on life & other inconveniences

I’m not surprised that THE DARK KNIGHT broke box office records to claim the throne for the biggest opening weekend ever. For one thing, the overall caliber of movies in theaters these days is weakened by the number of subpar choices, and when a movie that’s been fine tuned to perfection shows up, people take notice.

For another, THE DARK KNIGHT features Heath Ledger as the Joker, and it’s a performance that’s had a lot of buzz, even before Ledger’s untimely death.

I suspect the overwhelming majority of people who went to see THE DARK KNIGHT did not have a conversation about its commentary on terrorism and wire-tapping, the way we did, but that’s precisely one of the reasons it deserves a high level of success: while being a damn entertaining movie that features stellar performances from the entire cast, it manages to be more and have something to say about our society and the times we live in, the moral dilemmas we struggle with.

The question is, if other viewers did not see in the movie what we found ourselves discussing, did we really have a shared experience?

Set that question aside for a moment. On the weekend, I was reading a commentary about the death of monoculture. For some, this may be a new term that should be defined. At the simplest level, monoculture is about the shared experience. It’s about the one smash song of summer that 97.8% of the population is cranking on the stereo. It’s about the one big movie that everyone wants to be at for opening weekend.

If you wish to play the game of blame, the death of the monoculture has become a popular choice in recent years. The infrastructure that made the winner-take-all monoculture possible during the mid-to-late 20th century – the radio-MTV-record store monopoly of music distribution – is gone forever, thanks to the Internet.

We now have the “long tail,” Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s belief that there are huge profits to be made from the extensive back catalogues of movies, music and books. Add to that legal (and illegal) downloads of TV, music and movies, and the cultural jambalaya of YouTube and MySpace.

While consumers enjoy the binary buffet, critics – those in charge of constructing contexts and explanations for what we like – are less enthralled. “When I grew up, there was a monoculture,” Robert Christgau, the dean of American music criticism, noted in an October 2006 interview on Popmatters.com. “Everybody listened to the same music on the radio. I miss monoculture. I think it’s good for people to have a shared experience.”

 

As I’ve already mentioned, despite the fact that THE DARK KNIGHT broke box office records over the weekend, I’m not entirely convinced every viewer does have a shared experience.  In the same way that the reader can’t be extracted from the reading experience, the viewer brings their own ideas, values and awareness to the experience and those things may influence what they do and do not see in the film.  

It may be more important, therefore, to talk about shared exposure.  I can certainly remember the songs of summer from my teen years.  I find myself wondering now why it is it matters to us if the music we like is universally embraced or not.  Why does popularity justify our interest in some material?  We see it quoted routinely in bios of successful authors - sold 17 million books worldwide, translated into 16 languages.  Is the marketing angle meant to suggest that if you aren’t reading those books you aren’t one of the crowd with the 17 million who have?  That this is popular so you should get on the bandwagon?

I’m not really interested in the reasons behind marketing decisions for the purposes of this post.  All that matters is that we have witnessed the trend of promoting the blockbusters, and that encompasses movies, music and, yes, even books.  

In fact, this past weekend, Harrogate Crime Festival was held in the UK, and it faced its own moment of commentary on the blogs via Harry Bingham’s quote of Jane Jakeman:

“What the general public doesn’t know about the Harrogate Crime Festival is that the authors are not invited to appear there solely through merit. Their publishers have to pay a hefty sum per author to the festival organisers.This means that only big publishers can afford it, and then only with authors they want to push. It is rather like the system by which bookshops are paid by the publishers to have certain books in the window. These promotional activities, disguised as literary festivals, etc., play a large part in the present dismal standard of best-selling crime fiction. In my view, one of the finest crime publishers currently operating is the tiny Bitter Lemon Press, which specialises in translations of foreign work, but their sales are tiny compared with the massive ‘popular’ and heavily promoted stuff. I think the best way to get these practices dropped is to make the reading public aware of them.“

Struggling and midlist authors are often grumbling about the limited number of promotional dollars thrown at already successful authors, while they’re left on their own to spend considerably smaller advances doing their own promotion.  I’ve commented myself on the fact that real estate in a bookstore is something you can’t compete with, and that there was no single thing I could do myself to match what my publisher did by getting me on displays in Barnes & Noble.

I’m not certain that I would fully apply my comments on this to Harrogate.  It’s been asserted that Harrogate is a festival where exposure is bought by the publishers, instead of reflecting interest from the readers.  I’ve attended Harrogate twice, and both times enjoyed it immensely.  I was exposed to authors I read religiously, and I was also exposed to authors I’d never heard of before.  It had been my understanding that the program chairs invited at their own discretion, not that the slots were purchased by publishers.  I could stand corrected on that, but it is true that the system used for programming Harrogate is unlike the system used at other conventions.  Good or bad?  What I know as a reader was that I paid thousands to go, both times, and I did not want to attend repetitive panels where people begged me to pick up their bookmark, buy their book or clutter the table with promotional garbage.  I consider that one of the best advantages of Harrogate for readers - I didn’t feel as though I was being sold to constantly, I didn’t feel like a walking wallet.

On the other hand, the invite-only method does mean that there’s a risk that the conventions will be nothing more than a who’s who, based off the names in the program coordinator’s address book and who they get along with.  I can add that there are many familiar names that attend annually, and haven’t missed a year in the past four years.  There’s a risk of weakening the impact of the convention by drawing from the same pool.  That is the potential problem for readers.

(That said, I still love Harrogate as a crime fiction convention.  As a reader I’d rather hang out at Harrogate than be accosted in the hallways and fed sales pitch after sales pitch at Bouchercon.)

Harrogate may or may not speak to sustaining monoculture within the book business.  The quote I’ve pulled seems to suggest it does, but I’m still uncertain about its accuracy in terms of how the authors are chosen.  However, it’s commonly known that most marketing dollars go to a small number of authors.  This system of limited investment is good for those who receive it, and frustrating for those who don’t.  Ultimately, however, I think that the question that’s not being addressed is what readers stand to lose by continuing with such practices.  

The publishing industry is one of those businesses that still supports a front-stage and back-stage mentality.  Television and now the internet have eroded the barriers between genders and cultures to make knowledge more accessible to all.  The way that new mediums affected access to information was a critical component of my studied in communication theory, and perhaps that’s why I find it fascinating that the publishing industry is one where there is still a lot of behind-the-scenes talk, a lot of things that are not openly discussed.  It is for this reason that I maintain anyone serious about being published and understanding the business should attend a Bouchercon - there are many things you learn at a con that you will not find in any reference book, or on any blog.

One of the back-stage discussion topics of the past few years has been speculation on the future of publishing.  In and of itself, that topic isn’t a back-stage topic.  However, the specific idea that fewer books will be published, that we’ll see fewer books that are essentially blockbuster-type books dominating shelves, isn’t one a lot of authors want to discuss publicly.  I will say for myself it’s only speculation I’ve heard.  I am not convinced of its inevitability as a reality, although I concede it’s possible, and it is the possibility of fewer choices in bookstores that makes me hope that monoculture is truly dead.

For one thing, investing heavily in the promotion of books that are already certain to sell well is redundant and inefficient.  Consider the success of THE DARK KNIGHT and the fact that it broke records.  However, it’s been asserted that the cost of the film means that it hasn’t broken even yet, and that it will not yield a record profit margin.

The massive success of the movie’s opening weekend will also almost certainly guarantee that The Dark Knight will become the most successful Batman movie yet - a title currently held by Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, which made $250 million dollars at the American box office. But it won’t take the title of most profitable.

The Dark Knight cost an estimated $180 million dollars to make, and so hasn’t broken even yet - by comparison, Burton’s Batman only cost $35 million, meaning that it made its cost back more than seven times. In order to beat that record, The Dark Knight would need to gross somewhere in the region of $1285 million dollars before leaving theaters… and while it’s undoubtedly going to be a successful movie, could it really double the domestic gross of current box office ruler Titanic?

I haven’t done the math myself, or checked the numbers, but if this assertion is correct it underscores an important consideration in making anything successful:  if consumers choose your product but the amount of money invested in creation/promotion is astronomical you aren’t making money.

Add in considerations about market saturation.  I remember talking to Deric Ruttan about this, because as a musician he has to consider his exposure via concerts.  He said that it’s risky to repeatedly perform in the same venues because then consumer expectations are that you’ll always be there, they can see you any time, and attending your concert is no longer a priority.  Anyone who’s started off in a band, doing the bar scene, scraping the nickels together to get by understands that you have to be able to break even.  Gas has to go in the truck.  Given the choice of attending a venue where you’ll get a dozen friends coming by to hang out with you and performing in a bar where you’ll gain exposure to a few dozen people who haven’t seen you perform before, you need to go to the new venue.  It makes good business sense.

Monoculture is the thinking of the 80s, and it’s old-school.  In this era of the internet, people are used to having what seems like limitless choices.  More easily than ever before people are able to order books from overseas.  Geography does not define access.

Personally, I’d be happy to drive a spike in monoculture’s coffin.  I do not want imitations, I want originals.  The tedious practice of selling authors by comparisons is a throwback to the sheep mentality some of us grew up with.  The idea that a wider range of choices will make it possible for individuals to find exactly what appeals to them is a good thing.  From clothes to shoes to cars to music, movies and yes, even books, it should be obvious that many people like different things, and that is not necessarily a bad thing.  

I know that music downloads have been blamed for the potential death of the album.  Remember when you could buy 45s in the store?  Remember B-sides?  Do any of you - like me - remember the thrill of picking up a new album and listening to it, discovering a song on the album that wasn’t played on the radio, but it was the song that spoke to you most?  I was thinking about this the other day, because beyond a shadow of a doubt the song that has stayed with me most from Deric Ruttan’s debut CD is called TOM AND ANNIE, and it isn’t a song you’ll ever hear on radio.  Certain songs are made for radio or MTV/CMT.  They are the songs of summer, the catchy tunes that everyone sings along to, but not the stand-out songs that necessarily define an artist.  What is played on radio must be watered down for public consumption - just think of the controversy of radio stations refusing to play Toby Keith’s STAYS IN MEXICO because of it’s (lack of) moral message.

I know for myself I’d be bored to tears if I felt I was writing the same book over and over again.  I also know as a parent I’d rather that my child be a leader than a follower.  Be an individual instead of letting others dictate your choices - isn’t that what we’re trying to say when we throw out the old, “And if your friends told you to jump off a cliff, would you?”  

So why is it we try to raise our kids to think like individuals and not be unduly influenced by others, but we continue to reward a marketing culture that’s based on the premise of treating us all like we’re bleating sheep who must run off to do the popular thing to fit in?

Our cultural consumption exists on a spectrum from “individual” to “collective”. Technology has shifted the balance for both books and music. Digital distrbitution and the iPod have made music consumption much more individualistic, while the internet and global branding have made book consumption increasingly collective.

Barbara Fister has written an interesting post that stems from a discussion about the tendency to follow trends, read buzz books, watch hyped movies, etc.  I don’t want to steal her thunder, because her post is excellent, so I’m just linking to it and adding a few thoughts and questions.

Barbara raises the question of how she decides what to read.  I’ve always had a bit of an aversion to over-hyped things, which may be part of the reason why I fall outside the mainstream, but I also had the experience of someone passing on a book to me that they admittedly bought “just to see what was on the bestseller lists these days”.  I loathed the book and it drove a key point home:  Just because it was selling well didn’t mean it wasn’t total crap.

Ultimately, I’ve reached the same conclusion Barbara has about referrals.  What about you?  How do you decide what to read next?  Do you think more people are reading the blockbusters, or has the internet expanded our access to more obscure titles?