Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Whedon Changes the Rules Again



This is not very Old English or Medieval-ist oriented. However, I've recently found THIS supervillain musical from Joss Whedon. Now given all our utopian inclinations over at ITM, I thought this was a particularly interesting part of his "Master Plan":

Once upon a time, all the writers in the forest got very mad with the Forest Kings and declared a work-stoppage. The forest creatures were all sad; the mushrooms did not dance, the elderberries gave no juice for the festival wines, and the Teamsters were kinda pissed. (They were very polite about it, though.) During this work-stoppage, many writers tried to form partnerships for outside funding to create new work that circumvented the Forest King system...

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.
Circumventing hierarchy? Producing a change in Show Business which Whedon explains like this:
It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, “It’s Show Business – not Show Friends”? Well now it’s Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)

You know, I can't help but wonder if something's happening here that's bigger than Show Friendliness or Hollywood.

Because this seems a lot like a big-screen (if you have a large screen monitor, I mean) version of what Eileen Joy et al's BABEL workgroup is trying to do, if a bit less theoretically informed and a lot more entertainment oriented. The point being that we've seen the way a system works. Now let's see how we can do it differently. Let's see how we can theorize a place that isn't part of a mainstream, isn't part of an already established hierarchy -- and let's see if we can make it a place of friendship, a little like home.

3 comments:

Liza Blake said...

Sadly, the site doesn't seem to be working! I clicked on Act 1, and was told that the video wasn't available at that site. Oh well.

Mary Kate Hurley said...

Seems to be working for me....anyone else?

Anonymous said...

omg thank you :)