The Tyranny of the Audience
Apr. 10th, 2004 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myA curious thing happened at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. Bob Dylan, for the second half of his much-anticipated concert, plugged in. The audience had come for a folk music concert; many of them were shocked and upset that their ears were being assaulted with an electric guitar. People walked out; people booed. This was not lost on Dylan, whose rendition of Ballad of a Thin Man was raw, angry—and, for the first time, turned against his audience.
Afterward, one audience member cried "Judas!"—it's preserved perfectly on the CD—and was rewarded with widespread applause. Dylan's laconic, whined answer: "I don't believe you." Then he played Like a Rolling Stone, with that same sickened anger, thanked his audience, and left the stage, to perfunctory applause and a taped recessional recording of God Save the Queen.
It was a significant event in the history of rock and roll, and books have been written about Dylan going electric. But it's also interesting as a portrait of an audience. From their perspective, they'd paid for something and weren't getting it; they were perfectly right to complain, in their point of view. But in hindsight it became clear that they were present for a pivotal concert; there are boatloads of people today who wish they could have been there, and I imagine most of those who were there tell their grandkids about it.
I think about the Royal Albert Hall concert when I see people reacting to new SF. As a writer, I want to push boundaries, challenge my readers, do the unexpected—but time and time again I hear people say, particularly on Usenet, "I didn't like the main character" when the story depended on an unlikable main character, or "I don't like nonlinear storytelling," or "this season was too dark," or a dozen other things that make me hesitate to try anything unusual. I want to take them by the shoulders and say, "I don't believe you."
As SF readers, I think we have an obligation to challenge ourselves, to seek out the interesting as well as the comfortable. We shouldn't read (or watch) things that we don't like, but we should be interested, sometimes, in digging to learn what an author is trying to say—even if it's not personally appealing, even if it means swallowing something galling from time to time. I worry that the vast array of choices the modern world offers is turning us into gourmands, wrinkling our noses at whatever is not custom-prepared for our palates. By keeping such straitlaced opinions we miss opening ourselves to important works, things that might change our opinions, just as the people who walked out of the Royal Albert Hall missed an epochal event in the music they love. And we discourage writers from producing challenging works, by making them harder to sell.
Example: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, purple prose being foremost, followed closely by misuse of the word "glaive." I have no quarrel with anyone who's read it and hated it. But I know many, many people who "couldn't get past the rape." A protagonist who commits rape, in some eyes, is irredeemable. Never mind that the rape is the core of Donaldson's point about the Land and unbelief, and the defining act of Covenant's character; Covenant committed rape, which makes the book unreadable—whether or not it is interesting.
(I should make an exception here for people who have personal reasons for being unable to read about rape. That's not what I'm talking about, as I hope is clear.)
I try to approach a work with open eyes and faith in the author. If there's something interesting there to be found, I hope I'll find it, and I'm willing to suffer in the search. I have my own arbitrary hot buttons—enlightened feminist pagan wish-fulfillment, e.g.—but my goal is to overcome them. If I come away from something with a preconceived notion overturned, I count it a victory.
Then again, I also like watching Welcome Back, Kotter, so my horse can't be all that high. :)=
Something is happening, and you don't know what it is.
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Afterward, one audience member cried "Judas!"—it's preserved perfectly on the CD—and was rewarded with widespread applause. Dylan's laconic, whined answer: "I don't believe you." Then he played Like a Rolling Stone, with that same sickened anger, thanked his audience, and left the stage, to perfunctory applause and a taped recessional recording of God Save the Queen.
It was a significant event in the history of rock and roll, and books have been written about Dylan going electric. But it's also interesting as a portrait of an audience. From their perspective, they'd paid for something and weren't getting it; they were perfectly right to complain, in their point of view. But in hindsight it became clear that they were present for a pivotal concert; there are boatloads of people today who wish they could have been there, and I imagine most of those who were there tell their grandkids about it.
I think about the Royal Albert Hall concert when I see people reacting to new SF. As a writer, I want to push boundaries, challenge my readers, do the unexpected—but time and time again I hear people say, particularly on Usenet, "I didn't like the main character" when the story depended on an unlikable main character, or "I don't like nonlinear storytelling," or "this season was too dark," or a dozen other things that make me hesitate to try anything unusual. I want to take them by the shoulders and say, "I don't believe you."
As SF readers, I think we have an obligation to challenge ourselves, to seek out the interesting as well as the comfortable. We shouldn't read (or watch) things that we don't like, but we should be interested, sometimes, in digging to learn what an author is trying to say—even if it's not personally appealing, even if it means swallowing something galling from time to time. I worry that the vast array of choices the modern world offers is turning us into gourmands, wrinkling our noses at whatever is not custom-prepared for our palates. By keeping such straitlaced opinions we miss opening ourselves to important works, things that might change our opinions, just as the people who walked out of the Royal Albert Hall missed an epochal event in the music they love. And we discourage writers from producing challenging works, by making them harder to sell.
Example: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, purple prose being foremost, followed closely by misuse of the word "glaive." I have no quarrel with anyone who's read it and hated it. But I know many, many people who "couldn't get past the rape." A protagonist who commits rape, in some eyes, is irredeemable. Never mind that the rape is the core of Donaldson's point about the Land and unbelief, and the defining act of Covenant's character; Covenant committed rape, which makes the book unreadable—whether or not it is interesting.
(I should make an exception here for people who have personal reasons for being unable to read about rape. That's not what I'm talking about, as I hope is clear.)
I try to approach a work with open eyes and faith in the author. If there's something interesting there to be found, I hope I'll find it, and I'm willing to suffer in the search. I have my own arbitrary hot buttons—enlightened feminist pagan wish-fulfillment, e.g.—but my goal is to overcome them. If I come away from something with a preconceived notion overturned, I count it a victory.
Then again, I also like watching Welcome Back, Kotter, so my horse can't be all that high. :)=
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-10 12:19 am (UTC)I'm one of the couldn't-get-past-the-rape people. I recognize that there was a point to having the character do that, but it made me dislike him so much (and iIrc I already didn't like him) that I lost interest in the character and the trilogy/ies. The point being (for me) not that a protagonist who commits a rape makes the book unreadable, but rather that there wasn't enough else to like (for me) in the book to make it worth continuing past that big barrier. There are characters in fiction who do horrific things but who are nonetheless utterly compelling (Hannibal Lecter comes to mind); for me, Covenant wasn't one of those.
So I guess where I come down on the general question is that I approve in the abstract of artists taking risks and doing new things -- but I probably would've walked out of the Dylan concert, because when an artist goes too far outside of my comfort zone, no matter how much artistic respect I have for them, I don't enjoy or like the art they're creating, and I tend to stop subjecting myself to it. The rational part of me doesn't want artists to stagnate or to keep doing the same thing over and over; but the part of me that enjoys an artist's work gets pouty when that artist moves on into work that actively turns me off.
But I think it can sometimes be possible to create a work that's so compelling that you bring the audience along with you, willy-nilly. The example that springs to mind for me is Sandman: the first issue I saw was the "Diner of Death" issue, and my reaction was "This is extremely well done, and I wish the creators well with it, but it's just too revolting to make me willing to read it." It wasn't until some months later that I read the incredibly charming Death issue ("The Sound of Her Wings," I think? Issue 8, maybe?) and realized that there was going to be stuff in this series that I could like as well as respect; at that point I went back and read the whole series from the start, and in that context I could appreciate the "Diner of Death" issue a little more. I still didn't exactly like it, but it didn't stop me from reading and enjoying the rest of the series, and it probably expanded the boundaries of things I did like, at least a little.