Autographs are big: Richard Taylor signing books about the designs for The Chronicles of Narnia

Kristin here–

Back in the early days of this blog, I posted an entry on our friend Henry Jenkins and his concept of the “aca/fan,” a scholar who studies fandoms while being a fan him- or herself. At that time his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, had recently come out, and I highly recommended it. Fortunately the book has had a well-deserved success. On October 1 it will be coming out in paperback.

In that entry, I described Henry and our long friendship with him:

Henry doesn’t study fans to find out what makes them tick. He knows that. He’s one of them, a participant in fan cons, a player of video games, an explorer of the multimedia sagas like those of Star Trek and The Matrix that have grown up in the age of franchise culture. He received his doctorate here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where David was his dissertation advisor, and we have followed his career, as they say, with great interest. Straight out of the gate he was hired by MIT, where he is now the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities.

(You can find Henry’s blog, “Confessions of an Aca/Fan,” here. He interviewed me when The Frodo Franchise was published; you can find that in three parts, here, here, and here.)

The Frodo Franchise dealt with fan culture as well in Chapter 6, on fan-originated websites. Convergence Culture deals to a considerable extent with modern transmedia franchises. Yet neither of us had ever been to that Mecca of fandoms, Comic-Con. Of course, this year, when I got invited to participate on TheOneRing.net’s panel on the Hobbit project, I accepted. I emailed Henry just in case he happened to be going as well. It turns out he was, being on a long driving vacation through the west with his wife and son.

At first I thought maybe we could meet up early in the Con and then get together afterwards and share our impressions. (We bloggers look for material anywhere we can find it, and this seemed like a golden opportunity.) In fact we didn’t meet early on. There was so much going on, and we never glimpsed each other in the course of the entire event—not surprising, really, when you consider its size. But I made cell-phone contact on Sunday, and we sat down in my hotel lobby and spoke our thoughts into a microphone. Here are some excerpts.

(We talk about what we went to—him to the TV previews, me to artists’ presentation.)

On Different Tracks

We started off by talking about what we had each concentrated on.

HJ: It’s very clear that it’s like six or seven different conventions I could have gone to in the course of the weekend, and it would be a totally different experience depending on which one you went to.

KT: Yeah, I had that impression that there were probably people here mainly to buy stuff, some people here mainly to see celebrities and get autographs and so on.

HJ: And even on that there was a split between the film and the TV people. And there’s a whole comics track. Under other circumstances I would have just been spending my entire time at comics panels, because they’re the strongest comics sessions anywhere in the country.

Coming Alone vs. Having Something Specific To Do

KT: I was happy that I had something to anchor myself, though. I don’t think I’d like to come here, at least for the first time, alone and not having anything specific to do.

HJ: Luckily Henry and Cynthia were along, but it was overwhelming a bit, trying to negotiate and keep up with three people in a space that congested. So that was its own kind of challenge. Sometimes I was thinking it would be great just to be a single person navigating through the space and not have to have large-scale logistics! The scale of it just blows you away. I’ve been on the floor at E3, which is supposed to be one of the largest entertainment trade shows. I’ve done South by Southwest. But neither of them are anywhere near the scale of Comic-Con.

The Scale of the Event

KT: They always say 125,000, because that’s the number of tickets they sell, but then you’ve got all the exhibitors and the people who are presenting on panels. It must be another few tens of thousands packed into that building.

HJ: Yeah, at least.

KT: I was kind of amazed that it worked as well as it did

HJ: Yeah, they did a remarkable job in just managing crowd control. Getting people in and out of things with some degree of order. Some more bullying guards than others, but it was probably necessary to keep the peace.

KT: Yeah, there were a LOT of guards and guides and so on, but people seemed really to be polite, on the whole. I was taking the shuttle bus from a hotel down the street [from my hotel] every day and then coming back by shuttle bus. This morning the bus was quite late compared to other days. It was supposed to come every ten minutes, and we were there maybe twenty. And people who were arriving made this very neat horse-shoe shaped line on the sidewalk. It was very orderly.

HJ: Almost no signs of anyone breaking in line, despite the intensity of some people’s desire to get into things. Someone commented behind me about ‘honor among geeks,’ and that’s probably a good description. There’s a strong honor code.

KT: The venue seems to be up to having that many people in it. I hardly had to wait for rest rooms at all.

HJ: No, the facilities are good.

We ended up doing a fair amount of what they call here “camping,” which is sitting in several panels in a row because there was something we really wanted to see. But you end up trapped in a space with no access to food. Hall H at least has rest-room facilities in the space.

KT: I didn’t try that myself, that is, camping. But I was going to this action-figure panel because it involved Toy Biz, which did the action figures for Lord of the Rings. I heard from people in line that a lot of them were there for the next panel, which was on Sanctuary, which I know from nothing, but they were very devoted and were saying, “They shouldn’t have put this in such a small room.”

HJ: There is a certain sense that you vote with your body at Comic-Con. One of my newest fandoms is Middleman, which is a new ABC family show, and it was in a small room, but we packed it. There was a sense of accomplishment. The producer looked out and said, “This may be the whole audience for the show,” because it hasn’t gotten much publicity yet. There was a sense that just being there was show of support for things.

KT: I wonder how many of the companies have people at those panels—in the audience. I hadn’t realized it, but there was somebody from New Line—who’s probably not from New Line anymore—and then some Warner Bros. people, supposedly, sitting out in the audience for the Hobbit one. That kind of surprised me. Why bother?

HJ: At the larger sessions it seemed they had blocked off four or five rows of space just for the studio people. Rarely were they occupied to anywhere near that extent, so it was maybe overkill. But there were a few sessions where there were a significant number of people. The Battlestar Gallactica, for example. There was a large studio contingent there for that. Suits and friends and family and other writers, because that was a kind of last hurrah for that production. They just wrapped shooting the last episode two weeks ago, so this would have been a major last gathering of a lot of those people. They said they really hadn’t had a chance to have a wrap party yet, so in a sense it probably was.

The Hall H Experience

KT: Did you have the Hall H experience at all?

HJ: We went to see Heroes one morning, which was the first time, they said, a TV show had made it into Hall H. We managed to be there for Watchmen and a few of the other movies that followed it.

KT: I kind of avoided it for a while because I kept hearing that there would be incredibly long lines, and I pictured just sitting there for hours and hours and hours reading and possibly not getting into what I wanted to see anyway. So I avoided it until yesterday [Saturday], and I went to the Terminator Salvation one. I wanted really to go to the Pixar one, so I went to get in line very early, and ended up getting in on time for Terminator Salvation.

HJ: Well, for Heroes we waited for about an hour outside and then got in. Then there was a fairly long wait to get started, but then we knew that there were several things after that that we wanted to see as well.

KT: And was it full?

HJ: It was packed. But Heroes has been a kind of success story of Comic-Con. They showed the pilot there before it debuted, and Heroes is pretty desperate at this point to rekindle fan enthusiasm. Last season is largely seen as a bust. Hence their decision not to come back from the strike. They did a partial season and put it off to the fall, because the ratings were plummeting and they were getting bad buzz from fans. So they wanted to come back this year with a killer. They showed the entire opening episode, which was definitely a fan-pleaser. They had figured out what had gone wrong the first season and had put together something that was going to please. So there was lots of extended applause at key moments. It’s kind of fascinating to watch an episode of a TV show with 6500 other people.

The Exhibition Hall

KT: I only discovered the comics section today, as I was about ready to leave, because I hadn’t really been aware of which sections were devoted … I sort of thought it was all random, but obviously they do devote one big section to all the people who are selling old comic books. I suppose you could just stay in one part of the hall and never see the rest of it.

HJ: I felt I barely made a dent in the hall. The first day I didn’t quite realize how big it was, so I was just going up every aisle, and the second and third day I was going on targeted missions. But it still was just so immense that there’s no way you could see it all.

KT: And it’s SO congested.

HJ: Especially if you get to the studio side of things.

Autographs and Planning

KT: I could not figure out what was going on at the Warner Bros. exhibit, but they were constantly surrounded by lines and lines and lines of people who were obstructing the aisles around them. I guess they had people from their TV shows signing.

HJ: They seemed to. I kept stumbling into people. You wander around one corner and there’s Peter Mayhew of Chewbacca fame sitting there, and Will Frakes suddenly would pop up at another table. Neither particularly advertised. Then there were all the advertised autographed stuff. There were a lot of people there that you would know in another context.

KT: I don’t know how you would find out about all of those things in advance. I don’t think Lynda Barry was listed in the program as doing autographs, but she was at the Drawn and Quarterly booth at certain times. I missed her entirely. I got her autograph because I was sitting in the audience before her presentation and she sat down beside me.

HJ: They seemed to have a certain number of people who were there to do autographs, but then there were all these other people randomly. I guess you had to follow a particular company and maybe they posted on the Web.

KT: Yes, I was doing autographs at certain times for my book, and it was just on TheOneRing.net and The Frodo Franchise [websites]. You have to really investigate, go in with a plan.

HJ: It seems to be the case: The more you plan, the more you can get out of the experience.

KT: We were selling copies of my book at this very small booth, and I was there for an hour at different times of day on three days. I think almost everyone, if not everyone, who bought a copy came to the booth specifically to buy it. There were no impulse purchases. I don’t think people buy books at Comic-Con.

HJ: I looked at comics while I was there, but I would buy them from my dealer back in Boston or online at Amazon or My Line Comics [?]. Why I would weigh my suitcase down with comics in the age when it’s so easy to buy stuff digitally?

KT: Not new ones.

HJ: Not new ones. Collectibles, sure.

KT: Unless you have them signed.

Fan Culture hangs on at Comic-Con

HJ: Usually the cons I go to are small-scale, very intimate, you know a high number of the people who are coming. It’s fan-driven and fan-focused. This was like Creation Con on steroids!

KT: Though technically speaking, it is run by fans; there’s a committee.

HJ: It is, and they had a really bad art room with lots of cat pictures and dragon pictures and wolf pictures, which gave it a sense of fan authenticity, because they hadn’t closed out the really bad fan art, even in the midst of all the commercial takeover.

KT: Well, I missed that one.

HJ: You didn’t miss anything, other than the reaffirmation that this was still a con. There were still places and niches and corners where the fan stuff still ruled. You wouldn’t see fanzines there, but then you wouldn’t see them at most fan-run cons these days, since everything’s moved to the Web.

KT: Well, there’s Artists’ Alley, which is way over in the corner. That seems to be fans who are aspiring to be pros but haven’t really made it yet.

HJ: Well, it was a mix. I mean, you’d see Paul Chadwick there [author of “Concrete” series, published by Dark Horse Comics] or Kim Deitch [author of graphic novels such as The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Shadowland], who were independent and weren’t necessarily going to be there with a company, but yeah, it’s definitely a lot of wannabes in some of that space.

And then fans show themselves through costumes. For all the jokes about women in Princess Leia costumes—and I saw maybe a dozen Princess Leia slave-girl outfits—it was still a way in which fans asserted their presence. There were some quite remarkable pieces of fan performance going on there. There was someone doing Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, which had quite a spectacular Beast costume—a little more arty than one expects at a fan con.

Genre

[I mentioned having seen Focus Features’ Hamlet 2 preview.]

HJ: The role of comedy here interests me a lot. I’m always intrigued: What’re the borders of what a fan text is and what isn’t a fan text? Here comedy seems to creep into fandom in a more definitive way than I’ve seen elsewhere. So there was the focus on Hamlet 2, there was Harold and Kumar, The Big Bang Theory [TV series, 2007-08], but then just a bunch of panels on writing for sit-coms. So it’s probably just the industry’s priorities, but it’s interesting that it doesn’t extend to drama. You can imagine a lot of people there being into The Wire or The Shield or some equivalent, and it didn’t cross over in that direction.

KT: I suppose it’s what the studios think the fans want. It’s true there were a lot of comedies, and martial arts, war.

HJ: I think martial arts probably has crept into fandom pretty definitively over time. But it’s interesting to see where the boundaries are. We stumbled across one booth that had just a porn star signing her pictures, and it sort of outraged my son. Pornography isn’t fandom in his world view, but he thought nothing of going up to get wrestlers to sign autographs. Probably in any other fan con, the strong presence of wrestling performers would be out of keeping with fandom.

The Economics of It

KT: I was struck by how cheap it is, basically. How much was it for a single day pass?

HJ: Twenty-five dollars for a single day pass. It’s not bad at all for the scale of what you get. [Four-day passes are $75.]

KT: Some of the smaller tables were something like $380 for the full period, which I thought was kind of cheap. But obviously they NEED both sides of it. They need the exhibitors to attract the people and they need the people to attract the exhibitors, so keeping the cost down makes perfect sense.

HJ: The scale at which companies brought in people was also truly remarkable. I certainly have been to cons where they might have two or three performers from a show, but they brought the entire regulars of Heroes down, as well as the entire writing team. And Heroes is a large, large cast. They scarcely had time for anyone to say anything, but all lined up there on a panel, it was a pretty spectacular display. And Watchmen did pretty much the same thing. All the main characters in Watchmen were there with the director.

KT: That reminds me of the coverage that the film events and I suppose the television events, too, get in the trade press. I’m sure you read some of these articles about how, “Oh, it’s all becoming SO much Hollywood. The big media companies are coming in and taking over,” and so on. It struck me that Hall H is really kind of a world unto itself.

HJ: It is.

KT: It’s separate. You have to go out of the building and get in this line, and then you have to go out of the building when you exit. It’s quite a hike to get there if you’re around D or C in the exhibition hall. I think probably they don’t see much of the rest of the con.

HJ: It does seem largely cut off. That’s the sort of classic place where people camp. And so there’s almost an interesting tactical advantage in being one of the filler programs between the main events, if you can really maneuver into that. It’s like being right after a hit TV show or between two hit TV shows. You’re going to get exposure to people who wouldn’t otherwise. Yesterday Chuck was between Battlestar Gallactica and the Fringe panel. I’ve never see Chuck, but I wanted to see Battlestar and I wanted to see J. J. Abrams [executive producer of Lost and one episode of The Fringe], so we stuck through it. And we’ll probably give it a shot come fall as a result of being exposed to it in that way. There’s lots of things that get sandwiched in that probably get a boost off of this. Or they could hurt themselves.

KT: Bring the wrong scenes or whatever.

HJ: Wrong scenes or just the people are inarticulate. There’s certainly a range of comfort level up there.

In terms of the press coverage, the fact that Entertainment Weekly put Watchmen on its cover this week a year before the film comes out, purely on the basis of it playing at Comic-Con, says something about the publicity value of this thing.

KT: Oh, yeah, for the films there’s no doubt about its publicity value. I just think that if the big entertainment journalists plant themselves in Hall H and don’t pay a lot of attention, then you get this coverage that makes it sound as though the movies are just taking over everything.

HJ: It’s odd. It’s certainly every bit as spectacular a place to do TV as it is to do film. And comics. I couldn’t believe the betrayal I was committing in not seeing the full writers of Mad magazine in the 1960s or seeing Forrest J. Ackerman and his staff—things that were really significant to me as a kid or now. But they were competing with other things that I valued even more. So there are things that you would have killed to get to in any other context that you pass up because there’s so much going on at once. You can’t get to it all.

KT: I just get the feeling that if you at Hall H you’re at one con, and if you’re at the rest of it, you’re in a completely different world. The trades just never talk about that other stuff because it’s not really high-powered.

HJ: The question is, to what degree does that other stuff provide the context that explains what goes on in Hall H? Geek culture is integrated. Probably there are lots of people who travel between Hall H and other things, but if the reporters stay at Hall H, they won’t see the full layering of this.

The Gender Composition of the Attendees and the Industry

HJ: One of the things that struck me was the gender composition here was much—well, certainly there were more guys than girls, but compared to, say, E3 or many other cons I’ve gone to, the gender balance was surprisingly solid. There were an awful lot of women there.

KT: Yeah, they remarked on that on the Harry Potter panel this morning, saying that, unlike those cons, there were probably more women than men in that particular room.

HJ: That makes sense.

KT: When I went to the One Ring Celebration, the ORC, for my book, as I said there, it was maybe 95% women. I suspect it’s partly a factor of whether a con has gaming facilities. Gamers will come, and they’re mostly going to be guys, although probably not as much as it used to be.

HJ: Historically, if you go to Creation cons, which are more star-centered, men turn out much more, whereas if you go to a fan-driven con, which is fanzine oriented, women turn out much more. But because this combines everything, you’ve got just such a spread of people.

I’ve seen people argue that Comic-Con is becoming powerful and it’s exaggerating the power of fan men at the expense of fan women, that the fan-boy mafia is taking over the entertainment industry. Certainly you see it on the producers’ side, that an awful lot of the guys onstage would have been in the audience a decade before—and they’re mostly guys. But what’s interesting is to see the audiences that they’re trying to respond to and engage with has a large female component, and that’s got to have an impact over time on what plays here and what doesn’t.

KT: One of the people on the “Masters of the Web” panel on Thursday morning was making the point that now the younger studio executives are either people who had their own Websites a few years ago or they were in college when the big Websites were being formed. Now they’ve grown up into adulthood reading that stuff, and they’re now in position of power and will continue to be in the industry.

HJ: It was fascinating just to watch the producers, writers, stars, to see which ones were really comfortable in the space and which ones weren’t. Someone like Joss Whedon just grew up in that space. That’s his world. He was totally in his element, and he would understand what questions were being asked and how to respond to them and could use in-joke references to the culture, whereas someone like Alan Ball (executive producer), who no doubt in another context would be totally articulate and interesting, really felt strongly uncomfortable. Moving from Six Feet Under to True Blood, he doesn’t yet know how to “speak fan.” Where Zack Snyder (director of 300) has got to be the most totally inarticulate person I’ve seen on a stage in a long time. Watchmen is going to be his second movie, and he totally works with images, but his ability to use words did not seem to be his strong suit. Some of them who have done multiple fan shows seem really comfortable, and others just looked in shell-shock up there.

Henry and his other new book, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers

Kristin here-

You can’t picture the typical reader of Variety or the New York Times picking up the latest issue of Superman at the local comics shop. So why is Comic-Con, the annual confab of fans from around the world, gathering so much interest from both mainstream media and the trade press?

The obvious answer is that a growing number of megapictures and TV series are derived from superhero comics and, more broadly, fantasy and science-fiction literature. The chance to see stars and directors on panels, the first look at preview clips–these draw both fans and entertainment reporters.

Recently, the press is suggesting that Hollywood’s presence is becoming dominant at this gathering of self-professed geeks. After going to my first Comic-Con last month, I’m thinking that something else is going on. First, it’s not clear that Hollywood rules the Con. Second, and more interesting, is the question of exactly how Hollywood benefits from being there–or indeed, whether it benefits at all.

Hollywood vs. comics

Michael Cieply’s July 25 article in the New York Times is entitled, “Comic-Con Brings Out the Stars, and Plugs for Movies.” To read it, you would think that Comic-Con is a purely film event. Cieply Refers to Hugh Jackman promoting X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Mark Wahlberg presenting clips from Max Payne, the cast and director of Twilight addressing a squealing crowd of young female fans, and so on. Nary a mention of comics, video games, action figures, collectibles, original artworks, and other items being sold or promoted in the vast exhibition hall, let alone the numerous simultaneous panels going on all day upstairs and the long, sinuous lines of fans awaiting their turn for autographs from artists.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher started his July 28 story, “This is the year they tried to take the comic out of Comic-Con.” The piece is entitled “Comic books overshadowed by the embrace of Hollywood.” A reporter could probably find plenty of people at Comic-Con to deplore the decline of comics’ representation at the event and an equal number to say that the non-Hollywood part of Comic-Con is alive and well.

Boucher quotes two of the former, who tend to be people who have been attending Comic-Con and other such events for decades. Michael Uslan, a comic-book author in the 1970s and now the executive producer of, among others, The Dark Knight, declares, “I think Comic-Con is in danger of having Hollywood co-opt its soul. It’s turning into something new, and you could really see it this year.” Robert Beerbohm, who has sold comics at every Comic-Con since it was first held in 1970, also worries about the trend: “All the Hollywood directors say that they loved comics as a kid, but now they [i.e., the comics] are being pushed off the floor. Where are the next generation of directors going to come from?”

I tend to think that young directors get influenced by such a diverse mix of popular and high cultural works that the putative lack of comics at Comic-Con won’t make much difference. Plus these days the “comics” are often graphic novels, readily available to any future director from big bookstore chains and internet sources.

Avoiding Hall H

Comic-Con has grown hugely over its nearly four decades of existence, and other media have crept in slowly. Hollywood has been prominently represented for years now. Peter Jackson promoted The Lord of the Rings there, and Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts showed up to promote his King Kong. But somehow this year the journalistic zeitgeist seems to have dictated that most writers choose to stress that Hollywood is in danger of taking over the con. Well, it makes for a dramatic story premise.

Admittedly, I’m a Comic-Con newbie. I’m sure to the old hands the creeping presence of films and TV is noticeable and perhaps worrisome. To me the big Hollywood previews were something you had to seek out, and they weren’t that easy to get to. As I mentioned in my first blog on the subject, the ground floor of the enormous, lengthy building is divided into halls A to H. A to G formed one vast open space, and an attendee could trek from one end to the other without going through doors or lobbies. Hall H, where most of the biggest Hollywood previews and panels took place, was entered from a separate door on the outside of the building. The lines to get in snaked in the opposite direction from doors A to G. Entering and exiting the exhibition hall’s lobby through one of those doors, you might not even notice the lines.

The other big “Hollywood” space is Ballroom 20, on the second floor. Anyone going from one part of the building to the other on this level, on the way to the panel rooms or the autograph area, would be likely to pass it.

My sole Hall H experience came when I attended the Terminator Salvation and Pixar previews on Saturday afternoon. The rest of my time at Comic-Con bore no resemblance to what the news stories describe. Apart from Hall H, I moved extensively around the exhibition hall, the various hallways between the panel rooms, through the “sails pavilion” and along the main lobby without having any sense of the big film and television events going on. I occasionally passed Ballroom 20 when there was a long line outside, but even then there was seldom any indication of what the people were waiting for—no banners or posters. (In general, Comic-Con has sold only very limited “signage” outside the exhibition hall. The upstairs hallways outside the panel doors were unadorned apart from small schedule boards.) In the exhibition hall I saw the studio logos hanging above their exhibit spaces and learned to skirt around them to avoid the particularly dense crowds in that area—but it was one area among many in that giant space. I seem to have experienced a different Con from the one widely reported on.

I’m not alone in thinking that Comic-Con is a giant, diverse event that simply has a big Hollywood screening room next door for those who are interested. Marc Graser, who wrote several pieces on this year’s Con for Variety, talked with its PR director, David Glanzer:

“Not every studio has a presentation every year,” Glanzer says. “It’s not an earth-shattering event. Sometimes people read too much into it.”

Yet the irony in all of this is that film- and TV-specific programming makes up less than 25% of the Con’s schedule, Glanzer says. And even on the event’s show floor, studios are overshadowed by comicbook publishers, retailers, videogames and toy companies.

The rest of the panels are educational sessions on how to break into the comicbook biz, for example, that allow Comic-Con to consider itself an educational nonprofit.

In other sources, Glanzer gives the more specific figure for film- and TV-related programming as 22%.

Those educational sessions for budding comic-book creators do make up quite a share of the program. These aren’t just how-to-draw lessons. There was a panel, “Comic Book Law School Afternoon Special: Gone But Not Forgotten!” dealing with intellectual property rights and others on the practicalities of the business. There were also 50-minute “Spotlight” sessions devoted to individual artists like Ralph Bakshi and Lynda Barry. The Eisner Awards ceremony celebrated accomplishment in the comics world.

Camping in Hall H

Why do journalists covering Comic-Con tend to stress Hollywood so much? I assume because the previews and panels are where the big stars are. They and their forthcoming films are the big news, the buzz that makes it worthwhile for magazines, newspapers, and blogs to spend the money to send their reporters or hire free-lancers. Most reporters experience that other “Hall H” con that I only visited once. I saw Anne Thompson at the “Masters of the Web” panel on Thursday morning, and she duly blogged about it. Still, most of the many Comic-Con stories posted on her Variety blog by her and other reporters were on the films and TV shows.

And why not? The big entertainment reporters get access to the major talent for short interviews, and their photographers can get up close for glamorous shots to use as illustrations. That’s no doubt what the largest portion of their readership or viewership is interested in. Attending the Con is an efficient way of generating a lot of copy.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to note that Hall H seats 6500 people, dozens, perhaps hundreds of them the entertainment reporters and bloggers. That’s out of 125,000 attendees who bought passes and probably tens of thousands more who were exhibitors, “booth babes,” or panel presenters. Granted, people circulated in and out of Hall H, though my impression is that some people stayed there much of the time. If sheer numbers of fans were to determine news coverage, the other facets of Comic-Con would get more attention than they do. But it’s the stars.

What’s in it for the studios?

The answer to that question might seem self-evident: publicity, and lots of it. The situation fuels itself. As more reporters from bigger outlets come to Comic-Con, the studios get more valuable publicity at a relatively small cost. (USA Today’s July 28 wrap-up occupied nearly a page and a half of the print edition.) And as more studios send previews and big stars, more news sources will find it worth sending their main reporters. In fact, perhaps this year the situation reached saturation. Hollywood studios filled all the possible slots in the two large halls, and in some cases big news outlets sent teams of reporters. That might be what gave both studio execs and reporters the impression that Hollywood is steamrolling the rest of the Con.

Publicity is all very well, but in the August 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Zeitchik questions whether it’s really worth all the fuss to preach to the converted. He notes the growth of the big studios’ efforts to impress fans: “On its face, this shouldn’t be the case. A brand’s cult following isn’t a very large number, and it’s also a group already inclined to like and spend money on a product, which by most marketing logic is exactly the group you should spend the fewest resources on.”

Sure, the Comic-Con previews may impress fans who are assumed to be tastemakers, particularly in the blogosphere. Zeitchik comments, “And if the tastemaker effect doesn’t happen, the strategy loses its teeth. One director who’s had repeated visits to Comic-Con noted just before he went to this year’s convention that ‘The total number of people in the blog world is probably only a few hundred thousand, and as much as they might hate to hear it, for most movies that’s not going to make the difference between a success and a failure.’” Zeitchik points out that the Speed Racer preview at the 2007 Con was cheered, but that didn’t mean that a lot of fans bought tickets to the film itself. The wider public stayed away.

Yet surely the studio suits know all this, and they keep providing glimpses of films and series to come. What other advantages do they perceive?

A Comic-Con preview can be a chance not only to woo fans but to get clues that might help in the general publicity campaign. Focus Features president James Shamus, who previewed Hamlet 2 at Comic-Con this year, views the process as a chance to get instantaneous feedback that might help later in promoting a film: “It’s the start of an ongoing dialog. It doesn’t just start and end there. It’s not a thumbs up or thumbs down because some guy didn’t like your poster.”

Many studio executives also still believe in the viral quality of fan buzz on the internet. Lisa Greogorian, the executive vice-president of marketing for Warner Bros. Television, assesses past years’ previews of Chuck, Pushing Daisies, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles: “We saw an immediate impact online. Word of mouth is now one individual impacting a couple hundred individuals who can impact thousands. Social networking has allowed us to empower one fan to impact thousands of potential viewers.” (Both executives spoke to Marc Graser for a July 11 Comic-Con preview in Variety.)

I emailed James, who is an old friend of ours, about the subject. He pointed out that while the blockbusters may have a pre-sold audience, smaller films like Shaun of the Dead can create momentum at Comic-Con. Moreover, there are a lot of blogs out there now, and studios monitor the more important ones to help shape their own publicity efforts.

A Comic-Con presence often, however, is not simply a matter of persuading fans to watch a film or TV series. Sometimes major negative buzz began to surround a film from a few bad online comments based solely on the Con previews. Wooing the fans with stars and footage can be a way to prevent that negativity from getting started—or a big reason for some studios not to preview a film at the Con.

One factor that doesn’t get mentioned in the press coverage of why the Hollywood studios bother with Comic-Con previews is that this event in effect provides them with huge, low-cost press junkets.

The modern press junket for a tentpole film is typically an expensive affair. The studio pays for dozens, maybe hundreds of reporters to travel to a single spot. It may be as bland as a rented hotel conference room, or it may be set in some more picturesque locale. At Cannes in 2001, New Line held a big junket for The Lord of the Rings at a hillside chateau with a spectacular view. Other junkets might be on-set, at a studio where the film is still shooting. The studios have to shell out for the reporters’ hotels, give them a per diem, and supply a reasonably impressive swag-bag. And there isn’t just one junket, but several in the course of publicizing a major release.

With Comic-Con, the studios have a whole bevy of reporters, many of them famous names in their own right, delivered to them at their employers’ expense. There are rows up front in Hall H reserved for them They sit through preview session after preview session for four days and generate a huge amount of publicity. Certainly there are expenses involved for the studios, but cutting together a few scenes or a random collection of finished shots together with a temp music track doesn’t cost a lot, and the actors don’t get paid extra for their publicity appearances. Transportation might be a relatively simple matter of sending whatever stars happen to be in Los Angeles in a limo down to San Diego. James specified to me that Comic-Con is “a very cost-effective” way of bringing the talent from a film together with fans to gauge how they interact.

I suppose for the reporters, the chance to attend what is in effect a whole passel of press junkets in one stretch saves a lot of time on airplanes.

Oh, yes, the comics

Some stories do stress the comics. Not surprisingly, Publisher’s Weekly printed an excellent preview that talked about the comics and graphic-novels companies that would be present. The author also pointed out that the connections between comics and films are getting closer, what with all the adaptations that have been made or are in the pipeline. The article quotes comics author Steve Niles (30 Days of Night) as saying, that the Con is “crawling with producers now, which means some of the up-and-comers have a chance to get someone to notice their book.”

USA Today ran a story that analyzed the recent trend toward comics-based movies quite carefully. Author Scott Bowles discusses the trends toward darker stories and heroes who aren’t conventional heroic, such as Hancock and the Watchmen. The story also discusses whether this trend indicates that the superhero genre is nearly over or just reaching a more imaginative stage.

Bowles also points out that the traditional notion of the Con as largely frequented by fanboys is no longer accurate. This year nearly 40% of the fans were female.

Costumes and the press

Naturally journalists with cameras make a beeline for costumed Comic-Con attendees. They stand out in the crowd, they seem to these journalists to epitomize the fan sensibility, and they are delighted to pose at any length for photos. (Anne Thompson’s blog has a sampling posted.) Many of them have very impressive costumes and put on little skits or tableaux in the hallways. There’s a “masquerade” competition with cash (up to $150) and merchandise prizes on Saturday night.

[Added August 11: David Glanzer kindly emailed me to compliment me on this entry. He informed me that roughly one percent of fans attending Comic-Con come in costume. Not that either he or I have anything against costumed fans. On the contrary, I enjoyed seeing them, and obviously they were having a terrific time. But some journalists adopt a definitely mocking tone, and even those who are respectful tend to mislead the public about the attendees at the Con in general.]

But most attendees are content to declare their interests on their T-shirts, as I did, and their shopping bags. Again, that doesn’t make for good copy or images. The photos at top and bottom show what I saw much of the time in the exhibition hall. These people are not likely to be approached by journalists, though these days they might have a questionnaire thrust into their hands by a sociologist or ethnographer trying to figure out what makes fans tick.

If you have to ask …

For my account of things and event relating to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at Comic-Con, see here.

Dumbledore, by Lisa, from

http://www.poudlard.org/fanarts/displayimage.php?album=toprated&cat=6&pos=0

Kristin here–

By now anyone who has not lived in thorough isolation from the media knows that on October 19, during a signing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at Carnegie Hall, J. K. Rowling revealed that Prof. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore is gay.

At least in her opinion, some might add.

Rowling’s public revelation that she has long considered Dumbledore to be gay came during a question and answer session in which a fan asked, “Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?” Rowling replied, “My truthful answer to you … I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.” According to mainstream media reports, after a stunned silence the audience burst into a lengthy ovation.

Rowling has made a few additional comments on this subject since then. On October 22 during a press conference in Toronto, she was questioned about how far back her outlook on Dumbledore’s sexual orientation went. She dated it back to the planning stages, “probably before the first book was published” (Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, 1997). She pointed out, “I was writing for seven years before the first book came out.” (The press conference has been posted in two parts on YouTube, here and here. Some stories from reporters covering the event have slightly misquoted Rowling’s statements. My quotations are transcribed from the video.)

Naturally questions about the Dumbledore outing came at regular intervals during the Toronto press session. Initially Rowling commented, “It has certainly never been news to me that a brave and brilliant man could love other men.” Asked about the political ramifications of the outing, Rowling said that she could not comment on that so soon after the fact. “I can’t really answer that. It is what it is. He’s my character, and as my character, I have the right to know what I know about him and say what I say about him.”

But do we want to listen?

Of course, she has the right. The questions that have been raised by many are, should she? If she does, should we accept her statements as true within the universe of the published books?

Whether she should provide additional background for the series is basically a matter of opinion. Some people, many of them children, want more information and think she should.

Salon.com’s Rebecca Traister has posted a thoughtful essay taking the “she shouldn’t” position. She points out one thing that most fevered accounts of the Dumbledore outing have neglected: “Dumbledore’s gayness is one of the pieces of bonus information about her characters that she’s been dispensing steadily since the publication of her magical swan song, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.’”

Certainly at the Carnegie Hall appearance, the Dumbledore question came amidst several that Rowling was asked about the fates or motives of other characters. (The most extensive transcript of that Q&A session is on The Leaky Cauldron.) Nearly all mainstream media reports ignored these in favor of blowing up the gay issue, but just as much information about other characters was revealed, and Rowling has answered similar queries in other Q&A situations.

Traister admits that the fans are the ones asking for such information. “Her abundant generosity with information is surely a response to a vast, insatiable fan base that does not have a high tolerance for never-ending suspense, ambiguity or nuance. As she told the ‘Today’ show’s Meredith Vieira back in July, ‘I’m dealing with a level of obsession in some of my fans that will not rest until they know the middle names of Harry’s great grand-parents.’”

Traister adds, “Rowling naturally wants to provide answers for these heartbroken obsessives who perhaps are too young to know the satisfying pleasures of perpetual yearning and feel that they must must must know how much money Harry makes and whether Luna has kids.” I don’t know about heartbroken, but they certainly are curious.

Traister goes on to argue that Rowling should stop giving out information and ruining readers’ own imaginings about what the author left out. She cites an example of Rowling revealing to a fan what Harry’s Aunt Petunia nearly said to him upon their last parting. According to Rowling, it was “I do know what you’re up against, and I hope it’s OK.” Traister is disappointed: “Oh. That’s too bad. Because in my imagination, Petunia was going to say something much more exciting than that.”

Perhaps in many cases, especially about specific details like this, knowing is less fun than imagining. Still, I’m sure some of Rowling’s revelations are more exciting, or at least more interesting, than what we imagine.

Let’s take one small example, Rowling’s explanation for the name “Dumbledore.” Few readers will imagine anything about it or realize that the word actually means something. I have wondered whether Rowling just liked the sound of the word (which appears in Hardy and Tolkien) or she saw some connection between the headmaster and a bumblebee. She revealed the answer in a radio interview in 1999: “Dumbledore is an old English word meaning bumblebee. Because Albus Dumbledore is very fond of music, I always imagined him as sort of humming to himself a lot.”

That’s charming. I didn’t imagine Dumbledore humming as I read the book. Indeed, I don’t recall any scenes where he is alone (presumably when he hums), given how much of the narration is restricted to Harry’s point-of-view. But I am glad to know this, even if it had to come from the author herself. (In the same interview, by the way, she said, “I kind of see Dumbledore more as a John Gielgud type, you know, quite elderly and – and quite stately.” Perhaps a hint of where the gayness crept in.)

If Rowling were to heed Traister’s plea that she stop dispensing extra-textual information, that would mean we adults, who presumably “know the satisfying pleasures of perpetual yearning,” would get our way and the children wouldn’t. (Of course, not nearly all adults would refrain from asking for more information from Rowling.) I think that’s rather unfair, since these are at bottom children’s books. It was initially surprising how many adults ended up reading them, and there are HP fans of all ages. Still, shouldn’t the target audience take priority?

The video of the Meredith Vieira interview and the transcript of the Carnegie Hall event confirm that many of the questions were requests for more information about the characters. Would we really want the author to refuse each of these? How boring and frustrating for those children if every other answer is, “I really shouldn’t tell you. Just use your imaginations”! They want those “pieces of bonus information about her characters that she’s been dispensing steadily.” As far as I can tell, most or all of the bits of information Rowling has given out have come in response to specific questions from fans. She hasn’t been volunteering them right and left. And apart from the Dumbledore comments, the information she gives out has hardly been flooding the media to such an extent that we can’t avoid it if we wish. Given that Rowling has been answering such questions for months, why did commentators wait until this particular revelation to complain?

Who’s J. K. Rowling to tell us Dumbledore is gay?

Quite apart from there being some people who want this information and others who don’t, there is a more theoretical question. As Jason Mittell puts it in a brief essay on his website, “What does it mean for an author to proclaim such information about a character in an already completed fictional world?”

Mittell would accept that Rowling’s statements about that world would become part of the HP canon as long as the series was still in progress. “But something changes once a series is complete.” He points out that Rowling seems to have known all along that Dumbledore is gay, and yet she never made that explicit. “Does she retain her power to control her fictional world after the books have been closed?”

Does it have to be explicit, or will implicit do? Some, including Rowling, would say that there is a portrayal of Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald that hints at his being gay. At the Toronto press conference, Rowling stated, “It’s in the book. It’s very clear in the book. Absolutely. I think a child will see a friendship, and I think a sensitive adult may well understand that it was an infatuation. I knew it was an infatuation.” I must admit that I didn’t pick up on the clues. Not that I’m insensitive, I hope, but because it would not have occurred to me that a popular mainstream writer would include a prominent gay character. (Associated Press writer Hillel Italie has pointed out a few passages that some may have taken as indications.)

[Added Oct. 29: The November 2 print issue of Entertainment Weekly has the results of an online poll, “Did you suspect Dumbledore was gay? (p. 11). 22% said they did. That’s probably self-selecting, as those who did might be more likely to vote. Still, at least some people did figure it out.]

Putting aside that example, though, much of the other information Rowling has been giving out does concern events that occur after the books’ action or are never referred to in the texts, so Mittell’s question remains.

Mittell contrasts this situation with that of Star Trek, where it has been the fans who “claim their interpretive rights to open up ambiguities and subtext freely,” primarily by writing fanfiction. The situation is different, though, I think, because most fans would not claim that their fics enter into and become part of the canon, even though they may meticulously obey its premises. Rowling seems to be claiming the right to expand the HP canon by her statements as well as by her writing.

(By the way, Rowling also mentioned fanfiction during her answers about Dumbledore at Carnegie Hall. I’ve written on her remarks and that subject on the Frodo Franchise blog.)

One can accept Rowling’s pronouncements about the book series or not. But do those pronouncements carry any greater weight than comments made about the HP world by others?

I am aware that in the 20^th Century, the “death of the author” was proclaimed. When I was in graduate school, “intentions” was still sort of a dirty word in analysis. If the work cannot stand entirely by itself, then it has to some degree failed, was the widespread view.

There’s some truth to that, and yet there clearly is a very widespread impulse on the parts of readers and viewers to ask living creators for more. Film scholars read interviews with directors and other filmmakers. Some filmmakers have written about their individual works or their craft in general. David has commented here recently, “Do filmmakers deserve the last word?” As he shows, they can dispense misleading information about their own films. Yet not letting them have the last word doesn’t mean we must ignore all their other words. They often have very interesting things to say.

There are points that could be made in favor of a voluble Rowling.

One could argue that the books are not necessarily closed. Rowling could always write more in this universe. Indeed, she has said she probably will write an encyclopedia on the HP world–though she has cautioned this may not be her next project. A summary of Rowling’s July 24 appearance on the Today Show describes the project, partly in Rowling’s words: “’I suppose I have [started] because the raw material is all in my notes.’ The encyclopedia would include back stories of characters she has already written but had to cut for the sake of the narrative arc (‘I’ve said before that Dean Thomas had a much more interesting history than ever appeared in the books’), as well as details about the characters who survive ‘Deathly Hallows,’ characters who continue to live on in Rowling’s mind in a clearly defined magical world.” Presumably much of the information she has given in answer to questions comes from this mass of material, so it may someday exist in print with her as the author.

In the Toronto press conference Rowling gave further information about possible writing projects within the franchise. She said she would probably not write a prequel for the HP series, though she would not rule it out entirely. Asked about the rumored encyclopedia, she replied that it “would be the way of putting in all the information, the extra information on all these characters.” She adds that the proceeds would go to charity and that “It’s certainly not something I plan on being my next project. I’d like to take a little time from Harry’s world before I go into that.”

Tolkien did something comparable. For nearly two decades after the publication of The Lord of the Rings, he wrote drafts of essays on various characters and events. He seems to have initially intended these as an entire volume of appendices, though later he continued because he just could not seem to stop examining his invented world. The resulting posthumous publications of these texts as edited by his son are not exactly canon—not least because they are unfinished and sometimes contradict each other. But they certainly are treated by scholars and fans as illuminating parts of Tolkien’s created world that are not in the novel. Semi-canon, if you will. Perhaps if Rowling does write down all the nuggets of information that she has been tossing out, publication will anoint them with canonical status at last.

One could also argue that HP is not just a book series but an ongoing franchise or saga. The book series may be finished, but the HP universe is larger than it. Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore and other remarks come when there are two films yet to appear. One of these has already been slightly affected. In the Carnegie Hall Q&A, Rowling related how she scotched a scene in the script where Dumbledore reminiscences romantically about a young lady by passing along a note that the character is gay. Given that the object of Dumbledore’s putative past affections, Grindelwald, will presumably figure in the seventh film, it’s quite possible that Rowling’s statements will affect the portrayal of that relationship. While she is not one of the filmmakers, she scrutinizes the scriptwriting process closely, and whatever makes it into the movies might be considered as canon in some sense.

Finally, one could argue that Rowling’s voice is not simply one among many who might comment on the subject of her books. Setting aside aesthetic theory, for most people in the real world her authority as the author simply is more compelling than anyone else’s. Don’t believe it? What if Stephen King wrote a column announcing that Dumbledore is definitely not gay? (Not that he’s likely to do so.) Would we be inclined to believe him as much as Rowling just because he is also one of the most successful current writers and a fan of the series? I doubt it. What if Pat Robertson preached a sermon stating that Dumbledore is so admirable that he could not possibly be gay? Might we not indignantly counter him by saying, “He is, too. Rowling says so.” It’s the only concrete evidence we have.*

Robertson probably wouldn’t make such a claim. Much of the far right is already up in arms against Rowling. They don’t seem to doubt for a minute her after-the-fact statement that she has written a gay character. They not only believe it but they denounce it as part of some liberal plot to promote homosexuality as normal. For once they’re not far off.

Such claims suggest that we might have political reasons to accept Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore as authoritative—and presumably her remarks about other characters as well. We might want the overall theme of tolerance that is so evident in the series to extend to homosexuality. Clearly Rowling does, too. And she knows what it means. At a signing in Los Angeles a few days before the Carnegie Hall outing, Rowling stated, “I take my inclusion on the banned book list as a massive compliment.”

The Timing of the Revelation

Many comments have been made about the timing of Rowling’s announcement. If she’s so proud of having her books banned, why didn’t she speak up before? Was there a hidden, cynical motive for waiting until all the books were published? Was she trying to avoid losing sales by not revealing Dumbledore’s gayness while the books were still coming out? Was she trying to boost sales of the books after the series’ conclusion by stirring up controversy?

I’ve already argued that the second reason is unlikely. Rowling answered a child’s question on the spur of the moment. (The questions asked by the children in such sessions are pre-screened, but it seems unlikely that the assistants who do the screening convey the questions to Rowling ahead of time.)

How much will sales be boosted now that she has told the public about Dumbledore? This series is such a huge seller that it’s hard to imagine anyone, other than gay men, deciding to buy it solely because Dumbledore has been revealed to be gay. Surely no kids would buy it for that reason. OK, maybe a few liberal parents desiring an uplifting book for their kids might buy it for them.

But we know how many right-wingers there are in this country and how successful they have been at attacking the teaching of science in schools and at demanding that books be removed from library shelves, including the HP series because it “promotes witchcraft.” Surely the outing of Dumbledore in the midst of the series would have cut significantly into the sales for the rest of the books.

I doubt Rowling calculated it that way, but if she did, she was being smart. Possibly, though, her calculations, if any, were as much or more ideological than monetary. She clearly is a liberal, claiming that one major theme of the HP series is tolerance and that another is suspicion of authority.

(For a discussion of these political aspects of the books, see Keith Olbermann’s October 22 Countdown segment on the Dumbledore outing, in transcript or video form.)

Consider what outing Dumbledore after the book series ended implies. There are undoubtedly millions of children in this country whose parents oppose equality for homosexuals. Many of those children now have all seven books lined up on their bedroom shelves, and they may own several HP franchise products, including DVDs. They adore this series. For many the books are probably their favorite cultural artifact in the world. Now picture what would happen if those ultra-conservative parents march in and declare that everything Potter is going in the garbage because it’s immoral, pro-gay propaganda—or less pleasant terms to that effect.

I can imagine three basic reactions.

One, the child will respond, yes, take these terrible books away, they’re bad for me. Ned Flanders’ sons would say that. Maybe a few others would. Such kids are already indoctrinated, and we will just have to hope that they leave home someday and discover more enlightened views.

Two, the child starts crying, arguing, and defending the books. The parents give up and go away. Now this child of ultra-conservative parents has and will likely re-read a book series whose content–at least according to Rowling–runs counter to their parents’ beliefs. A tiny victory for tolerance, repeated in many homes across the land. Perhaps Rowling’s series will help guide such children, if only in a small way, to be less bigoted than their parents. Indeed, there is reason to hope so. Opposition to gay marriage is already less widespread among young evangelicals than among the older generation, with 81% of those above 30 opposed, 76% among those under 30.

Three, the child starts crying, arguing, and defending the books. The parents are adamant and dispose of all the books and paraphernalia. As a result, the child is upset by a homophobic act. Some such children may grow up primed to realize that homophobia is a bad thing. Others will presumably recover and become as intolerant as their parents.

I suppose there might be some way that a child who has already read the books could become even less tolerant of homosexuality as a result of Dumbledore’s turning out to be gay. It’s hard to believe, but maybe it could happen. On the whole, though, Rowling’s revelation creates a win-tie situation. Kids are either influenced for the good or they remain the same. She has smuggled liberal ideas into the heart of the enemy’s camp in a form that will be difficult to eradicate.

How much can a mere book series, along with its attendant films and franchise products, affect society’s attitudes toward something as important as equal rights for homosexuals? It’s hard to say. On rare occasions, books do have a real impact in society. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a major factor in promoting abolitionism, the Civil War, and the freeing of the slaves. Apart from the Bible, it was the best-selling book of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a phenomenally popular liberal author of our own times can use her influence for good as well.

Do pre-teen children really understand what’s going on when Rowling says Dumbledore is gay? Conservatives complain about her choice to do the outing to an audiences of kids. But as Olbermann points out in the segment linked above, the HP books contain death, persecution, betrayal, torture, revenge, and all sorts of dark things that caring parents would likely want to discuss with children as they read the books. In comparison, to complain about having to explain a professor’s sexual preference, particularly when it intrudes only subtly into the plot, seems absurd.

Traister’s Salon.com article contains a cheering anecdote. She says she learned of Rowling’s revelation from a nine-year-old friend at a wedding. The child “exuberantly announced, ‘Dumbledore is gay!'” Traister asked whether she was surprised by this, and the reply was, “Well, I always thought he loved McGonnagall, but I guess he only loved her like a sister.” If only all reactions to the news could be so sensible.

[Added Oct 30:  Today’s Star Bulletin (Hawaii) contains an account of three unflappable fans who attended the Carnegie Hall signing and loved it. A photograph taken by the mother of one of them provides the first image I’ve seen of the event.]

*A less prominent figure, John Mark Reynolds, writing on a Christian site, The Scriptorium, makes exactly this claim in his “Dumbledore Is Not Gay: Taking Stories More Seriously Than the Author.” He argues his case in comparable terms to Mittell’s position that the author has no power to affect a book’s content once it has been published.

KT here:

On May 29 we posted an entry responding to the inevitable badmouthing of sequels that journalistic movie critics tend to indulge in when the summer season starts. “Live with it! There’ll always be movie sequels. Good thing, too.” gathered comments from current and present “filmies” of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They defended sequels for a wide variety of reasons.

Now another ex-Madisonian, Henry Jenkins, has weighed in with “The Pleasures of Pirates and What It Tells Us about World Building in Branded Entertainment.” Despite its somewhat formidable title, this essay jumps into the fray, taking critics to task for their knee-jerk tendency to lump virtually all sequels together into a category fraught with prior expectations and to dismiss the latest entries as mindless, inept films.

Henry takes Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End as his point of defense. Somehow critics seem by telepathy to agree to take the same stance on a particular blockbuster. Here they claimed that AWE is far too complicated and gets bogged down in exposition at the expense of action. (So much for claims that blockbusters are all CGI pyrotechnics and no plot!) They also kvetched that there is too little of Jack Sparrow’s character, apparently their main focus of interest in the film.

Henry takes AWE to be, alongside The Matrix, an example of elaborate world-building, a trait of the best of the big film series. In the age of DVDs and cross-media franchises, such films, he argues, are meant to be watched more than once. They also place a lot of faith in the viewer to be able to follow a complicated plot. Henry, like Steve Johnson in his Everything Bad Is Good for You, credits modern media as challenging viewers/readers with dense works that require a lot of figuring out.

Critics assume the opposite, that summer movies are supposed to be mindless entertainment, and they treat them as such. Complexity, which they would hail in an art-house release, becomes a fundamental flaw. Henry has some cogent remarks on the circumstances of reviewers’ screenings and how they handicap the writers’ approach to pop summer movies.

Whether or not one admires AWE, Henry mounts a strong defense of the film and in the process shows how much most reviewers are out of touch with audiences’ tastes and miss the various ways in which summer blockbusters work.

In other news, David’s The Way Hollywood Tells It has just been slated for translation into simplified-form Chinese. He’s now preparing a blog entry paying tribute to the great art theorist Rudolf Arnheim, who died on Monday at the age of 104. The family’s obituary is here.

The Cinema Ritrovato, which we’ll be attending in July, has posted a provisional schedule here. David will go on from Bologna to Brussels for research and the annual Cinedecouvertes and L’age d’or festival; films and other info available here.