Back in the early days of The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin wandered by the messageboards on Television Without Pity, presumably to chat with fans. One of the site administrators describes what happened next:
West Wing writer/creator Aaron Sorkin showed up on the boards one day and engaged the posters in conversation. Things went well until he got into an embarrassing fight with one of his own writers on said boards and the press picked up on it. Sorkin apologized and then disappeared for a while from TWoP. He returned one day to find that some fans (and our recapper) had grown a bit more critical of the show and were finding flaws in the way it presented conflicts, particularly regarding Muslims and feminists. Aaron posted defensively that people were taking his "little show" too seriously and that was just trying to entertain, not make any sort of political statements. Then he disappeared again.Shack (the administrator) recapped this particular episode, The U.S. Poet Laureate, in which one of the subplots has to do with Josh running across a website run as a tribute to him. When he begins to interact, the whole thing blows up as the people running the website turn out to have opinions of their own and don't appreciate Josh trying to run the discussion. By the end, Josh's secretary and the Press Secretary have convinced Josh that all people on the internet are crazy, their judgement is not to be trusted, and really Josh should never have bothered engaging them in the first place.
Not surprisingly, the people at TWoP saw this episode as an attack, directly from Aaron Sorkin to them, and Shack said as much in his recap. I read the recap then, and I read it again now with the same question: What was Sorkin thinking? It's not like TWoP was the only website for fans of TWW, first of all, and secondly, why would you want to alienate passionate fans like the ones on TWoP? I don't for one second think that Sorkin wrote this episode and never imagined that internet fans, with whom he had communicated in the past, would watch the episode and think he meant anyone but them.
And that leads to another question. This episode aired in March of 2002, when social networking wasn't nearly as established as it is now. So, I wonder: Would he try that sort of stunt now? Or would he know that he'd be torn to bits by the online communities?
Source: Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: New York U, 2006. Print.
Shack. “The Truth, and Other Nuisances.” Rev. of The West Wing: The U.S. Poet Laureate, by Aaron Sorkin. Television Without Pity. Bravo Media, 24 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Feb. 2011.
Wow! I can't believe I'd never heard of this. Seems like one of those things that would have made it into my trivia knowledge before now! I think tv producers would definitely fear (rightfully!) that the fans would be all over them on the net if they did something like that. In fact, for those who are diehard fans, there's probably a good chance that information that an episode like this was going to come out would probably be on the internet before the episode ever aired.
ReplyDeleteThis is just another symptom of our new culture and progressing society. The relationship between creators and fans is a fragile one, and the barriers between the two are falling. Mass produced entertainment is no longer some far off group of folks. It just takes running into a writer in a message board to break the seemingly infinite barrier between the mass produced and the mass market.
ReplyDelete@Jenna: It was 9 years ago; I think you're excused for not knowing about it! ;) And yeah, he'd never get away with that now (although he does have a reputation for belligerence, so he might try it).
ReplyDelete@Blake: Yep. Even after the whole thing blew up (press involved, fans angry, etc.) there were still plenty of people on the TWoP boards (me included, I readily admit) who just thought it was really cool that Aaron Sorkin dropped by at all, never mind that he was a jerk! :) It took away one more bit of the barrier, as you point out.
I love hearing about this kind of clumsy mistake from the corporate side of media. The communication changes catalyzed by the Internet clearly take some adjusting to get used to. I doubt Sorkin would ever try something like that again because, as Jenkins describes, alienating a small group of hardcore fans is practically just as bad as pissing off a large group of moderate followers in the world of convergence culture. I'm glad I'm not a media executive; thinking about trying to please the masses along with the few diehard fans in the face of constantly changing technologies and in the midst of new communication structures makes my head hurt.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really awesome example that I was completely unaware of. The influence of a fanbase in the production of larger media ventures is something that definitely has evolved over the years, but its premise is still the same: please everyone if possible. And now, with the immediacy with which fans can interact with producers, the dynamics of the conversation can change almost instantly. This is especially true with music; rumors can generate buzz even without validation. And when people do seek out validation, you don't need to work your way through obscure sources with privileged information. Is Justin Bieber REALLY going to do a song with Kanye West and Raekwon? Who knows, you can just tweet them and find out (they did do a song together, after conversing on Twitter).
ReplyDeleteThat said, with the almost direct connection between musicians and fans, it's now unbelievably easy to piss off your fanbase, as well as win them back over, in a heartbeat. Release a song deemed as selling out, and it's all over. Tweet that your label made you do it and they love you again.
@Goli: I think if I were in that position, I'd have to stay off the fan stuff. I just can't trust myself not to do something stupid.
ReplyDelete@Ishaq: I hadn't thought about that side of it... it's just as easy to get back on the good side of fans as to get on their bad side. But, that's true; when Sorkin left the show at the end of season 4, fans on & off TWoP were heartbroken.
I can't imagine that anyone would try anything like that now. As Goli mentioned, alienating a die-hard fan group can be one of the worst things you can do these days. Because there is so much more opportunity for consumer participation, producers would just be asking for a beating if they tried to pull a stunt like Sorkin today. Social media does require a certain kind of behavior from producers, which is great at preventing the kind of situation that happened here.
ReplyDelete