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Trendspotting
Nov. 5th, 2010 11:59 amA casual hobby of mine is trying to pick the way things are going to go. I wondered if we'd ever see a Stephen Fry backlash and I think we are. It started before his recent comments on women and sex, and the slide seemed triggered mainly by overexposure, secondarily by tone and thirdly by his running out of material (ie. a lot of the same anecdotes and stories and bon mots are surfacing time and again.) The guy isn't a machine and I'm not standing here demanding he dance; I'm talking about Fickle and how it works.
I think 'internet celebrity' might be moving into a Scheherezade phase. You could argue it always was, to a degree, but I think it's now concreting. We keep them around because they entertain us on a daily basis, but once they become confident, gesticulate a little too wildly and move outside the chalk circle we've drawn on the ground for them, they get slapped. And when that happens, they retreat, keen to retain their shape and form. Fry's done it, and I've seen a couple of authors do recently as well. It seems like the social rules for this new proximity between star and fan are being quietly, unconsciously codified. Rules of behaviour are being established and enforced. The dynamic now more than ever seems to be that the crowd holds the power, and 'stars' are dancing for their dinner.
One prediction I've stuck with for 20 years now is that violence against children onscreen would eventually become graphic, commonplace and accepted. The poster for Man Bites Dog caused upset in its day, as it showed a man firing a revolver into a baby carriage, with a pacifier flying skyward on a jet of blood. The Professional featured a small boy being machinegunned off-camera. People left the cinema I was in over that one. Pan's Labyrinth shot a little girl. Most recently was Kick-Ass which featured a grown man kicking the crap out of an 10-year-old girl. Artfully cut so that, technically at least, you never saw a blow land... but really you may as well have.
The Walking Dead is the new zombie series from American cable. First episode was pretty good, and I've got hopes for it. But the first scene ends with the main character shooting an eight-year-old girl in the forehead with a large-calibre handgun. Not cut away, pretty graphic. The get-out with that one is that the eight-year-old is a zombie.
I don't know how I feel about it, but I do find it interesting watching society change. What's a hanging offence one decade is de rigueur the next.
I think 'internet celebrity' might be moving into a Scheherezade phase. You could argue it always was, to a degree, but I think it's now concreting. We keep them around because they entertain us on a daily basis, but once they become confident, gesticulate a little too wildly and move outside the chalk circle we've drawn on the ground for them, they get slapped. And when that happens, they retreat, keen to retain their shape and form. Fry's done it, and I've seen a couple of authors do recently as well. It seems like the social rules for this new proximity between star and fan are being quietly, unconsciously codified. Rules of behaviour are being established and enforced. The dynamic now more than ever seems to be that the crowd holds the power, and 'stars' are dancing for their dinner.
One prediction I've stuck with for 20 years now is that violence against children onscreen would eventually become graphic, commonplace and accepted. The poster for Man Bites Dog caused upset in its day, as it showed a man firing a revolver into a baby carriage, with a pacifier flying skyward on a jet of blood. The Professional featured a small boy being machinegunned off-camera. People left the cinema I was in over that one. Pan's Labyrinth shot a little girl. Most recently was Kick-Ass which featured a grown man kicking the crap out of an 10-year-old girl. Artfully cut so that, technically at least, you never saw a blow land... but really you may as well have.
The Walking Dead is the new zombie series from American cable. First episode was pretty good, and I've got hopes for it. But the first scene ends with the main character shooting an eight-year-old girl in the forehead with a large-calibre handgun. Not cut away, pretty graphic. The get-out with that one is that the eight-year-old is a zombie.
I don't know how I feel about it, but I do find it interesting watching society change. What's a hanging offence one decade is de rigueur the next.
