Being a fan doesn’t seem like something it’s possible to be bad at—except for the fact that art is complex, and stories often contain nuances that are missed even by their most dedicated fans. In this age of TV antiheroes audiences often come to a show to be entertained by the sex and violence, but don’t stick around for the moral ambiguity. So, is a Breaking Bad watcher who loves Walter White and hates Skyler a “bad fan”? Are the people who despise Girls‘ Hannah Horvath for being a complex and imperfect person “watching wrong”? And is there such thing as a “proper” audience response to a morally problematic show like Game of Thrones or Hannibal?
Listen to Episode on Libsyn, or subscribe to The Stake Podcast on iTunes.
Reading Assignments:
Emily Nussbaum: The Great Divide
Emily Nussbaum: The Female Bad Fan
Emily Nussbaum: That Mind-Bending Phone Call on Last Night’s Breaking Bad
Matt Zoller Seitz: Breaking Bad, and Why Viewers need to Whitewash Walter White
Great analysis! You had me swayed at every turn. It does seem like there is some fan responsibility needed. But then again, like you said, the shows themselves glorify certain aspects, sometimes unnecessarily.
For example in Breaking Bad, they would insert these weird car-loving scenes with stupid soundtrack music and close up shots of the suspension bouncing, and I’m like, what the hell am I watching? An ad for macho motorheads? Or in that last season with that super nasty prison killing scheme, which was up there with the worst that Game of Thrones has to offer. That definitely came off as celebrating W.W.’s “genius” and ruthlessness. The violence itself was unwatchable and served no real purpose to the narrative. And you know there were plenty of hurrahs happening when he gunned down the skinheads at the very end. Everything about that scene was manufactured for maximum pro-W.W. coolness.
I’m interested in hearing more about this “type of viewers” topic that you brought up. I don’t think it’s as clean cut as casual vs. engaged…. same goes for the shows themselves. Shows that used to be challenging and hard to find are now the mainstream, so a huge array of people will watch them for a wide number of reasons.
Damn. Why can’t things be more black and white? Hrmph.