next_to_normal: (Britta has feelings)
next_to_normal ([personal profile] next_to_normal) wrote in [personal profile] beer_good_foamy 2013-12-16 04:14 pm (UTC)

if all I wanted was exactly what I knew I wanted, then I could write it myself.

Indeed - although I don't and have never translated "what the audience wants" so literally? Giving the audience what it wants doesn't necessarily mean the audience being prescriptive - "being surprised by the narrative" is a totally valid thing to want from a story, IMO. The feeling of being sucker-punched by a well-executed character death is a valid thing to want. Seeing the usual genre tropes being turned on their head unexpectedly is a valid thing to want.

Which is part of why that phrase has always seemed stupid and nonsensical to me. When you strip away the specifics, what people WANT is a well-told story. So to be proud of the fact that you're not going to give them what they want is... odd.

And that doesn't even get into the fact that people want different things! Some people want a narrative that challenges them, others want something comforting and predictable. Sometimes the same person can want BOTH, depending on what show they're watching or what mood they're in. So the idea that Joss would claim to KNOW what the audience wants is also absurdly presumptuous.

Which is why I'd also say that What we need is stories that surprise, thrill and challenge us is a questionable assertion. Maybe that's what you and I need - but maybe what someone else needs is to see characters that look like them on TV. Maybe this person needs a narrative like BtVS S6 that helps them confront their own issues with depression, while that person over there needs a comedy that will lift their spirits and take their mind off their problems.

Haha, basically tl;dr - "what the audience wants" and "what the audience needs" are both meaningless generalizations. I agree it's dumb to set them up as mutually exclusive, but it's also useless to use them - separately or in comparison - as any kind of metric for "good" storytelling.

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