Are comic book fans privileged?
Oct. 5th, 2019 08:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySo, I found this blog post on my DW friends feed, and am curious as to how fellow comic fans would view it. The individual who posted it isn't a fan of comics, just the MCU films and games.
Comic Books Incorporated- Interview with Shawna Kidman
Shawna Kidman has written a book on "How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood". She's used to work in the comic book industry (specifically DC) and currently teaches media studies at the University Level.
My first encounter with comic books was as a worker, not as an academic, and not as a fan. Part of why DC Comics hired me was actually because I didn’t fit the profile of most of their job applicants; I wasn’t steeped in comic book culture and I didn’t have a typical fanboy/fangirl perspective. But I did have a media background—I’d had jobs in film development and film financing during and after college. That helped me to understand the Hollywood folk the company was interacting with, and that’s really what DC needed around 2005 when it was trying to improve its west coast presence. During the few years I was there, first as an assistant and later as a creative executive, I got a crash course in comics and read a ton. I spent a lot of time with editors, met a lot of writers and artists—it was amazing. But I learned more about the business side, since that was what got me the most excited.
I think this separates me from a lot of scholars in this space, who are drawn to comic books because they love the medium. It was the dynamism of the industry that I loved.
You discuss comics fans as “privileged,” which would seem to be the exact opposite of John Tulloch’s concept of television fans as a “powerless elite.” In what sense are comics fans privileged and how is their influence felt within the comics industry?
Yes, this is definitely true. I believe that comic book fans are privileged in many ways, so much so that I don’t really consider them to be a subculture at all. I’ll stick to just two points though, which I think most directly address Tulloch’s argument. First, comic book fans are very well represented in the film and television industry, disproportionately so. Comic book publishers estimate the comic-book-reading audience in the US at two million people, or less than 1% of the population. Now if you spend any time in Hollywood, you quickly realize that way more than 1% of the people are reading comic books. Sure, some of them are just looking for source material, and some of them may be overstating their reading habits, but even so, it’s an extremely well-regarded medium within that creative community. This is even more true when you look at the upper echelons of the entertainment business. A huge portion of the guys who have been dominating Hollywood for the last thirty years are lifelong comic book fans. Now this may be for good reason—comic book reading could theoretically improve creative thinking and thus statistically increase the likelihood of someone ending up with a career in media. Regardless, I think you would be incredibly hard pressed to argue that comic book fans are a population that lack access to cultural production or decision making.
Second, even comic book fans who are just fans—who have no role in the media business and don’t desire any—get a kind of preferential treatment in Hollywood that is, again, disproportionate with the community’s actual size. By this, I mean that media gatekeepers typically take the opinions of comic book fans more seriously than they do those of other interest groups or cultural communities. There are many reasons for this. For starters, comic book fans often fall into what some consider the “right” demographics—young, male, white, educated—so advertisers are willing to pay more for them. Many comic book fans have also been early adopters of technology. So a fan presence was established early on the web and remains highly visible. This is one of the reasons Hollywood flocked to San Diego Comic-Con in the early 2000s—they wanted online fan support (this has changed a bit in recent years, but that’s a discussion for another day).
Of course, comic book fans are not all-powerful and they are not one thing—this is a heterogeneous constituency that is sometimes heard, sometimes not. But if you identify as a comic book fan, you are generally far more likely to be catered to by mainstream media producers, and your criticisms are far more likely to be heard, than would be the case if, say, you identified as a hip-hop fan or a reader of romance novels. Relatively speaking, comic book fans are among the most powerful consumers of media out there. Which is part of why comic book adaptations are so incredibly prevalent across film, television, and gaming.
Thoughts? Because with over twenty some years of reading comics that's not been my experience at all. Also, I don't think she's broadly read in comics or knows that much about the comic fandom.
What do you think?
Comic Books Incorporated- Interview with Shawna Kidman
Shawna Kidman has written a book on "How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood". She's used to work in the comic book industry (specifically DC) and currently teaches media studies at the University Level.
My first encounter with comic books was as a worker, not as an academic, and not as a fan. Part of why DC Comics hired me was actually because I didn’t fit the profile of most of their job applicants; I wasn’t steeped in comic book culture and I didn’t have a typical fanboy/fangirl perspective. But I did have a media background—I’d had jobs in film development and film financing during and after college. That helped me to understand the Hollywood folk the company was interacting with, and that’s really what DC needed around 2005 when it was trying to improve its west coast presence. During the few years I was there, first as an assistant and later as a creative executive, I got a crash course in comics and read a ton. I spent a lot of time with editors, met a lot of writers and artists—it was amazing. But I learned more about the business side, since that was what got me the most excited.
I think this separates me from a lot of scholars in this space, who are drawn to comic books because they love the medium. It was the dynamism of the industry that I loved.
You discuss comics fans as “privileged,” which would seem to be the exact opposite of John Tulloch’s concept of television fans as a “powerless elite.” In what sense are comics fans privileged and how is their influence felt within the comics industry?
Yes, this is definitely true. I believe that comic book fans are privileged in many ways, so much so that I don’t really consider them to be a subculture at all. I’ll stick to just two points though, which I think most directly address Tulloch’s argument. First, comic book fans are very well represented in the film and television industry, disproportionately so. Comic book publishers estimate the comic-book-reading audience in the US at two million people, or less than 1% of the population. Now if you spend any time in Hollywood, you quickly realize that way more than 1% of the people are reading comic books. Sure, some of them are just looking for source material, and some of them may be overstating their reading habits, but even so, it’s an extremely well-regarded medium within that creative community. This is even more true when you look at the upper echelons of the entertainment business. A huge portion of the guys who have been dominating Hollywood for the last thirty years are lifelong comic book fans. Now this may be for good reason—comic book reading could theoretically improve creative thinking and thus statistically increase the likelihood of someone ending up with a career in media. Regardless, I think you would be incredibly hard pressed to argue that comic book fans are a population that lack access to cultural production or decision making.
Second, even comic book fans who are just fans—who have no role in the media business and don’t desire any—get a kind of preferential treatment in Hollywood that is, again, disproportionate with the community’s actual size. By this, I mean that media gatekeepers typically take the opinions of comic book fans more seriously than they do those of other interest groups or cultural communities. There are many reasons for this. For starters, comic book fans often fall into what some consider the “right” demographics—young, male, white, educated—so advertisers are willing to pay more for them. Many comic book fans have also been early adopters of technology. So a fan presence was established early on the web and remains highly visible. This is one of the reasons Hollywood flocked to San Diego Comic-Con in the early 2000s—they wanted online fan support (this has changed a bit in recent years, but that’s a discussion for another day).
Of course, comic book fans are not all-powerful and they are not one thing—this is a heterogeneous constituency that is sometimes heard, sometimes not. But if you identify as a comic book fan, you are generally far more likely to be catered to by mainstream media producers, and your criticisms are far more likely to be heard, than would be the case if, say, you identified as a hip-hop fan or a reader of romance novels. Relatively speaking, comic book fans are among the most powerful consumers of media out there. Which is part of why comic book adaptations are so incredibly prevalent across film, television, and gaming.
Thoughts? Because with over twenty some years of reading comics that's not been my experience at all. Also, I don't think she's broadly read in comics or knows that much about the comic fandom.
What do you think?
no subject
Date: 2019-10-06 03:25 am (UTC)