Growing up as a nerd in the 50's was tough. I wasn't there, but I've seen "Back to the Future". More than twice. It wasn't cool to be smart unless you were using those smarts to make money, preferably in a white collar career. Comic books, science fiction and horror movies, fantasy books - these things were fun, but nothing worthy of serious interest. If you were a fan of statistics, baseball was your thing - that or you were weird.
It was in the 50's that the theater and cinema were just beginning to be taken seriously. Storytellers have always had a difficult time of it socially, and until recently it was rare that any artist beside the very select few gain any social recognition or wealth. Historically, societies are built on fairly rigid class systems. Actors, poets and playwrights have consistently fallen into the lower classes, except in the rare cases when someone catches a rich sponsor's eye and lives in the lap of luxury for as long as they're allowed. The job of the court musician and the court jester amounted to the same thing - please the guy with the money or sleep in a doorway somewhere. Theater troops lived in the wagons (now, it's buses) they traveled between towns with and shared meals around campfires like cowboys because it was cheaper. Film changed all that because it allowed for posterity. Actors could become rich when they were no longer performing for 300 people, they were performing for 3 million people.
Many of them did become rich, as did many other people involved in media. And as technology advanced, entertainers became some of the first people to benefit. Musicians were now listened to all over the country. Film stars were marrying into royalty. The game was changing and talented people were finding it easier to become rich. Showbusiness royalty was crowned and dynasties were formed, forcing their way in to the American aristocracy any way they could.
When I discovered comic books and role-playing games, almost simultaneously, a former actor was the most powerful man in the world. The cartoons we watched on Saturday morning could be found in other forms on the comic racks once a month. Our parents often grew up reading comics and they passed on their old issues to us. VHS tapes allowed us to watch Superman save Lois Lane over and over. Technology allowed us to mass produce media like junk food, making art a legitimate money-making industry, but people like to have something to look down upon from on high, so the focus was shifted from the arts and humanities in general to the growing segment of society that was outside the norm. Lumped in with the traveling circus freaks - that is where sidekicks are found, after all - these lesser-than-lesses were dubbed geeks, nerds and the richest people on the planet.
Sorry, the rich thing really didn't happen as much until the nineties. The point is not moot. Nerds started getting stupid rich all over.
Now, people are going to have to find something else to be resentful about. If this summer teaches us nothing else, let it be known that it is a fan's world. One comic book movie just made a billion dollars in two weeks. That's ridiculous; it isn't even funny. There's a recession right now. All over the world. Important people with lots of letters after their name are spending a lot of time talking about how bad it is. And The Avengers just made a billion dollars (not of this writing, but very soon now).
A billion dollars is only a piece of the film industry puzzle, which is worth
10 billion per year. Even with a surprisingly high percentage of films losing money, the film industry has seen steady growth forever. The small hits it has taken in the last two years was thanks to the economy more than it was lack of interest. Although traditional cinema still does most of the steady business, a huge chunk of that annual total comes from films with a large prebuilt fanbase.
The real magic of living in the fan's world is the effect outside the box office. The Avengers' (and films like it) success for many will boil down to the final box office total, but the real success comes from points not often mentioned. It would be interesting to find out, when all is said and done, how much economic movement films like this actually create outside the box office. Toys and comic books and branded clothing, tattoos and craft supplies for costumes, income was generated in unimaginable sectors thanks to fans' vested interest and desire to support that which they care about.
Big budget blockbusters like Batman, Spider-Man and Superman are what really make the noise, but a silent revolution has been happening that is securing the truth of the fan's world. Comics led the forefront. Cheap and easy to distribute, comics reached millions with mixed media messages as soon as printing could keep up with demand. Artist and writers leaped on the medium, and in time it became sustainable to the point that independent publishers started cropping up regularly. Now, Comic-Con, the Mecca of the medium, is visited by every major media company in the game, many of which buy advertising and retail space at the event.
Studios and distributors have figured out the formula for making large piles of money, but they're just hanging onto the coat tails of others. That sounds backwards to many, because one big number always seems more important than a lot of small numbers. The people leading the charge are the people turning fandom into an economy, the people emulating the early comic creators that adopted the new media first. People like Kevin Smith, Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton or Louis CK, who are taking advantage of the internet and social media to advertise and distribute in a way that's much more efficient than the multimillion dollar advertising sprees many media companies mismanage.
Fans of comic books and other things geek are the most fervent supporters of their favorite artists and creators because of the large amounts of time and emotion invested, but all of the arts are affected in the same way. Justin Beiber fans will mob record stores and buy out his albums just to push his name up the charts. Television dramas are packaged into DVD sets with extra footage to help turn casual viewers into fervent fans. Artists are no longer being supported by sponsors, they're being supported by common people that have disposable income and want to be entertained.
Media has changed the world - politically, economically and socially. One of the most pronounced changes has been culturally. We've given people something to be obsessed with, time to fill with the obsession and an avenue to pursue it. As comics, film, television, music and new media continue to cross-over and build bigger universes, the culture of fandom will become more entrenched. Even if superheroes go out of style they will always be around, as will monster horror, fantasy, science-fiction and pop media. The information age is upon us and as long as we don't devolve into anarchy, the information we will most want to trade is the information we enjoy - stories of superheroes and elves and starship captains and other survivors of strange shared worlds we can all immerse ourselves in. From here, the life of a fan can only get better.
Of course, a zombie apocalypse could occur and ruin it all. Don't worry, though; we're already prepared for it.
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