Okay so
I’m officially untracking the main Emma Approved tag.
I feel more and more like I might be on my way out…
This post, with its accumulated reblogs, hit me kind of hard. That so many people whose opinions I respect have reached what approaches a consensus position of “Emma Disapproved” carries a lot of weight with me.
I wanted to add a few more notes of my own. I don’t want to pile on with negativity, and I’ve already whined about the show a lot, but since my last whine pre-dated the big drama of the past weekend I wanted to update with some of my latest thoughts. These are kind of disorganized and rambly; apologies for that. But I think more for me than for anyone else, I wanted to get this off my chest so I can move on.
The metashow
I haven’t bothered to watch the last five EA episodes. (I didn’t realize it was so many until I checked.) It wasn’t some big act of protest. I just didn’t feel compelled. Having given the characters time to engage me, it just hadn’t happened, and watching felt like a chore (more on that later).
At the same time, I’ve read lots of meta, including all Bernie Su’s relevant posts, Rammi’s google doc, Bernie Su’s google doc, and all the recent fandom drama in the #Emma Approved tag. (The last is kind of ironic, since I haven’t bothered to read the tag since the show started. I guess fandom drama is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, at least in small doses.)
The metashow, with the creators interacting with the fandom, was a big draw for me from the beginning of LBD, so maybe it’s not surprising that that aspect of the recent events has been more compelling for me than the show itself. Fandom interaction by the creators has largely been missing from EA, at least in the positive sense that people like Rachel, Mary Kate, Ashley, Katie, Jay, and Alexandra interacted with the fandom during LBD. And I’ve noticed in thinking more about it that that sort of interaction is a strong feature of the other LBD-inspired creations I’ve been loving lately, like AoJE and ATTV. Maybe it’s a feature of these small, web-based creations, something they can do well that bigger, more-professional shows (like TV and movies) can’t.
With the benefit of hindsight, that may be one of the mistakes Bernie Su made in where he took Emma Approved. In being “ambitious” (in his view, at least), making something that aspired to be more like a television show, he may have lost sight of some of the small, human qualities of LBD that made it compelling.
Bernie Su and writing female characters
I appreciated Clavisa’s comments about Lookbook (the webseries), which I didn’t watch. Increasingly I’m wondering if a lot of the negative response I’ve had to EA is rooted in the creative vision being narrowed down (mainly) to that of Bernie Su, without the input of the strong female perspective that infused much of the writing in LBD, especially early on in the show.
I confess that I soured on a number of writing choices in LBD that played out in the Lydia arc and its aftermath. In the past I’d (maybe unfairly) blamed that largely on Rachel. I wonder now if blame could more properly go to Bernie Su and/or Hank. It’s probably impossible for someone in my position to know what happened in the decisions that led to those choices being made. But having series like Lookbook and Emma Approved, where Bernie Su’s storytelling is highlighted more, is at least an interesting data point in speculating about that.
With all that said, I’m not a woman and don’t flatter myself that I’m as sensitive to depictions of female characters as others are. But I’ve loved content that tends to be labeled as “chick lit” (or the film equivalent) for many years. I found a lot to like in LBD in that area, but just haven’t felt that same connection with EA. The earlier commenters in this thread gave me a lot to think about.
Laziness versus exhaustion
I wanted to take back one word I used during my earlier criticism. I said that many of the choices with EA felt creatively “lazy”. After reading Bernie Su’s recent posts and watching some of the criticism hangout, though, I want to revise that.
As a parent of a teenager, I often find myself harping on my child’s effort level with schoolwork. Maybe some of that spilled over into my criticism of the creative approach in EA. Especially in terms of the creative shortcuts that have been made with the transmedia, it just seems like the show’s creators didn’t really even make an effort.
But a lack of effort doesn’t have to be the result of willful laziness. It can also be the result of people making a good-faith effort, but simply being too exhausted to do an adequate job. Bernie Su has basically acknowledged as much. His whole intro section to his criticism-response google doc reads like an extended apology for his being too exhausted to do EA justice. It sounds almost whiney: “Hey, don’t get on my case. I sacrificed my own mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing to create LBD, and I’m doing it again for Emma Approved. You unappreciative fans should be grateful.”
The response, of course, is: Bernie Su, please, take a break. The show is not important enough for you to sacrifice your health. And no one made you do it. The only thing you’ve entered into any explicit obligation to provide is the Kickstarter perks (in particular, the DVD). If providing that has proven to be unexpectedly challenging (as it obviously has), then forget the rest and of it and just concentrate on that.
It’s significant to note, I think, that the January hiatus in EA was something Bernie Su was planning to do before the big fan criticism blowup following his reaching out to Rammi after her tweet. As he described it, it was only because he’d already decided on the hiatus that he even had time to go into the fandom and saw all the unhappiness.
The act of creation should be joyful and fun. Not exclusively so; that wouldn’t be realistic. The insane amounts of effort required for any high-grade creative effort are always going to leave creators exhausted from time to time. But if there isn’t also some joy in the process, some aspect of it that is cool and fun, no creator will be able to sustain the effort for long.
I think the contrast between the EA creator and the AoJE and ATTV creators is one of the things that has brought this home to me so strongly. Can you even imagine the creators of those latter two shows writing a rambling complaint about what a chore it was for them to be creating their shows?
If creation isn’t joyful, it will show in the work. And clearly, Bernie Su views EA as a chore at this point. The many creative shortcuts that have been taken with things like story, character, and world-building feel like the actions of someone overwhelmed and just trying to get through this.
I don’t want to exaggerate things, but Bernie Su’s social media output recently almost paints a picture of someone on the verge of a breakdown. There’s no way to expect him to do good creative work while he’s in such a state. As one of the people who loved the project he worked on previously and was part of the push to get more, I feel a little ashamed for not having considered the effect it has been having on him as a person.
Collaboration vs. solo creation
Bernie Su prides himself on being the kind of person who can create professional-looking video content super fast and super efficiently. “One-take Bernie”, or something like that, is a label he’s talked about proudly before, the idea being that he will get the shot and get on to the next one. Which is a great achievement, I’m sure, and is certainly a requirement for anyone to be a great showrunner.
But while it may be necessary, I don’t think it’s sufficient. Not if you want to create something great. Being able to make decisions all day long and get the job done means that the result will be professional-looking, but it doesn’t mean it will be great art. It doesn’t mean it will be compelling.
Bernie Su used his talents to create an environment at LBD that, at least at times, allowed for the creation of something really beautiful and meaningful. But I think it may well have been the contributions of other people — writers and actors, especially — that supplied much of that depth of meaning.
I think in his current exhausted state, Bernie Su has pared away everything else in pursuit of getting EA done and in the can. And one of the things that has been pared away is the collaboration that could have led to something better.
The Kickstarter distribution
One of my earlier speculations was that the way the Kickstarter overage was distributed might have led to bad blood with some of those who’d contributed to LBD’s success, with the result that EA ended up being made by a smaller, less-collaborative team (or at least, a team that didn’t include many of the people who’d been involved with LBD). Bernie Su talked about the issue of the Kickstarter expenditures a lot in the hangout, giving more details than I would have expected in some areas, though not really addressing the underlying issue as effectively as he might have.
That’s understandable, on both counts (his providing both too much and too little detail), since he was speaking off the cuff. Boiled down, he basically seemed to be asserting that 1) Hank didn’t get any Kickstarter money, 2) he (Bernie Su) got some, but no more than he was due based on his time invested in the project and arguably less than he might have, and 3) the allocations to others was done in a manner that seemed (at least to Bernie Su) to have been fair. And unstated, but implicit, was 4) people like me with concerns based on the rumors that were going around are just going to have to trust him.
I’m fine with that. I don’t expect to get any more information, and certainly don’t feel I have the right to insist on it. In the future I’ll be more aware of potential concerns I might have with crowdfunding creators, and creators looking for crowdfunding would probably do well to be more aware of the potential for such concerns. Live and learn.
How to handle fan criticism
It’s a truism of creative work that you should listen to people’s complaints to get an idea for what’s not working. But you shouldn’t necessarily follow their prescriptions for how to fix it. I think that would be a good piece of advice for the EA creator(s) to follow right now. Lots (and lots) of fans have things they don’t like about EA, and lots of them have very specific instructions for how they think the problems should be fixed.
I hope that in working through what the problems are and how to fix them, Bernie Su and the rest of the EA creative team will take to heart those things that a very large contingent of fans are saying are not working, rather than taking refuge in the excuse that “some fans think we’re doing great.” Yes, some fans think you’re doing great. Some fans will always think you’re doing great. But probably not enough for you to get away with phoning the work in.
But after listening to the fans about what’s not working, it’s going to be up to the creators to figure out what they can do to fix it.
Why is the hiatus happening?
Bernie Su says he thinks the quality of EA has been good overall, and he’s proud of what they’ve accomplished so far. But looking forward, he didn’t think the next month’s shooting was going to go well at all, and that’s why he decided on the hiatus. He says he wasn’t aware of the negative fan response until now, after making the decision to go on hiatus, so the negative fan reaction wasn’t a factor in the decision.
I think there’s probably a little more to it than that. Bernie Su and the creative team may not have been explicitly following all the negative fan commentary. But I’m certain they are intimately aware of their YouTube viewership. And EA has lost a lot of viewers compared to LBD at its peak. The last EA episode I watched has about 67K views currently. That’s about half what LBD shows from early in its run eventually got. True, they ended up getting some of those views later from binge-viewing fans who arrived late, but I remember tracking the numbers at the time, and even on their initial airing, the early LBD episodes were doing substantially better than EA has been. Given the huge audience they built up by the end of LBD, those numbers have to have been a concern, and I suspect that played a role in the decision to go into hiatus.
Thimblesful of wine
Something I’ve seen offered in defense of EA is that the show is being delivered slowly, in 5-minute increments twice a week. People are just being impatient for those big story moments they’re looking forward to. They need to relax and give the show time. It’s not fair to compare it to the LBD experience, where a lot of users arrived late, and then got to whip through the early episodes all at once.
There’s some truth in that. We’ve all talked about it a lot before, this aspect of LBD and other vlog adaptations of classic novels. We do get it in little bits at a time, and it can be agonizing waiting for things to get to our favorite parts. There will be a little bit of show, and then a huge mass of obsessive-fan analysis and meta and squee and gifs and jokes and complaints and so on.
But it’s a sword that cuts both ways. If the show is good, if there are lots of layers of meaning to tease out, and interesting choices in modernizing the story to discuss, then that time between little sips of content actually builds engagement. But if those things are missing, and instead the show is a disappointment, there will be several days in which obsessive, highly articulate fans pick it apart like vultures at a carcass.
I think EA has suffered from the latter effect.
It’s not you; it’s me
I’ve been thinking back to LBD a lot, and trying to figure out if it was really as good as I thought it was at the time. Is EA really so bad compared to LBD? Are the differences between the shows that great? Is it maybe that I’ve just grown tired of this particular kind of show, such that EA seems tired when what was basically the same sort of show seemed fresh and interesting with LBD?
I think there’s certainly some of that going on. I loved LBD early on, when it was new and exiting and full of promise. Later on some cracks appeared, but I gave the show a pass because I felt such affection for it. EA has had some of the benefit of my fan loyalty, but not as much as LBD did. And like with anything — a favorite song, say — there comes a point when it’s been in heavy rotation all summer and you just want to hear anything else but that song. Or favorite TV shows, where the premise seems amazing in the beginning, but eventually it plays out and you’re just not that into it any more.
As I said, I think there’s some of that in my current negative reaction. But I think EA really is objectively worse than LBD. If EA seems tired, I think it probably has more to do with the creator(s) of the show themselves being creatively exhausted, rather than with the genre itself being played out (as is demonstrated by the similar shows from other creators that continue to seem fresh and innovative).
What could have been (and still could?)
The people I feel most sorry for with EA are the principal actors. They’ve done a wonderful job with what they had to work with. They just haven’t been given something very good to work with.
There was a hint in one of the earlier episodes of the “badly done” scene, with Knightly scolding Emma, and her being visibly bummed as a result. And in that moment, I saw what I assume was some of the acting for which those two were cast, and it led me to look forward so much to seeing some of the big moments later in the story. Because they were going to absolutely kill it.
I wish the writing had been better, so I would have felt it was worth it to get to those moments. I hope after the hiatus it will be better, in which case I’ll be first in line to start watching again.
I don’t know how likely that is. But in the meantime, I am very grateful to the other creators who are doing amazing things with vlog adaptations of classic literature, and who themselves have been quick to credit LBD — including Bernie Su — with having paved the way and inspired them. So whatever happens with EA, I want to thank Bernie Su for what he’s accomplished. He’s given me a lot of enjoyment, enjoyment I didn’t pay for and never expected to have, and I’m grateful for that.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/69607072491.
Tags: emma disapproved.
