Episode 203: Solidarity and SDCC
In Episode 203, “Solidarity and SDCC,” Elizabeth debriefs Flourish on a very unusual San Diego Comic-Con: one held during the parallel WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Building off of Elizabeth’s coverage of the topic for WIRED, they talk about how the strikes affected the convention, how fans responded, and how conversations about labor and the entertainment industry there reflected broader concerns about the future for both creators and fans.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:01:39] Elizabeth’s article that we’ll be referencing throughout: “At a Comic-Con Without Hollywood, Fans Show Their Allegiances”
[00:08:29] A representative moment from Star Trek Hall H presentations past:
[00:13:55] Apparently you could ride these for free? OPPORTUNITY MISSED!
[00:16:45] For context, BlizzCon began in 2005. Disney’s D23 Expo was first held in 2009. Star Wars Celebration actually predates both of these—LucasFilm held the first one in 1999, in advance of the release of The Phantom Menace.
[00:18:36] “You’re gonna love this franchise”—a line (uttered from the Hall H stage) and highlighted in Elizabeth’s piece about SDCC five years ago.
[00:19:54] The actual details of James Doohan helping a suicidal fan are a bit different than Flourish remembered—this clip of him telling the story is relatively short and very moving!!
[00:29:29] That’s Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who strikesplained for us just two weeks into the WGA strike.
[00:40:46] If you want to understand what “influencer” means in the SAG-AFTRA context and what this strike means for them, this piece is really illuminating.
[00:42:25] Rise of the Pink Ladies: canceled, pulled from streaming, and then nominated for multiple Emmys.
[00:46:47] UPDATE! Turns out the “discless” WandaVision case (that costs $90, btw…don’t worry, instead of the actual show, you get some stickers!!!) was apparently news to the people at Marvel/Disney.
[00:47:58]
[00:52:56] FLOURISH WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR????
[00:55:42] Javi (the “Tom Hanks of Fansplaining”) modeling the Barbie glasses at The Blind Burro in San Diego:
[00:57:16] “I get tingles when I see Assad as Armand.” — Sam Reid
[00:59:54] Our outro music is “Don’t trust the cloud” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish.
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining! The podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #203, “Solidarity and SDCC.”
FK: [sighs] The first SDCC in a long time that I have not been to, which means I am going to grill you about what it was like, [laughs] because it seems like it was weird.
ELM: Uhhh, super weird. San Diego Comic-Con, for anyone who doesn’t know that acronym. It was weird, it was weird that you weren’t there, I’m not gonna lie.
FK: Awww! [laughs]
ELM: I didn’t say it was a bad weird, I just said it was weird.
FK: Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow. [ELM laughs] OK, OK, OK. So obviously we’ve, I mean this podcast started at SDCC. We’ve been to SDCC together basically ever since.
ELM: Yeah!
FK: That’s wild. And this year—
ELM: [overlapping] I know! You betrayed me this year! [both laugh]
FK: We knew it was gonna be a strange one, because of both the writers’ strike and the actors’ strike happening at the same time. Which, like…I mean, SDCC is not only about Hollywood productions, but there’s [laughing] a lot about Hollywood in it. That must’ve been so strange.
ELM: Right, so I think we should say off the bat, I wrote an article talking about this, and I think, I would suggest people read that first if they’re interested, right?
FK: Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. That is, by the way, the only thing that I know [laughing] about your SDCC, I haven’t been asking. [ELM laughs] So I’m gonna get it all out now.
ELM: So we’ll put that in the show notes, it’s at WIRED, and the basic angle was like, you know, this is a Comic-Con, with this double strike—double strike between these unions, the Writers Guild of America, which began in May, and SAG-AFTRA, the actors, which began, what, at this point a week, two weeks ago now. They haven’t done that simultaneously since 1960.
FK: Which is when they got health insurance. So… [laughs]
ELM: Right, right, right. And the actors themselves I believe haven’t struck since 1980?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: The writers do it somewhat cyclically, [laughs] you know, they say, what’s it—every fifteen years or so. And so that’s historic enough as it is, but you know, this kind of idea of this event, which has come to be very dominated by Hollywood, what would it mean to have that kind of absence there? Was sort of the pitch, and the angle, which I was looking at the con.
FK: Right, and it’s complicated too, because there’s all sorts of roles in Hollywood that are not on strike, including people who are, like, you see at Comic-Con. Producers and directors are not on strike. [laughs] You know?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: They’re doing things, and even if they want to have solidarity, they’ve got contracts, they can’t—if they’re not striking, they can’t just be like “I’m not gonna fulfill my contract to you.” [laughs]
ELM: Hundred percent. So one thing I didn’t include in the article, just for space’s sake, but I went to one of the very few panels in Hall H. So if anyone doesn’t know about how Comic-Con works, Hall H is the one where, if you’ve seen the big announcements you’ve seen the—everyone’s frickin’ Wikipedia photo is always from Comic-Con, [FK laughs] every actor, I don’t know how this happened, I guess they have nice lighting? But it’s like, why?
FK: Oh no, I’m sure it’s because they release it, and it’s legal.
ELM: [overlapping] Ahaaaa, that must be it.
FK: Because Comic-Con, at Hall H they must release it under a Creative Commons license.
ELM: That’s so funny, that’s how this happened.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But you’ve noticed this, right? It’s like, every— [laughs]
FK: Oh, absolutely. It is good lighting, but it’s also like, legal, and not, you know.
ELM: [laughs] But so, Hall H is the one that fits 6,000 or so people. Historically you’ve had to camp out overnight to get in in the morning, and then you sit there all day and you see these huge presentations from studios and networks.
FK: And there’s like a snack bar, and restrooms in the back, so that you literally don’t leave the room all day.
ELM: Yeah. Because they won’t let you leave, they don’t want anyone reselling an exit pass and getting back in, that kind of thing.
FK: Yeah, if you leave, you can’t come back, you have to get in that line forever, again.
ELM: [overlapping] I will say that as I exited Hall H this year, I was offered a pass to get back in.
FK: Because nobody cared! [laughs]
ELM: And I was like, “I don’t think that’s necessary, because there were a lot of empty seats inside.” So… [laughs]
FK: Wow.
ELM: And I was also like [laughing] “I’m not coming back in, don’t worry about it.” So that was fascinating. So, this is, you know, I mean you mentioned briefly at the very start of this conversation, Comic-Con is not by any means just about Hollywood, right, you know? Like the way I started that article, I was trying to give a long list of the many things and the many people who probably didn’t encounter much of this at all. Like if you go to San Diego Comic-Con to play Magic: the Gathering for four days in a hotel room, it’s like a big, you know, hotel conference room, with a bunch of other Magic: the Gathering stans…
FK: There’s a tournament! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. It’s there, it’s there, you may never leave it. That may be the entirety of your Comic-Con, is Magic: the Gathering.
FK: Right. If you’re there looking for a comic book to complete your collection, then you don’t care! You’re going through all the different comic book people who are there, and like, trying to get this rare book, you know? [laughs]
ELM: Right, and it’s worth noting, the comics folks are always a bit, a bit ornery. Ornery? Is that the word?
FK: Ornery.
ELM: You know…yeah. [both laugh] About how much space Hollywood takes up at Comic-Con. Like, just kind of in the, not just physical space, but like…[laughs] you know, psychological space in the conception of the event, right? But—
FK: Yeah! Which by the way is kind of fair, because like, the Eisners, which are basically the Oscars of the comics world, are taking place. You know? [laughs]
ELM: Right, right, and it totally gets overshadowed by these A-list actors, it’s like, “Oh yeah, in comics news, the Eisners happened,” and it’s like, yes, their equivalent of the Oscars. That being said, if you are coming in the comics world, you can spend your entire time in that space, right, only attending comics-related panels, only seeing comics artists. It’s just because it’s such a large event that it has a lot of moving parts.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so I was mostly focusing, and my reporting, on the kind of Hollywood gap, you know, as it were. So, I don’t know what it would be like if your whole world was comics, and all of the comics artists still came, because they did, you know?
FK: Right, but the comics artists aren’t the ones who are usually on the panels in the 6,000-person Hall H, just because…you know, there’s a lot of different comics artists, and some of them are super, super beloved and have many many fans, but maybe not 6,000 people who are going to wait that long to see them.
ELM: Right. That room, Hall H, feels like it’s about the scale of Hollywood, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: It’s like, the very very biggest parts of the entertainment industry are in that room. And…have kinda made it into a whole ecosystem. That already, before the actors struck, was like, coming undone as a bunch of the studios and streamers said, “We’re not gonna bring anything”—because they didn’t want to take a risk. They, they, I imagine they also saw the writing on the wall with the way the actors’ negotiations were going. So they pulled out and by the time the con began, not just there but in the other large venues, too, almost everything with Hollywood actors was canceled.
FK: Right, it was, there was a point like a week before, where one of my friends was like, “So. William Shatner. The one guy who’s coming.” And then he pulled out! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, they changed the blurb on the, on the website even, like, [dramatic voice] “In solidarity with his fellow striking actors, Bill will not be attending.”
FK: Bill.
ELM: “Instead you can hear the, the Senior Vice President of Jeff Bezos’ space company talk about how he went to space.”
FK: So that was what they replaced it with, was just like, whoever was going to be on the panel who wasn’t an actor? Just, [laughs] trying to fill the hole?
ELM: I’m sorry to report I did not go to hear a man who works for Jeff Bezos’s [FK laughs] space company, Blue Origin, talk about William Shatner. That’s just not on my list of interests. But— [laughs]
FK: I, I will say, [laughs] I wouldn’t have either. [both laugh]
ELM: But, on your interests, I did go to the Star Trek panel in Hall H, because I was really curious how they were gonna handle it. So—
FK: What’d they do? Because I have dragged you to that panel many times, so. [laughs] You know what it normally is like.
ELM: [overlapping] I like to see your little childlike smile up there, when you see any old, any old alien, and Flourish goes [in a high voice] “Oh my God! It’s, it’s from the whatever!” [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Oh, I wish this was a video podcast. [laughs] Your imitation of me is unfortunately so accurate.
ELM: [still laughing] So…so in the past, you know, they always have some emcee, it’s usually a senior-level entertainment journalist, sometimes they get a comedian to moderate these things, and because they’re like these block presentations, they will have, you know, 30 minutes for one show, 30 minutes for another, 30 minutes for another, or one movie, et cetera, et cetera. And so they’ll like, show footage, or a trailer, and then they’ll bring out a panel, which is usually dominated by actors, but often there’s a director on there, a producer. I’m explaining this to you, even though you could explain this part because this is the normal year.
FK: This is the normal part. It’s OK, I’m happy to let you do the fansplaining today.
ELM: [laughs] So…for the Star Trek presentation, it was still about three shows: Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and, uh…what’s the one? Discovery.
FK: Which is hilarious to me because they also just announced that they’re doing Starfleet Academy, which—anyway, nevermind, let’s move on. It was about those three.
ELM: Those were the main three. To be clear, I only went to part of the Star Trek panel, so maybe they mentioned that.
FK: [laughs] OK.
ELM: One man was on stage. He came out on stage, he was an entertainment journalist, and he just riffed. He talked about himself, and how much he loves Star Trek—
FK: Great. [laughs]
ELM: I don’t envy this man, if you asked me to go talk about, about something I was in the fandom of, instead of the actors of the thing? For 90 minutes?
FK: Oh, I would just die. [laughs]
ELM: To, I would estimate 4,000 people [laughing] in a 6,000-person auditorium?
FK: Right? Because they’re obviously hoping to see trailers, which they still can show. So. [laughs]
ELM: Right, right. But like, he had to do a lot of, like, vamping, is the word I would use, and it was a little bit like…hmm, this is not…it’s an unenviable task. [FK laughs] And at one point he was like, “Star Trek has an Oscar-winner now, let’s give it up for Michelle Yeohhh!!!” And everyone was kinda like, “Excuse me?”
FK: “Is she coming? Is she, is she—”
ELM: [simultaneous] “Is Michelle Yeoh coming? Is she scabbing right now??” And then we were just, suddenly a wave of realization washed over the crowd and we realized we were just clapping for her. [laughs]
FK: That’s great, I hope that she knows that we love her anyway. [laughs]
ELM: And then he did it a few more times, and every time it was the same reaction, it was like, “Is that person coming?”
FK: No.
ELM: And then it was like, “No, we’re just clapping, we’re just clapping for their name.” It was so super weird, because you know, in normal circumstances that person would physically be there, and that’s what’s kind of unusual about this event, right? Is like, you’re literally clapping for them.
FK: Yeah, and I’m sure that like, could he…I guess I shouldn’t say I’m sure, I don’t know, was he allowed to acknowledge, like, “On strike…” [laughs]
ELM: So that was very interesting. The part of that panel I attended, he did not. But every other one I went to, the strike was mentioned, and I was taking kind of an informal poll of everyone I was with who’d gone to various things, and some of them said they didn’t mention the strike at all, even if they were talking about film and television.
FK: Hmmm.
ELM: Which was a little surprising to me, because every single thing I went to, it was either the subject, or it was acknowledged and kind of floating in the room. So in Hall H, I also went to this directors panel, it was three big-budget directors. They were fantastic, and they were like, “We’re just here because we’re contractually obligated, the Directors Guild came to an agreement with the producers,” right? Or with the studios rather. You know? And the strike was kinda this like, occasional background joke. They had had other famous directors pre-record questions, and one of them, they joked afterwards they were like, “I kept expecting Brad Pitt to pop out in the background,” because it was like some movie he’s working, he was working on before.
FK: Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And then one of them was like, “Oh, there’s this whole strike thing,” and they were like, “Oh yeah yeah, ha ha ha,” so it’s that kinda thing, you know?
FK: Yeah. Well it kinda makes sense to me that the talent, like the directors would be allowed to talk about the strike, but they probably don’t—that was my question, was like, if the franchise has hired this guy to be the presenter?
ELM: Right.
FK: Then they probably told him “Don’t make a thing of it.” Whereas obviously if you’re the director and you have to be like, “Just so you know, this is not, this is not crossing the picket,” you know? [laughs]
ELM: Yeah! Right, well and I think not even that, I mean, I have to imagine individual directors probably all have their own feelings about what happened, you know? Like, yeah, the majority of them voted not to authorize a strike, but plenty of them did, and I’m sure it’s gotta feel weird for them to be like, you know, the part of the triangle [laughing] that is still, you know, outside of this, this frame or whatever. Who knows, I’m not a, I’m not a Hollywood director.
FK: [overlapping] Well and also like, whether or not they think it was the right thing to strike, I’m sure that they, I’m sure that there are people who voted against the directors striking but still support the actors or writers in striking, you know what I mean?
ELM: [overlapping] Absolutely, yeah, sure.
FK: [overlapping] Like you can have different, they don’t all [laugh] operate in lockstep, they can have different feelings about those things too, so.
ELM: Yeah, yeah. And it was interesting, seeing the directors in Hall H, because normally they would each have been there with their individual properties and the casts of the films that they have coming out, one of them was Justin Simien who’s the director of the new Haunted Mansion movie. One cute Comic-Con note, I gotta say—so you know, pedicabs, where the guy bicycles?
FK: Oh yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Disney bought, sponsored a bunch of them, and they made the shell the Haunted Mansion ride shell. You know, the thing you sit in, in the Haunted Mansion?
FK: Yeah! [laughs]
ELM: They made the pedicab look like that, so everywhere you looked, these little Haunted Mansion shells were [laughing] going down the street.
FK: OK, I love that, I have taken one of those pedicabs while drunk many times, [ELM laughs] and by the way they always cost too much and you’re always like, “That was two blocks, why did I do it? But I’m drunk and it’s Comic-Con, so who cares.”
ELM: [overlapping] Don’t do it, don’t do it. [laughs]
FK: But that seems like a great “I’m drunk and it’s Comic-Con” experience. “I’m in the Haunted Mansion!” [laughs]
ELM: It was extremely cute. I mean it was just, it was really, it was a really cute marketing idea, it was one of the best things I saw. You know, because everyone has like—not everyone, but—lots of people have fond feelings about the ride, you know? So.
FK: Yeah, absolutely!
ELM: So yeah, seeing him talk about the movie, and yeah, it was nice that he got more space to talk about it, and everyone wasn’t distracted by like, I don’t know who’s in that movie, LaKeith Stanfield and Danny DeVito, [FK laughs] though obviously I would’ve loved to see Danny DeVito. You know? But like, it was, and there were lots of other panels where it was all these people who do more technical things, and like…
FK: Right.
ELM: Obviously those panels still go on every year, but it really felt like there was more space for some of that. For better or for worse, you know? Like, actors take up a lot of room in our minds, you know?
FK: Yeah, they do. I was gonna say, I think that I would probably have mixed feelings in those positions, because on the one hand those people often rely on the actors to sort of be the entertainers, because you don’t become a director or do technical things because you want to, like, entertain people yourself, by, by, [laughs] by public speaking, right?
ELM: Right, right.
FK: You know? And actors are usually—OK, not all film actors, but a lot of them are very good at that, and excited, and like, basking in this attention in a way that not every person [both laugh] who works in the industry is. So like, I’m sure there are people who are like, “I can’t believe I have to carry this myself now. But on the other hand, [laughs] someone is listening to me for once!” You know?
ELM: [laughs] It’s true. Yeah, and I just feel like…I mean, interested in your perspective on this from working in Hollywood for a while. It’s interesting to think about how Comic-Con and how these other studio- and streamer-specific events that they’ve kind of created in that mold, you know, like the…I mean, I don't know, some of these kinda predate it, but D23 for Disney, right, is kind of like Disney’s Comic-Con, you know? It’s like, they get to, right?
FK: [overlapping] Mmm hmmm. Yeah, absolutely it’s like that. Yeah, yeah.
ELM: And this kind of idea that, you know…30 years ago, actors in a big movie, you know, they do all the press, they’d go to the premiere, but they didn’t have an expo where they all were trotted out on stage to smile with their beautiful faces, and everyone could be like, “Wow, this movie’s coming out, look at these humans in this context,” you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, totally.
ELM: And so like, I feel that’s now become kind of baked into the machinery of the entertainment industry, you know?
FK: Yeah, it’s interesting, because the thing that those sort of private cons always makes me think of—I don’t know if this was the first one of these, but it’s the one that I always think of as predating D23 or whatever, which is BlizzCon, the Blizzard Entertainment thing? And that one I think was because…I don’t know why they started doing it for sure, but my impression has been that there was a period where no one in the entertainment industry was taking video games very seriously as something that people were fans of, but there was fan demand to like, meet the voice actors, and like, the artists, and all this stuff, right? And so they—
ELM: [overlapping] Mmm, yeah yeah yeah. See exclusive previews.
FK: Right, to see—and to play in a tournament or to watch people play a tournament.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
FK: To like, come and dress up in cosplay about this thing. And they recognized that people actually did want that experience at a time when like, there wasn’t that availability anywhere else. Right?
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: And nobody, nobody was even doing coverage of new video games [laughs] that much. I mean, there were, there was coverage, but not the way that there would be of films or of TV or whatever.
ELM: Right.
FK: So, it’s interesting to me to think about how, like, that to me feels like an old thing, that’s a before “geek is chic” and before people recognized that video games made more money than movies do, which they do, by the way. And then like, now we’re sort of in this space where it’s like, we’re entering maybe a post- space, you know?
ELM: Yeah, no, but it’s interesting to me too because when you think about like, old-school fan cons where actors would be there, you know, the classic Star Trek convention or whatever. It wasn’t so much a marketing blitz kind of opportunity, it wasn’t, “Here’s where the people making the new Star Trek show are gonna show, drop the exclusive trailer,” you know what I mean?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: It was something that a fandom had gathered around, to a scale that they could actually, say, pay Bill Shatner, you know, to come and do an appearance or whatever, right? It wasn’t necessarily like, this kinda preemptive—I mean this is what we talked about with Comic-Con in the past, this sort of preemptive presumption of fandom that comes from the studios, the “You’re gonna love this franchise,” kinda thing, right? Like…
FK: [overlapping] Right, right, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s very true. And I mean it feels also like that is…it’s interesting, because there’s like a relationality to even something like BlizzCon, which is organized by the, you know, by the Powers That Be, but still is about people who already love the thing. [laughs] Right? Or D23. Even those, but especially old Star Trek cons and like, you know, old-fashioned cons that are put on by fans, for fans, and then they invite talent to come? [laughs] Right?
ELM: Yeah. Right, right.
FK: All of those are fundamentally actually relational, about the relationship between fans and the people who make the things they’re fans of, and the actors that they’re fans of, and the writers that they’re fans of, right? Like, there’s a conversation, almost, happening in those spaces. Which I feel like is not…Hall H is one to many. Right?
ELM: Sure. Sure.
FK: Whereas those fan cons feel a little bit more like there’s some talking back, there’s some interaction, there’s some, you know, uh…
ELM: Right, right, right.
FK: James Doohan can like, find out that someone is suicidal and then say “I’ll meet you at the next con,” every con for ten years, and actually have a relationship with a fan. You, that doesn’t happen to people anymore, you know?
ELM: Wait, is this a true story, or like, a very bleak [laughing] example that you came up with?
FK: [overlapping] Yes! No no no, he met, he got a letter from her, and she—he got—this is very famous, James Doohan, who plays Scotty in Star Trek, got a letter from a fan who confessed that she had suicidal ideation, and he wrote her back and said, “I’m gonna be at a con in your area and I want to meet you there.”
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, God…
FK: [overlapping] And she came, and he met her, and he made a date with her to meet her at the next con.
ELM: [overlapping] Stop….
FK: And he did this for like, ten years, and at the end she had made it through her depression, and gotten a Master’s degree, and like, had a really happy life. And it makes me cry every time I think about it, this is the good part of fandom, right? [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] Oh my God! [laughs] I mean, that’s so kind of him, too, you know? To like…get so invested in the…
FK: [overlapping, laughing] I know! Every, he was apparently a great guy. [laughs]
ELM: In the life of a stranger, you know? All right.
FK: Yeah! I mean…yeah.
ELM: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, he could’ve met her once, and been like, “You just keep on fightin’!” You know? And then that’s that. [both laugh]
FK: I mean admittedly I think he was planning to go to those cons anyway. But still!
ELM: Still! Still. Still. [laughs] I mean, don’t get me wrong, just talking about all the different things that happen at Comic-Con, which—at SDCC—which is, you know, what, the 150,000 attendees or so inside and then another 100,000-plus in the general…
FK: Whoo.
ELM: Non-badge…
FK: [laughs] Just marinatin’ in the vibes.
ELM: Yeah, just bakin’ under that—you know, beautiful weather, not gonna lie. I got off the plane yesterday and I was just like, why do I frickin’ live here…
FK: [laughs] Back in the armpit of the world.
ELM: [laughs] Well it’s like, also, you, you’ve landed at JFK in the summer. And like, I love the ocean. But it’s like I am being punched in the face with the smell of hot seaweed, you know? [FK laughs] And it’s like, for anyone who doesn’t know, JFK is on Jamaica Bay, which is a big…in the hot summer night, pungent, bay. Um…
FK: [laughs] It’s smelly! It’s, and it’s like, sometimes I’m like, “The smell of the ocean!” And sometimes I’m like, “The reek of the ocean!” [both laugh]
ELM: You know, I love it, but it’s not what I want after I’ve been, you know, in the land of…
FK: [overlapping] In beautiful San Diego, California.
ELM: The land of beautiful weather. Um…you know, those kind of connections I feel like certainly happen in corners of San Diego, but—
FK: I’m sure.
ELM: I think one thing that ties, to me, we wanna talk about this year and the strikes, I’ve already talked about Hall H a little bit. So one of the big theses I came to in the article was the absence of Hollywood wasn’t like the absence of the machine. To me, it really felt like the absence of humans. Right?
FK: [laughing] Oh, oh, wow.
ELM: Whaddya laughin’ about?
FK: No, I’m just laughing about how that’s so true, right? Like, if nothing else, even if it’s one to many, you do still get a sense of the actors as people.
ELM: Absolutely! And like, it was really, you know, like seeing…I mean, seeing Justin Simien up there, who was awesome, seems like an incredibly cool director, and imagining a normal thing where he’d be there with all of the actors from the thing. And I was like, “They’re not here.” And I thought about that, I thought “Danny DeVito is not in this room with me right now.” [both laugh] You know? It was really just all about the lack of Danny DeVito to me, that was really what defined my Comic-Con.
FK: Uh huh.
ELM: But just the kind of idea, and like, looking at the schedule and seeing canceled, canceled, canceled, seeing this person won’t come…I talked with some friends who went to the Good Omens panel in Ballroom 20, which is the second-largest venue, and they didn’t even have a vamping man. They literally just had someone from Comic-Con come in and say, “Do not film this,” you know, that spiel they always give being like, “This is exclusive.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And then immediately went to a pre-recorded thing. They said that they saw the first episode of the second season, and then they had a pre-taped Q&A with the actors that they’d made very clear was filmed before the strike began. [laughs] They like, put a big date at the bottom being like, hey—
FK: Well, good for them I guess, [laughs] yeah.
ELM: But it feels like, the man who’s the head of Comic-Con does a lot of the intros of big things in Hall H, and he came out before the Star Trek thing, and he said “We’ve got a lot of great content for you coming up.” And I just thought, you know, if the actors were here, they would never be calling it “content.” You know? [FK laughs] They would say “We’ve got a lot of great surprises, got some incredible guests coming,” and those are humans! But instead they said, “Here’s the content!”
FK: Right. Content.
ELM: And you know, I don’t know what other word he was supposed to use, because that’s kind of the word that exists right now, you know, to show, and it was a variety of sizzle reels and trailers and an episode they showed, but it did kind of hammer home that sort of…dehumanizing distance, of them being gone, and… I don’t know, I had this line in my article where it’s like, I can see, I feel like there’s an ideal world in which the studios, the ideal relationship for them is the IP, and there’s fans/consumers, and as few people in between those as possible.
FK: Yeah, for sure.
ELM: And like when you think about the stuff that they’re striking over, how they want to like, scan all their faces and then just create these ghoulish versions of them forever, they would love it if they didn’t have to work with these actors ever again. You know?
FK: Uh, have you, you know, which I think is so funny, have you seen the meme that takes the like, “You wouldn’t download a car—you wouldn’t steal a car” thing? Remember?
ELM: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
FK: Right, you remember these, like when we were youths there were anti-piracy things, right, you wouldn’t steal a car. [laughs] And then “You wouldn’t download a movie.” And someone changed it to be, “You wouldn’t download an actor.” [both laugh] It’s like, Hollywood, I believe that the problem is that we have all now internalized the thing that you tried to teach us, and now you’re trying to say that you have different rules, fuckers. [laughs]
ELM: [laughing] That’s really funny. You know they would also steal a car.
FK: Oh, they would absolutely steal a car, it’s fine. [ELM laughs] And download things. It’s just that, you know, there’s laws that they have to follow.
ELM: Yes, it’s true. But you know what I mean though, it’s just kinda like, also…I feel like we’re in such a rut, you know? And it’s like, there’s an idea that they would just give you the same thing over and over again with the same people, you know, like, “You loved this guy 50 years ago? We got him. And we’re gonna try to cash out on that teeny little sliver, that ping of nostalgia you get. And we’re just gonna, we’re just gonna give him to you again. We’re gonna give you the same thing over and over again. You like that one? We got ten more just like that. We’re gonna crank ’em out right now,” you know? And it’s just like…one of the funniest things I saw at Comic-Con is in that directors panel, which I didn’t write about in the article at all but actually was very interesting, is… Gareth Edwards was there, who was the director of Rogue One, amongst other things.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And he has a movie coming out this year called The Creator. Have you seen anything for this?
FK: No.
ELM: It’s an original sci-fi film.
FK: Whoa!! I didn’t know they made those anymore!
ELM: [laughing] So, they said that, they were like, “It’s an original sci-fi film,” the crowd—I have not seen a crowd go that wild, you know, since they were like, churnin’ out the next Marvel thing in there, you know? And I was just like, this is, that we’re so excited—
FK: It’s not the thing that we’ve seen befooooore!
ELM: [laughs] And then they play the trailer, and I thought it was actually really good, it was really well done, interesting.
FK: Good!
ELM: And the crowd went wild. They loved it, you know? But I was just like, cracking up that people were like, literally like, scream-cheering for original IP. [laughs]
FK: I mean, I feel that way too! Like, you know, [ELM laughs] I, honestly, I didn’t ask someone to make a Dune movie, you could make a movie that is your movie, that’s good. [laughs] You know? It’s like, when you like people’s artwork, you’re not always actually wanting them to adapt a thing that was already done that was, that you liked. You know?
ELM: Yeah. Well I mean, at least in that one, I guess there were other film adaptations, right? But like, adaptation from books feels a little different to me than this constant rebooting of the same movie. Like, we’re gonna give you the same movie—
FK: [overlapping] Oh no, I specifically find it annoying because like, they kinda fucked up the David Lynch Dune, and I don’t need another Dune.
ELM: Oh yeah, there is another Dune.
FK: [overlapping] I liked it, to be clear, I liked the first movie and I’ll see the second one, but I’m still like, you could’ve been making something new, buddy. Anyway.
ELM: So…so that’s some of the vibes. I’m giving you the vibes.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And then I attended a bunch of panels that were really specifically about the industry, ‘cause it’s also an industry event, so I went to those—there’s a long-running TV writers panel where it’s like, every single one of them has written for one of the Star Treks, you know this one, right?
FK: Right. Yes, I do.
ELM: You know, they’re making jokes about the strike…
FK: They’re allowed to be there, but not to promote their projects, right?
ELM: Right. So unlike the actors, whose faces at a con counts as scabbing, I think…I wonder if an actor was allowed to just talk about their past work, if they would be OK to go. But like, it seemed like all the actors had pulled out.
FK: Uh, so, my understanding, I don’t know if this is true, but I was reading through really closely, and apparently it’s like, any work that would be struck. [laughs] So no. I don’t think that they’re allowed to talk about—
ELM: [overlapping] Right. All franchises…
FK: All franchises, anything like, if it’s already happened, but it would be struck, [laughs] if it were happening today, don’t talk about it. I think they could come and talk about their overall approach to acting. But not about specific things that they’ve acted on. [laughs]
ELM: It really seemed like they all, none of them came. And I think part of it too was they just went on strike. So like, they’re all picketing and stuff. Whereas like, the WGA has been sloggin’ through this for like, three months now, right?
FK: They need a pick-me-up! [both laugh]
ELM: And so there were writers there, they just were not there to promote their work, but there were still panels where they talked about like, the other kind of panels that a writer would be on, you know, talking about—like our friend Javi, who strikesplained so well for us recently, was there to be on a panel about problematic faves. How to reckon with, like, Michael Jackson and stuff like that.
FK: I also feel like a lot of writers, especially at San Diego Comic-Con ‘cause it’s so close to LA, actually pay their own way to Comic-Con because it’s a chance to network and to like, get their name out there and be with people, whereas actors don’t usually do that. That’s not a thing. Like, actors go with a production, whereas writers go as themselves.
ELM: Right, right, that totally makes sense. So at this writers panel, they were making jokes about the strike, and there were things, times when they were talking about things that were, they were currently or recently working on and they just didn’t name them, they were like, “I was recently working on a project,” just by way of example, but the entire thing was about the strike. You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it was about how worried they were. And it was really interesting too, because they were exclusively talking about younger writers. These were all people who were, like, at Javi’s level, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: They’ve been around since the 90s, right, maybe some of them are a little younger…
FK: But they’re established.
ELM: Yes, they were all, they’d all been showrunners of things, for the most part. Of many things. But they were talking about what opportunities and training they had been given, and how worried and upset they were that the younger people were not getting that, people our age and younger. Which is a lot of what Javi talked about, too, when he came on, right? And so I was really glad that, you know, I think that they, both unions have been doing a really great job with the press.
FK: Mmm hmmm, yeah.
ELM: Everyone but the trade publications, which are obviously in the pockets of the studios.
FK: Yeah, I mean what can they really do, you know? [laughs]
ELM: There are some word choices they could make that are a little less biased. [FK laughs] I think. But. Um…so you know, they’re reaching the public through those channels, but similarly the human element—you know, it was meaningful to be in a room and to see this like, very large group of panelists all talk one after another and say the same things, say like, it really made you feel like this is an industry problem, these are the humans that make up this profession. And that’s something that you could only really get at a convention, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: So I was thinking about that as a fan practice, of what do we get out of going to a convention as fans? And this was it, it was, under normal times you’d get fun little anecdotes about workin’ on whatever show, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And this time we got like, very grave, you know, prognostication about the future of their profession. And how often do fans get a chance to hear that people who make the stuff they love kind of, you know, go into detail like that, right? And so I thought that was really interesting to see.
FK: Well that’s really cool, although I have to ask, [laughs] we’ve been talking a lot about the presentations and that aspect of the experience. What was the, like, what was the fan on the street take on this, right? Like, were people like…
ELM: [overlapping] Aw, you know… [doing an accent like an old timey radio character] Hey, fan on the street, how ya doin’.
FK: [laughs] No, but I mean, you know what I mean, like sometimes I’m at Comic-Con and like, wow, I am terminally online, and I’m obviously really in this industry, because I have a totally different take on this than what 99.9% of the people here think is going on.
ELM: [laughs] Yes.
FK: So what was that like? [laughs]
ELM: Well, I gotta say, we did have one of those moments. Because I always think about the time that I was in Hall H for the Fantastic Beasts presentation, and everyone on my Twitter was like, “Ugh, Johnny Depp, ugh, gross, the worst man,” and then Johnny Depp appeared suddenly on stage in costume, and everyone lost their minds around me, and they were like, “Johnny!! I love you Johnny!!” and I was like, wow, this is very strange. [FK laughs] And like, yeah, it often can feel like an angeringly apolitical or anti-political space—
FK: Right.
ELM: —in that, like, some controversy is brewing and the questions that people get asked, even in these smaller panels, are, like, softballs. You know?
FK: Right, like no one—
ELM: Right.
FK: But also like, yeah. In Hall H, they’re not gonna let you ask the hard questions, but—
ELM: [overlapping] They will not allow you, and they will, they will tackle you if you change your question from the one, from the gentle one you said you were gonna do.
FK: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: They will give you the literal hook to get you out of there.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. But on the smaller ones, yeah, like when people are, when it’s like, you’re not being censored, and yet [laughs] that’s what you ask?
ELM: Even then, yeah, it feels very, it’s that element of fan culture that’s very, um…uncritical.
FK: So was there, there was a lot of this around the strikes? Or…
ELM: So that’s already the kind of vibe I think we’re both used to.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And we did have a moment like that when we were getting our badges, one of my friends, when she was getting her badge the person who checked her in was like, “Are you gonna see William Shatner?” [FK laughs] And she was just like…uhhhhh…you know? And I was like, what a Comic-Con, of course that’s how she, like, yeah! William Shatner! No reason to not see that legendary man from Star Trek, you know? [FK laughs]
FK: I feel that I, I need to make it clear to anybody who does not know this…although I love Star Trek, I am an anti-Shat [both laugh] Star Trek fan. As many Star Trek fans are.
ELM: So, that was what I was kind of expecting, you know, and after witnessing all the like, kind of online meltdowns about the cosplay stuff—I feel like we should talk about that a little bit.
FK: Yeah yeah, why don’t we before we start talking about this, right, because…so, I, what started—I guess it was the SAG-AFTRA rules for influencers that got people really worried about whether cosplaying is scabbing.
ELM: OK, so actually it started before that, so you know, right after they struck, which was the end of the week before Comic-Con, over that weekend a few people wrote to them and were like, “I’m a little confused, what are we allowed to do,” et cetera, et cetera. And to be clear, these were not people in SAG at all, and I don’t think people who were intending to be in SAG. But for some reason something got triggered with this strike that wasn’t triggered with the WGA strike, where fans, and people who create YouTube content but like, analysis, you know, and cosplayers, were like, “Actually my continuing to engage with this media, stuff that’s coming out, analyze it, cosplay as it, is that actually scabbing?” And I’m still confused about why that happened then, and didn’t happen with the WGA strike, because, you know, the writers weren’t allowed to promote…
FK: Yeah…I think there was a little bit, because there were people who were like, “What about my fanfic?” You know? “What about fanfic, what about all that?” for the WGA strike.
ELM: [overlapping] Oh, so yeah, that’s right, and when we talked to Javi very early on, people were like, “No scabbing, don’t make fancasts.” And it was like, bro, what are you talking about?
FK: Right, right.
ELM: So it was like, that kind of initial small response went into overdrive with the entrance of the actors, which was not helped by whoever was running that SAG email account, that was replying to them and being like, very vaguely worded, very poorly worded emails being like, “We’re asking folks”—folks, things like that—”We’re asking people not to do x y and z,” and all of it was meant for people who are actors. [laughs] You know?
FK: Right, or like, a cosplayer who aspires to be an actor, or who might be hired by a booth, or…
ELM: Paid influencers…
FK: Right.
ELM: Et cetera, et cetera. But one of these emails that were sent back implied that critics should not review struck work, right? They literally said, “That includes reviews.”
FK: Whoaaa.
ELM: So that’s when I got really kinda mad, and I was, like, journalists have nothing to do with this, obviously we’re gonna report on the strike and I think it’s important if you are covering entertainment, to be working that into any single story you have, if you’re presenting an interview that you did beforehand, put a big thing at the top being like, “This actor is now on strike,” et cetera, et cetera.
FK: Right.
ELM: But I do not work—when I review something, I do not work for the people making that thing, in any capacity. [FK laughs] In fact it’s the opposite of that, I am somewhat in opposition to those people.
FK: Right, and that was what was weirding me out too, because there were a lot of people talking in fandom, the moment that I heard about this was the moment after that person had responded and said, like, cosplayers—were asking people not to cosplay. And suddenly there were a bunch of people being like, “Don’t engage in any way!”
ELM: Right.
FK: “See, they said don’t cosplay, don’t engage with things at all! Because that is scabbing and you should be doing other things with your life right now, or else you’re a scab.”
ELM: The thing that drove me bananas about this whole discourse was, the WGA and now SAG-AFTRA have been extremely vocal about how they don’t want people, right now, to cancel anything. They would still like people to go see Barbie. They still want you to keep paying for Netflix. I’ve seen argued, because partly these numbers are gonna come up in the negotiations as they go forward, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And so it’s like, they want you to continue to value their work, so they have these metric and monetary signals to the studios, that people actually want what they make.
FK: Right. And I imagine that’s probably also the case for actors, right? Like, actors have less power if…yeah.
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, the actors are saying it too! Yeah! If Barbie tanked because everyone was like, “I won’t see Barbie out of solidarity,” which also the majority of people aren’t gonna do anyway, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: So they’re saying like a big boycott is really hard to organize, to get at scale.
FK: But even if you could organize a big boycott, it would just backfire because they’d be like, “See, no one cares.”
ELM: Right, yeah, and it would totally devalue their work. And so, you know, obviously we keep seeing people who are like, “I’m gonna cancel my subscription anyway,” it’s like, well cool, you’re willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of paying less money. You know? [laughs] Like, you’re really helping people out there. But a lot of fans have internalized the like, “OK, don’t cancel yet, that’s what everyone says, we’re gonna keep doing what they ask,” and then were saying things like, “But writing fanfiction and creating fanart is scabbing, because that’s free advertising.” Which basically reduces the fan to a pure consumer, to say that you can only pay for the product, but you can’t have any thoughts about it? You can’t express anything about it? You can’t…I’m sorry, write fanfiction, which is not advertising in any way, at scale? You know?
FK: Yeah, I mean it’s tough because like, on the one hand it is expressing that you love the thing. It is doing that, that’s true. But like, that also suggests that there’s only two ways of engaging, which is pure consumption or uncritical support.
ELM: Yes. Yes.
FK: Which, like…I do think that fanfic can help get people interested in something, and I’m not saying that it doesn’t help those things, but so can a negative review. [laughs] You know?
ELM: Yes. Right, right. Well, as you pointed out, with the fanfic thing…still, at a scale, it’s like…
FK: Yeah, it’s right, it is free advertising, but when you look at it in comparison to actual advertising, it’s a totally different, like…we don’t need to worry about this, guys.
ELM: Right, right. Yeah. Exactly.
FK: Like, it’s fine. It really is a drop in the bucket. [laughs]
ELM: And even then, I noticed also, too, that a lot of this angst and online, you know, worrying about this, went immediately out the door when Barbie came out. You know? And all of a sudden it was just like, “Barbie this and Barbie that,” and I was like, oh, OK, so you were like, gonna be very, you know, very monk-like in your communications about entertainment media properties, but the fun memey one came out and then it didn’t matter at all. So…
FK: Right.
ELM: It is what it is. So like, the cosplay thing, yeah, they put out this official thing that was like, “This is for paid influencers.” And like, influencers? Sorry, they’re in kind of a shitty space, you know? They’ve already kinda wound up in this ethical quagmire, where they’re like, taking money for access, or they’re taking money with like…you know, they’re not in this union.
FK: And they’re looked down on by people in the union, too, to be honest.
ELM: I know, so they’re in this weird spot, but that’s kinda the bed they made, and so I have sympathy for them but it’s also like, this is not relevant to your average cosplayer.
FK: Right.
ELM: And so I think by the time Comic-Con began, I think the word had gotten out about cosplay, and if you’re just doing a regular old cosplay it’s fine. And so obviously there was just as much cosplay as normal, and I wound up interviewing a cosplayer for the piece who was really articulate, she was wearing a button that said, “This character was created by WGA and SAG-AFTRA labor,” and talking about how she cosplayed because she’s a booster. She wanted to show the people who made the thing she loves that she loves it, and if they had said “Don’t cosplay,” she never would’ve done it.
FK: Right.
ELM: When she had initially heard, when this initial confusion was going on, she was planning not to cosplay, and then it was cleared up and she was like, “Oh, good.”
FK: Well, I’m glad to know that it actually, like, the word got out and that it did get cleared up, because I definitely was like…I mean I’m just, I was so curious to see how that would filter out, and I’m sure there are most, I’m sure that most people at Comic-Con didn’t hear a word about any of this, they probably know there’s a strike because there’s so many canceled things, but like…I’m sure they never heard a word about—they’re not worried about cosplaying.
ELM: Right, right, right.
FK: But it’s good to know that people who were considering it, and doing it at a high level, are like “Yeah, I thought about this.” [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, for sure. And it’s interesting too, I didn’t get to include in the article, but she said one of her—she was in a Severance cosplay, and she said one of her other cosplays was Rise of the Pink Ladies. Which, I don’t know if you’ve been following, but that’s the one that was canceled, removed from Paramount+ forever, and then nominated for Emmys like, two weeks later. [laughs]
FK: Yeah yeah yeah. Yep.
ELM: And so she said she’d done that even as a bit of a protest, you know, just to say—which I thought was interesting, this idea of cosplayers using their art and their fan activity to sort of comment on…
FK: Right. “You can’t memory hole me.” [laughs]
ELM: Right, and to comment on the mess that is part of the reason that these two unions are striking, you know? I thought that was kind of an interesting thing.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I wound up interviewing someone from SAG-AFTRA who was there at a demonstration, they were just, like, an awareness demonstration, it wasn’t a picket line. And a writer, and they both talked about how they’d seen all these buttons, signs, huge shows of support, you know, people giving them thumbs up, cheering, and so I think that, for all I think of this as a very anti-political space, I feel like, I just felt like there was something bigger happening, that everyone was like, “Hell yeah, unions!” You know? [FK laughs] That was like, anytime the strike came up…
FK: That’s incredible news actually! [both laugh] No, that’s, that’s way better than I thought it might be.
ELM: Yeah, anytime anyone brought it up in a panel, it was just like, genuine…the kinda cheers that are usually reserved for mentioning a fan favorite, or like a reference, you know what I mean? [FK laughs] I was just like…a celebrity, the strike, you know? I thought that was awesome, and I don’t know, the people that I interviewed in the article were saying, and Javi brought it up too—Javi, I interviewed in the article—but you know, Javi talking about like, everyone is getting fucked over, right? Unless you’re Bob Iger on a yacht, you know this. This is the life you’re living, too, no matter what your job is, probably, you know?
FK: Yep.
ELM: And not your job, you know? When I talked to him for this article, he was talking about, fans know what they wanna watch, and they’re getting nickel-and-dimed by streaming services, and just fucked around on this very tedious, just sucking all the little life out of you. And so I think that everyone kind of understood that it’s all one big problem.
FK: Well, you know, I was actually kind of expecting this to be a depressing episode, where you were like, [ELM laughs] “Well, we care, but turns out the great American viewing public doesn’t give a shit and here’s how I know,” you know? But it turns out that it’s about [laughing] the great American viewing public solidarity with the unions!
ELM: Counterpoint, I do think more people at SDCC than your average person know what’s going on.
FK: Oh, I’m sure that’s true. I’m sure that’s true.
ELM: I mean, we met a woman in the hot tub—I hope she doesn’t mind me referencing her—she was there with her grandsons, she had just booked a trip to San Diego for them, unknowing. [laughs]
FK: Whoops.
ELM: And she was, she didn’t know, she didn’t understand why some of the hotels were so expensive, and she just booked a little vacation for them. It was really cute, she said that they had gone to, like, the non-badged—there’s all these activations, you know?
FK: Well, that’s good!
ELM: I know, and they’re like teenage boys, so it was like, oh, that’s great, you know, you can go to Adult Swim or whatever, that kinda thing.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But you know, she didn’t know very much about the strike. I think she had heard that it was happening, but. So I thought that was interesting, you know? The man on the street, woman on the hot tub, just letting you know what people have to say. [FK laughs]
FK: Yeah, I mean still, I’m not surprised by that. I feel like that would be the case for any strike, that the people who are most invested in the, you know…whatever the industry is, would know the most about it. I’m just glad to hear that the people who are invested—you know, because there is a very real possibility, I have met a lot of people at Comic-Con who don’t seem very engaged with how this stuff is made or anything like that, who are just…you know, “I’m just here to enjoy this thing that I love, and I don’t care about the politics behind it at all.” Like you were saying with Johnny Depp. So that totally could’ve been the attitude, and I’m grateful to hear that it’s not.
ELM: Absolutely, yeah. No, I understand why that would be the assumption. And yeah, I was pleasantly surprised too, right? But I think a lot of it goes down to that idea that it’s fucking people over as fans, right, this current…you know, the Rise of the Pink Ladies thing is just like, oh my God, you know?
FK: [overlapping] Oh yeah! I mean they memory-holed Star Trek: Prodigy, I’m pissed about that!
ELM: Flourish, I’m sorry, you have like 100,000 other Star Treks, calm down.
FK: I know, but they still shouldn’t remove it, and I can’t even buy it on DVD! I need to be a completionist!
ELM: [laughs] Did you see that they are selling just the DVD cases for…WandaVision? With…the discless DVDs, I think it was?
FK: That’s horrifying. Get out.
ELM: [overlapping] People were like “This is my Joker moment, right now. When Disney sells the DVD case and no physical media.”
FK: You need to give me a fuckin’ Blu-ray! [ELM laughs] Give me the Blu-ray! I wanna—I don’t want a DVD by the way, I want a Blu-ray, because I am a fan of the thing and I wanna watch it in beautiful high definition without my fucking internet connection deciding that it wants to poop out midway through!
ELM: Flourish, I’m sorry to tell you, we’re in a discless age right now.
FK: [overlapping] I hate it.
ELM: You just get the box, no disc.
FK: I HATE. IT. [ELM laughs] Speaking of which, if AI is good for anything, it should be good for upscaling Deep Space Nine, so that’s my second beef.
ELM: I don’t even know what words you just said, but OK. [FK laughs] I recognize “AI” and “Deep Space Nine.” [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] I’m just saying, if we’re gonna use AI for something, Deep Space Nine was shot on video, so you can’t make it ultra high-definition, but AI can do that. It’s the one good use for AI.
ELM: [overlapping] Ohhh, all right. Oh no, Flourish, I just left Comic-Con, don’t make me listen to this right now, [FK laughs] I can’t, that’s too, too much.
FK: [overlapping] Am I, I am channeling the Kenergy. [both laugh]
ELM: Um…yeah, no, I, I think that yeah, it was a really pleasant surprise, just how much—it was in every conversation I talked to with everyone.
FK: Wow.
ELM: And granted I was talking to a lot of people in the industry, in the entertainment industry, but like, it just seemed to be…it just seemed to be very much this kind of undergirding. And this kind of idea of like, what I said in the article was just kind of, like, sense that that is the future of entertainment. How these strikes wind up. This is, they keep talking about how these strikes are existential, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, this isn’t just, we need to kind of re-up the relationship and get them to budge on something, this is like, if we don’t—you know what I mean? I don’t mean to diminish the past strikes, right, there were important business reasons why they needed to happen. But this is kind of like, yeah, if they don’t solve this, it is gonna be the fan-consumer and the studio-owned IP, and there’s gonna be no one in between. Right, you know? [FK makes a sound of discomfort] There’s gonna be one sad writer cleaning up shitty AI scripts, and the holograms of actors. They’re not holograms, I know how technology works, but you know what I mean.
FK: [laughs] I do, I do know what you mean.
ELM: And we’re gonna, we’re gonna be shown a hologram of the actor, and they’re gonna be like, “Michelle Yeoh, ladies and gentlemen!” and we’ll all go “Yeahhh there she is!” Right, you know? I don’t know if this is too bleak… [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] Yeah, “She’s been dead for 30 years, but here she still is!” [ELM laughs] And we’re like, “Oh God, great, great.”
ELM: Right? That’s, that feels like the world they wanna create.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And just this kind of idea of like…fandom doesn’t need the actors in the thing, fans need each other. Right? But like, you want the—you want artists to make the art that you’re into, you know?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: You don’t want it just to be like, this kind of name-pattern recognition of like, “You like this? Here it is again, I’ve just generated it for you.”
FK: And you also do want, like…I’m sorry, I also want, there is a magic in that meeting the celebrity, or the actor who you love or whatever, you know what I mean? I know that’s not like, that’s not the major thing that I want in fandom, but it is a thing that I like.
ELM: Extremely uncool stance, Flourish, you’re excited to meet celebrities? I’m kidding.
FK: Yeah! Look! I’m gonna be uncool about this. [both laugh] Like, whatever, like the James Doohan story, you know what I mean?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Those little moments of connection and meaningful…you know, even when they’re just five seconds or whatever, it’s actually nice. [laughs]
ELM: No, yeah, I’m not gonna—
FK: We like that! [laughs]
ELM: I like, you know, you’re talking to someone who went to Hall H once to see James McAvoy, even though it wasn’t a thing I cared about. Right? [FK laughs] There is a magic to it, I’m, I’m trying to—
FK: [overlapping] Preaching to the choir.
ELM: I’m trying to be cool here, but I was just like, yeah, I literally went because I wanted to see him talk.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Talk about how his daemon, in His Dark Materials, him personally, is an otter. [both laugh]
FK: That will make me laugh for the rest of my life.
ELM: He kept saying that in every interview afterwards too, he was like, “I’m an otter, I’m an otter.” And it’s like, first of all. [FK laughs] I know you know what that means.
FK: [overlapping] How many gay men do you know… [laughs]
ELM: I know you know what that means, but also outside of the sex thing, like…it’s not sex, it’s like a designation, right?
FK: Yeah, it’s like a sexiness designation.
ELM: Yes. Outside of that, also yeah, he’s totally like an otter. He’s small. He’s kinda wiggly. [FK laughs] James McAvoy wasn’t there, wasn’t there, so…
FK: [overlapping] Small, muscular, ready to murder someone with his claws and steal a surfboard…
ELM: [overlapping] Oh yeah, he’s a, I learned from the film Zootopia that otters are predators.
FK: Oh, not only are they predators, they will fuck humans up. [laughing] Like if you see an otter that looks like it’s in trouble, don’t go near that otter, it will fuck you up.
ELM: [overlapping, laughing] They look, they look so cute! No, I, you know, you’ve seen that film right? How it’s got this like, bad racial politics of the predators and the prey?
FK: Yes, I have.
ELM: And when the otter was a part of that I was like, “Excuse me??”
FK: Yes, they are murder machines.
ELM: [overlapping] It had never occurred to me. [laughs]
FK: If they were, they’re like a prime example of an animal that if they were larger, would be like…killing humans for fun.
ELM: Like a cat.
FK: Yeah! So cute! So murderous.
ELM: I think about that sometimes. When I pick Orlando up and she looks at me and I’m like, “Imagine if you were so much larger.” [laughs]
FK: Yeah, she would eat you. Whereas a dog would be like, “Hi, best friend.”
ELM: I know. I read Clifford.
FK: Yeah, exactly, Clifford is like…a documentary. [both laugh] All right, I feel like we’re getting off topic.
ELM: So, OK, back to fans though. You know, outside of Comic-Con, I think one thing that we should stress, and I think we do stress when we talk about Comic-Con, is like, most fans—and I think a lot of our listeners—don’t have much contact with that kind of fan culture at all. You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: They’ll say “That’s too consumerist,” or “That’s too big and loud and I would never go to that kinda thing,” right?
FK: Or just “It’s far away from me, so I don’t do it.”
ELM: Yeah, a million reasons that’s not for me, right? But I do think that it’s part of an ecosystem, you know? We see every year the people who aren’t at Comic-Con waiting for the trailers and stuff like that. I actually didn’t even realize, because they canceled the Interview With the Vampire panel, that the new trailer had come out, until I got back to LA! [both laugh] Did you watch it yet?
FK: No.
ELM: Flourish, what? You’re a monster, go watch it!
FK: I’ve been saving—I’ll watch it as soon as we’re off.
ELM: Armand’s like, sexy, loaded looks, it’s too much.
FK: I knew it was gonna be too much, that’s why I’ve been saving it to savor! It’s like when you have like, when you have a box of chocolates and you save the best one, it sits there for a little while, and you finally eat it? It’s like that!
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah. Yeah. All right. OK, anyway. But I think this is all, you know, there, this is all an ecosystem that works together. You know? This is just an in-person place where a lot of that stuff happens. And so yeah, I don’t know, I would say overall I’ve been very interested to see fans online kind of embrace the strikes. There’ll be like one guy tweeting a picture of an A-list celebrity actor and being like, “You’re rich, why do you need this?” and then 8,000 people dunking on him, you know? Or explaining to him why he’s a monster, right?
FK: [overlapping] Yeah. Good. Yeah.
ELM: And so it’s like, there’s been a lot of commentary about how badly the studio heads and the AMPTP misjudged [laughing] the PR elements of this entire thing.
FK: Yeah, you had all of the most famous people who are really good at talking to cameras and saying things, you pissed them off, and then you thought you were gonna have a better…? [laughs]
ELM: [overlapping] The people who are great at writing, and the most beautiful people in the world, right, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: Like…yeah. No, and everyone is so on message too, I gotta say, the people in the striking unions I interviewed, I was like, “Everyone knows exactly what to say. I’m really impressed with all of you that you have the messaging down so well.”
FK: Great.
ELM: But it’s like, there’s a world in which fans did say “I want what I want,” but I think fans can tell it’s broken. You know? And also fans, I’ve seen so much commentary, fans are just decent people. They’re like, “No! I don’t want the writer of my favorite thing to live in their car! Why would I want that? I would rather not have that thing exist, than them have to go through that to try to make things.”
FK: [overlapping] Yeah! Right. Right.
ELM: Like, and that’s great, because I don’t think I would, I generally think of like you’re saying, you’re surprised to hear this, I don’t think of fans as particularly selfless, I think often fans can be quite selfish. They want what they want, you know?
FK: Fans are like humans in general. Which is to say…
ELM: [overlapping] Yeah, but sometimes like, jacked up to eleven, a little bit, I would say. [FK laughs]
FK: I love it when humanity pleasantly surprises me, so. I mean I don’t know, what’s the, what’s the message of, what’s the message that you took away from this? What should I…what should we be getting from your Comic-Con experience, Elizabeth? [both laugh]
ELM: Um…still super awesome, shoutout to The Blind Burro, the only bar I like in all of America. [FK laughs] They, I gotta give them credit, they did like a Barbie crossover, and it really, it really brought a lot of joy to the people drinking margaritas.
FK: Which was you. You were the people drinking margaritas. [laughs]
ELM: No, I was drinking Pacificos, but thank you.
FK: OK.
ELM: So, I think that my biggest takeaway from all of this was that human element, you know? And that kind of idea that you could talk about all this stuff online, you could see footage from the picket lines of actors giving their spiels or whatever, but the lack of them there was really striking. The, those moments when they’re asking us to cheer their names and they weren’t there was striking. And the people who were there, and who were talking about their labor struggle, that was very palpable to me. And like, the fact that there were people all over wearing buttons being like, “I support the WGA, I support SAG-AFTRA,” I don’t know, that’s, yeah, that was kinda moving, you know? [laughing] The fact that people do, that’s wonderful. And the fact that like, they weren’t trying to impede the event, it was still going on, there were still plenty of things that could happen there that aren’t related to these unions, but the fact that it still had such a presence there in people’s minds, I think says something…somewhat, maybe somewhat even hopeful about this whole thing, so. I don’t know, is that…is that too heartwarming?
FK: No! That’s perfect.
ELM: Is your heart warmed?
FK: My heart is, it’s, it’s tingling.
ELM: Tingling?
FK: A warm and tingly feeling.
ELM: That’s what—I don’t know if you saw—but that’s what, in an interview recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike, actor Sam Reid, who plays Lestat de Lioncourt, said about Assad Zaman’s performance as Armand. [FK laughs] In the second season of Interview With the Vampire.
FK: All right, OK…
ELM: Tingling! He said it gave him, it gave him tingles!
FK: Elizabeth.
ELM: Just thinkin’ about Sam Reid’s tingles. [laughs]
FK: [overlapping] We are now—we are—OK. I, I think we are now out of discussing this about fan culture, and into discussing your fan culture, and that means…
ELM: [overlapping] False! False! What you are misunderstanding here is, [laughing] Sam Reid is a bigger Interview With the Vampire fan than any of us, and you know it.
FK: [laughing] Elizabeth, I’m calling it now. This has been a wonderful conversation, and I will talk to you next time for our anniversary episode.
ELM: Don’t say goodbye to me, we have to talk about Patreon.
FK: [groans] OK. All right, all right. Really quickly. We support this podcast. By. Patreon.com/Fansplaining. Where. You can. Pay your money. And receive your perks.
ELM: You sound like Bill Shatner.
FK: [laughs] I think I was doing that unconsciously.
ELM: Bill Shatner in space. [laughs]
FK: [laughing] In, in seriousness though, uh…that is how we support the podcast. And there are many different levels that you can support us, from $1/month all the way up to as much a month as you want, rewards that include a bunch of special episodes, getting a cool little Fansplaining pin, having your name read in the credits…so please go to Patreon.com/Fansplaining if you want to support us in a monetary way.
ELM: Yes.
FK: Do I let you talk, or are you gonna talk about Sam Reid now?
ELM: [after a beat, laughs] You made me think about him again.
FK: Great, the answer then is possibly no.
ELM: No, I gotta, I got it. In non-monetary ways that you can support us: you can spread the word about the podcast. You can share our transcripts for people who are not podcast listeners—we have a full transcript every time we have a new episode. You can write to us, you can let us know your thoughts about this topic, I would love to hear fans talking about their personal investment in these strikes; you can do that by writing fansplaining at gmail.com; you can leave us a message on our website, Fansplaining.com; you can do it in the ask box on Tumblr, and you can leave us a voicemail at 1-401-526-FANS. And you can also find us on Tumblr, Twitter—
FK: X!
ELM: Twitter! [both laugh] And Instagram.
FK: And Bluesky!
ELM: Oh shit, and Bluesky! [laughs] Yes, and Bluesky.
FK: All right, all right, all right. You did it, now I will let you go so that you can think about Sam Reid some more. I’ll talk to you later, Elizabeth.
ELM: I’m gonna. Goodbye. [both laugh]
[Outro music]