In politics, at the very core of democratic principles is the idea of power coming from the will of the people. Therefore, the opinions of the population are generally given lots of weight, and governance becomes a shared experience of officials in theory being responsive to wants and needs.
We are constantly being given scientific and unscientific polls purporting to say what Americans believe, and the conversations that occur in the media about a given topic are fought with those statistics being the baseline. But most people would accept as a function of leadership, especially the good kind, sometimes telling a majority of people in the country they’re wrong and pushing ahead with a different vision on an accelerated timetable.
While not totally analogous, the push and pull of this dynamic is similar to how media are consumed, digested, and the aftermath of reactions from an audience, especially fans who think their views should matter and be considered. Sometimes good storytelling requires not giving an audience what they think they want, but going in a different direction which may piss them off at least initially.
There’s an old series of videos with Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, discussing various issues with aspiring writers. One of the issues Serling tackles is the balance between whether a work of art is a shared experience where the reflections of the audience are an important aspect to consider. Or whether trying to make art so they “get it in Des Moines” and worrying about the vicissitudes of the public when creating their vision is “prostituting” the work to the lowest common denominator, and the artist’s vision should be accepted or rejected as what it is.
This sort of thing gets especially tricky when a property gets so popular and its fandom grows to such lengths those fans feel they’re a part of it. The community that forms views it’s as much “theirs” as the author or corporation that actually owns it. And you see this sort of thing in almost every form of media, whether it be people complaining about their childhood being “raped” when a cartoon gets remade in a live-action film adaptation, howls of protest when new editions, remakes or cuts are made which changes things to what the powers that be think is better, or people getting pissed off by the lack of new material from a creator.
Over the weekend, two stories from different sides of this spectrum made some news, and involved two of the biggest franchises: Game of Thrones and Star Trek.
George R.R. Martin’s pace of writing of the A Song of Ice and Fire series has long been a contentious issue. For many fans of the books, they want to tie Martin to a typewriter and make him finish the story, with the first book (i.e., A Game of Thrones) published almost two decades ago, worry he will die before it gets a conclusion, and get pissed off when he decides to do things other than write. This led author Neil Gaiman to put together a lengthy defense of Martin some years back that boiled down to “George R.R. Martin is not your bitch.”
Even though excerpts of the story have been released and there had been promises of it being done by the end 2015, for a while now it’s been thought as doubtful Martin would finish the sixth book in the series, The Winds of Winter, for a 2016 release. On Saturday, Martin made an announcement on his blog admitting the book is not yet finished, and may not be anytime soon.
Believe me, it gave me no pleasure to type those words. You’re disappointed, and you’re not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed…but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, ‘I have completed and delivered The Winds Of Winter on or before the last day of 2015.’ But the book’s not done.
This means season 6 of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which premieres in April, will probably include some future material from the book series and spoil it, or may take a divergent path from Martin’s. Season 5 had already begun going away from the source material in bigger and broader ways. Moreover, the delay also assures the HBO series will probably finish before A Song of Ice and Fire does in book form. However, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been told by Martin how the book series will conclude. So the destination of the story might be the same for both the TV show and books, but how both get there may be different.
In previous years, there have been long diatribes by some fans of the series lamenting the delays. Martin has in the past suggested HBO could delay Game of Thrones’ ending by detouring into a prequel season, where the past history of Westeros could be expanded on using tangential material written by Martin (i.e., Tales of Dunk and Egg and The Princess and the Queen), or possibly dramatizing some of the events surrounding the fall of the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen, and Rhaegar Targaryen’s war against Robert Baratheon over Lyanna Stark. Both of those options are untenable given the limitations of keeping the core actors under contract for an extended period of time, as well as the aging of the actors playing the parts of children (e.g., Maisie Williams, Isaac Hempstead-Wright, etc.). However, the delay of The Winds of Winter has generally been met with understanding, and Martin has said he’s “astonished” by the support he’s gotten since making the announcement.
From David Sims at The Atlantic:
It’s easy to sympathize (who among us likes deadlines?), but even easier to offer armchair diagnosis of Martin’s problems, which the Internet has always been ready to do. His sprawling narrative of war, politicking, and revenge has only expanded with every sequel, and his gimmick of telling every chapter from the point of view of a single character makes it all the more challenging to recount events on a global scale. Martin frequently blogged about what he calls the “Meereenese knot,” a complicated bit of storytelling centered around the fictitious city of Meereen in A Dance With Dragons that took him years to untangle. With The Winds of Winter, Martin should be moving his grand saga toward a conclusion, since he has seven books planned overall. That involves tying up hundreds of story threads, so it’s no wonder that it’s taking a while.
It’s not the first time the conclusion of an epic series has been threatened by authorial issues. The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is often cited as the worst-case scenario for a beloved fantasy saga: He spent decades writing them and died at the young age of 58, meaning the final three entries had to be assembled from his notes with the help of a co-author. Martin has always had a pithy response pre-loaded for fans who speculate about his health (namely: “Fuck you”), since much of their concern is less about his well being than it is about who will finish the series. As was the case with Jordan, it’s likely Martin’s work will not be completed entirely by him—only here it’s thanks to the realities of TV scheduling, not to an early death.
Another property with a giant fandom is Star Trek. It’s a billion dollar franchise which started as a lowly-rated television show that was saved and nurtured by conventions and fan support. The division of Star Trek fandom conflicted between the pre-J.J. Abrams films and everything post was already contentious enough, with many Trekkies having major problems with how Star Trek Into Darkness played fast and loose with logic and plot holes, and being underwhelmed by the trailer for Star Trek Beyond.
Paramount and CBS, which own the film and TV rights to Star Trek respectively, made news last week by suing a crowdfunded fan film for copyright violations.
The upcoming Star Trek: Axanar raised more than a million dollars in two successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns using material like the preview clip embedded below. The production uses actors from the various Star Trek series (e.g., Tony Todd, J.G. Hertzler, Gart Graham, etc.), and bases its story on the vague information about the character Garth of Izar from the episode “Whom Gods Destroy” of Star Trek: The Original Series. The movie would tell the story of a pivotal battle at the planet Axanar during a Klingon-Federation war which occurred before the time of Kirk and Spock.
Both Paramount and CBS have sued Axanar’s production company and its executive producer/co-writer Alec Peters, claiming their intellectual property rights are being violated by using their characters, story elements, and ideas. Moreover, the plaintiffs assert the professional quality of the movie makes it different than the other fan films they’ve permitted over the past 30 or so years.
The defense offered by the filmmakers argues Axanar is a “noncommercial venture” made by people who love Star Trek, and lawsuits alienate the fans passionate about their product.
From Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter:
Paramount and CBS, represented by attorneys at Loeb & Loeb, are now demanding an injunction as well as damages for direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Although the plaintiffs have allowed ample cosplaying over the years and even permitted other derivatives like amateur Star Trek shows to circulate, the lawsuit illustrates that there is a place where no man has gone before, where the entertainment studios are not willing to let be occupied: crowdfunded, professional-quality films that use copyrighted "elements" like Vulcans and Klingons, Federation starships, phasers and stuff like the "look and feel of the planet, the characters’ costumes, their pointy ears and their distinctive hairstyle."
In an interview with THR following the filing, Peters says, "We've certainly been prepared for this and we certainly will defend this lawsuit. There are a lot of issues surrounding a fan film. These fan films have been around for 30 years, and others have raised a lot of money." Peters, who notes he is a lawyer and has licensed other products from CBS, says he asked CBS to give guidelines similar to what Lucasfilm has done for fans of Star Wars, but that CBS/Paramount haven't, in his opinion, "because of fear they are going to give up some rights."
Paramount and CBS gave us this joint statement after the posting of our original article: "Star Trek is a treasured franchise in which CBS and Paramount continue to produce new original content for its large universe of fans. The producers of Axanar are making a Star Trek picture they describe themselves as a fully professional independent Star Trek film. Their activity clearly violates our Star Trek copyrights, which, of course, we will continue to vigorously protect."