven’s Gate has its defenders”?
I must be one of them. What’s actually wrong with Heaven’s Gate, other than most people grew up hearing how awful it was?
It would seem a spammer got through your filters… I think I’ve seen that nitwit “winter trend” in my own filters.
I’ve never actually seen Heaven’s Gate… I think it’s just because it under performed at the box office that it got a reputation as toxin.
This is great, and helpful to me, since for a while now I’ve been trying to work out some kind of corollary that describes people’s tendency to intellectualize their dislike of a given thing in a way that implies that that thing is objectively bad.
It’s hazy, because it’s possible, at least in theory, to argue that pretty much anything is bad or good, and the trick is spotting the difference between someone who wants to have an honest conversation of the relative merits of a thing, and someone who wants to allay their own insecurities by giving you ten reasons why the thing you liked sucks and you’re a fool for liking it. Obviously this is a big problem in geek communities.
@Kevin: “…the trick is spotting the difference between someone who wants to have an honest conversation of the relative merits of a thing, and someone who wants to allay their own insecurities…”
Post-modernism burn!
Pretty much the only reason I watched atrocious classic movies I had no interest of seeing ever, was because MAD did a satire of them, and I wanted to understand the intent behind the jokes. That’s the ONLY defense I can give in this case.
@highlyverbal Ha – you’re joking, but I do think that things like film criticism contribute to the problem. Which isn’t to refute film crit or academia or the great contributions they’ve made to legitimizing things like science fiction in the greater culture. But sadly, I think the takeaway for a lot of folks in fandom is to incorporate a weird sort of deconstructionist mentality into an already-existing, insecurity-driven, fuck-you-if-you-haven’t-seen-Evil–Dead-yet hipsterism.
I think most recently the acme of this was people’s reactions to Prometheus. I liked the movie just fine and thought it was a pretty good way to spend two hours of your life. But I could understand someone not liking it; it was far from amazing. What I was unprepared for was the crazy level of hostility people had for this movie, and the spate of reviewers complaining, sort of nebulously, of plot holes and Damon Lindelof. Everywhere I went, someone was explaining to me why Prometheus was the worst movie ever made, and giving what were honestly pretty weak reasons to support the claim: Those scientists were stupid for interacting with native wildlife. Charlize Theron shouldn’t have run in a straight line away from the falling ship. It was weird that the medical-machine-thing didn’t have any settings for working on women. Plot holes, plot holes, plot holes, they said, without ever really concretely identifying anything that actually counted as a plot hole.
It was weird: As though geeks everywhere had decided with one voice that they hated a movie (which is totally reasonable) and then intellectualizing why it was objectively terrible (which is, you know, less OK). I still don’t get it.
Hey Daniel, I thought I was the only person to see movies because I read the Mad parody first! Woohoo!
But seriously, there is a difference between the people who actually have a compelling reason for their dislike or adoration and the ones who just like to start fights.
I think both of these essays boil down to the fact that I’m entitled to my opinion and to use my time as I see fit, whether anyone agrees with me or not. But I should allow other people the same.
I appreciate the distinction between the two titles. Rights and responsibilities, indeed.
You… haven’t been to a lot of DC panels, have you, John?
@Kevin-
It sounds like you’ve read a lot of shitty criticism of Prometheus, which is a shame because there are many perfectly good reasons why that movie was bad.
I’m curious why people would give the examples you gave as exampled of ‘plot holes.’ Those aren’t plot holes; those are examples of shitty writing.
Regarding Prometheus I see the opposite with many “nerds” defending the movie and telling the detractors to “stop being HATERZ”. The movie was ok, better to look at though the story was at best meh.
Alas, trolls exist. (And not just on blogs.) And they have an irrational belief that being assholes somehow validates their existence.
@Will – Sounds like a lot of the backlash regarding the ending of Mass Effect 3. I’ve lost track of the “stop being a hater” comments because I’ve said that the ending, well, sucks. And I did play through that stupid game.
Yeah, still bitter about wasting 100 hours on a Shepard only to have all those decisions literally not matter a damn bit. C’est la vie, I suppose.
@Murc: Actually, that was a reference to something that happened to me. Went to a DC comics panel at CONvergence last year, and spent the whole time more or less sitting on my hands because I realized pretty early on that I had nothing to contribute beyond, “I’m just not interested in DC comics anymore.” I think that the experience made me a better person. 🙂
@John-
Fair enough. I’ve been to a number of DC Comics panels (including one at NYCC) where a guy saying something like “Everyone involved in Flashpoint should be hurled into the Speed Force and then into the sun, including the layout artists and inkers” would have resulted in half the panel standing up and clapping.
The medical machine didn’t have settings for women because it was only on the ship for the one person.
I think there’s one angle that’s not being addressed here, which is that disappointment can come from genuine emotional investment in a product (or its predecessors, in the case of a series/franchise/whatever); and that those negative reactions need some kind of acknowledgement, and there’s a margin between “meek acceptance” and “now I’m going to troll you forever”.
So f’rinstance – to continue the Flashpoint line of discussion – when the New 52 came out I discovered that all these years I’d been the worst kind of continuity whore – once the continuity was stripped away, it turned out I no longer had any interest in the comics! But I didn’t complain about it on the Internet ’cause I didn’t have much of an emotional investment – the only point would be to troll people who were still reading DC.
On the other hand, Guild Wars was my favourite video game of all time, and I had a huge emotional investment in giving GW2 as much of a chance as possible. So when I ragequit in disgust a couple of months ago (when the first “free update” included gear treadmill elements they’d promised they’d never adopt) I experienced what felt like genuine emotional betrayal. Obviously I’m not calling for abusive online meltdowns (I managed to refrain from doing anything beyond posting a passive-agressive comment on the GW2 youtube channel 😛 ); but in some sense that emotional relationship needs to be addressed, and it’s just a question of figuring out how to do that (a)healthily and (b)in a non-jackass manner.
(It didn’t help that the link to the exit survey was broken, so I couldn’t tell them why I’d uninstalled. Every day for a month, I clicked that link… 🙁 )
(Also Prometheus was good, I never got the hate!)
@flypaper
I am not shocked that NCsoft has no desire to hear any critical feedback. If that sounds nasty, its the remaining bile i feel towards NCsoft for killing City of Heroes.
I think there is an exception, for people who are actively boycotting something and telling people why. I’m thinking of things like people who boycotted The Last Airbender due to the racebending in the casting decisions, or the people who are boycotting DC for some combination of the way they treat their writers, their characters, and their properties in general. I just think there should be an allowance for those who want to avoid the work and complain about it, provided there are actual serious issues of that kind in the production phases.
on prometheus “plot holes.”
charlize theron running: action sequence, blind panic, unable to gauge gigantic falling thing’s trajectory when running for your life. Long story short, she pretty much served her purpose in the story, so whatevs.
medical Machine: it’s for the old guy, not infected lady. so there’s no need to waste resources programming it for her. Furthermore, there might have been a program, only this thing was about to burst of her chest just this moment.
scientists and alien: the only true weak part. because they were acting so smart earlier (hell no am I going down that dark cavern, etc.) but I’ll allow maybe excitement upon finding new life. That said, IT’S ACTING LIKE A COBRA.
all in all we’re flipping prometheus a lot of shit because lindelof because the lost ending. There’s just as many ‘plot holes’ in alien.
@Kevin: I was only kinda joking, because I am an unreformed modernist and rarely pass up a chance to take a dig at pomo. It was a shoe fits kind of situation.
“…for a lot of folks in fandom is to incorporate a weird sort of deconstructionist mentality ”
Deconstructionist: when childish destruction loses its high and you need the extra kick from knowing you are destroying someone else’s efforts
If you like something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be good, then you’re a bandwagon-jumper.
If you like something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be bad, you’re an idiot.
If you hate something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be good, nobody remembers.
If you hate something when it’s first presented and it turns out to be bad, then you were right all along.
Game theory shows us, therefore, that hating everything is the winner strategy. Because if you dump on it and it turns out to be good, then everyone’s so happy to get something good that they don’t care whether anyone dumped on it. And if you dump on it and it turns out to be bad, then you’re an amazingly prescient artistic genius who can totally spot the lame ideas and you’re ballsy enough to call them out on their lameness, unlike all the sheeple who uncomplainingly suck down the pap that Hollywood puts out these days.
So what you’re saying, basically, is that it’s OK to not like things but that one shouldn’t be a dick about it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
Charlize Theron getting squashed could have worked, if they’d set up that she tends to panic in certain situations.
It could have worked as a macabre joke at least.
There are very few media products where it’s worth descending to the level of, “There’s something wrong with you as a person if you liked this.”
“Life is Beautiful” is an example.