Morgan Leigh Davies’ previous work for The Toast can be found here.
Recently, I slept on the ground for the first time in maybe ten years, and I didn’t do it in a campground in the middle of the wilderness but instead on a small strip of grass in-between a busy street and the San Diego Convention Center, under a fleece blanket with someone I had met around six hours before.
“Well, that moved fast,” she said, as we settled in for the night, peering down at the row of other nerds sleeping – or trying to sleep – packed into the small space like sardines. One or another of our large group had been in line since nine-thirty that morning, so we got to sleep on grass. Less dedicated – or, you might say, less insane – people, who had gotten there at any time in the day before nine PM, when the line was capped, mostly wound up on concrete.
When we finally stumbled into Hall H – the Convention Center’s largest venue, which according to the Convention Center’s website holds 6,700 people – the next morning, the staff waving us in cheered encouragingly, as though we had undergone some test of endurance. I suppose this is true, if you consider the number of stories that went around that day about people vomiting in line, or the fact that we were mostly getting by on protein bars and adrenaline. Still, the entire thing seemed surreal: we had, collectively, waited in line for a total of twenty-four hours in order to sit in a large dark room, watch movie trailers, and listen to famous people talk.
The day was characterized by varying states of delirium, extreme boredom, and intense discomfort. But we didn’t really care about any of that: we just needed to make it to 5:30, when the Marvel Studios panel – the biggest ticket event of the weekend and the real reason we had slept outside overnight in the middle of a major city – would start.
They were late. Everybody started getting restless. “We want Marvel, we want Marvel,” one of the sections at the back started chanting. The front of the room tried to do the wave. Finally, at 5:45, the lights dimmed, and all six thousand-plus people in the room started screaming so loudly you could practically feel the floor move.
“Gav this is so bonkers and it hasn’t even started yet I feel like I am in an actual cult situation,” I had tweeted at my friend only moments before.
“probably because you are in an actual cult situation,” she replied, which was true.
*
San Diego Comic-Con, which runs annually for four days on the last weekend of July, is the largest convention of any kind in the world. Though nobody except the organizers themselves seems to know the exact figure, upwards of 130,000 people attend, which I don’t believe includes talent, press, exhibitors, and staff. I’ve seen figures as high as 160,000.
A single-day pass to the con costs $45, or $30 if you want to go on Sunday, which is less busy since everything is winding down. Since you can no longer buy a pass for the whole weekend, attending for all four days would come to $165. For your money, you earn the privilege of having access to something called the exhibitor hall, where massive studios, publishers, and independent artists and vendors alike have booths where they sell merchandise, and also to panels and events put on by studios, publishers, and networks. To get into these panels, you have to wait in line for many hours, often overnight.
At these larger panels, most of which are designed to promote movies or TV shows, celebrities, directors, and producers talk about their work, and screen maybe three or four minutes of footage as an “exclusive” sneak peek. (This footage typically debuts online a day or two later.) Audience members get to ask questions for fifteen minutes or so, and then everybody leaves, the so-called talent to run the gauntlet of press, and the audience to go off to the next thing. There are panels for comics or video games that don’t require nearly as much time in line, and smaller panels run by independent attendees – journalists, academics, fans, and so on – that are not necessarily designed to make a profit, but everything else is, because Comic-Con, despite its claim of being a “celebration of the popular arts,” is at its core really about one thing: money. By buying a pass to Comic-Con you are essentially paying money to be marketed to (on top of the panels themselves, literally everything at Comic-Con, from the baggage claim at the airport to the interiors of the hotel elevators, is an ad) and to buy things.
This is, to put it mildly, weird. It is particularly weird if you are a woman, because if you are a woman – and as far as I could tell, around half of the people at Comic-Con were – most of the studios don’t seem to understand that you exist. Since people functionally exist as buying power at Comic-Con, the merchandise available becomes very telling. It was predictable, of course, that most of the movies being promoted in Hall H on Saturday were starring white men – depressing, but not exactly a massive shock. But it’s really remarkable that so many of the massive corporations that dominate the convention aren’t better at capitalism. As many people have said before, it really seems like they would rather not sell anything than sell things to girls.
To illustrate this point, us go back to Marvel, because Marvel movies – in particular, the Captain America movies – are the movies that my friends and I really care about, and the reason that I was there, aside from simple anthropological fascination. I wanted to spend money on Marvel stuff – and it is a really weird feeling, let me tell you, to be desperate to give a massive corporation more of your money, and then to discover there is no avenue by which you can do so. Marvel was selling three articles of clothing in a women’s size, only one of which was promoting anything any of their immensely popular movie and TV properties, from their merchandise booth. This was a t-shirt for their upcoming show Agent Carter, which will be their first and thus far only female-led property, and it sold out almost immediately. When my friend asked if they would be getting more shirts in, the attendant said no. “We didn’t expect them to sell out,” she said, as though baffled that their fanbase was not comprised solely of people who were or had once been fourteen-year-old boys in basements.
“Really,” my friend said, and, resigned, bought a water bottle and a mug instead.
*
In spite of my general internet proclivities, I never imagined I would wind up at Comic-Con, except in a professional capacity, and in fact I did wind up coming as press, sort of. I don’t like crowds, I don’t like lines, and I don’t like watching celebrities interact with fans. While I was tweeting in agony during the Q&A portion of the panel for the MTV show Teen Wolf, my friend Gav tweeted, “I can’t believe @MLDavies, a person whose worst enemy is audience Q&As, is voluntarily at Comic Con, queuing for audience Q&As.” The irony was indeed choice.
But because I went to do some writing, I got in for free, with my hotel room included (though this meant a night of sleeping on the floor, on top of the night on the ground). I was going to be in southern California anyway, and my curiosity got the better of me. I decided to just say yes to everything, including camping out overnight to watch celebrities talk and show movie trailers, because it was all part of The Experience.
There is no way to describe or explain with any level of accuracy the feeling in Hall H when the moment everybody had been waiting for for over a day finally came. Marvel started off their panel with a montage of footage from their previous films, and I’m glad I’ll never see it again, because although it was very well-done, it was only a montage. And yet, as it was happening, and my friends and I were screaming at the top of our lungs and clapping so hard our hands hurt, I experienced one of the weirdest, most intense feelings of euphoria I have ever felt in my life. If that sounds like hyperbole, I can assure you it isn’t. The whole situation – the sleep deprivation, the protein bars, the massive crowd – makes you temporarily insane, and of course the simple fact of the matter is that I love those movies. I wasn’t just annoyed about the merchandise situation for reasons of principle: I really fucking wanted a Captain America shirt, and couldn’t buy one.
But being a fan is a complicated endeavor, particularly being a fan of films made by Marvel, possibly the most dominant studio in Hollywood right now, and certainly the most fascinating from an outsider perspective. My euphoric high rapidly dissipated when studio head Kevin Feige brought out the creative team of the upcoming Ant-Man, which is a disaster too complicated to discuss at length here (suffice to say: most of the creative team, including writer-director Edgar Wright, has turned over in the past few months, and despite shooting starting in two weeks, they don’t seem to have a script), but nobody cared too much about that beyond a certain morbid fascination. After all, we were really there for the cast and footage of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which will be released next spring.
Our enthusiasm was revived when the actors starring in that film came onstage shortly after, ushered out one by one by resident bandleader Robert Downey Jr. Some of them seemed less enthusiastic than others, but they were all managing fine – that is, until Chris Evans walked out, hands in his pockets, rictus grin firmly in place, entire body radiating nervous energy.
“Oh, no,” my friend said in tones of abject horror. And all of the euphoria that had been running through me – all the joy, all the excitement – vanished entirely, just as quickly as it had come, leaving me almost off-balance. Its sudden absence was just as weird as the way it had suddenly burst forth in the first place.
I covered my mouth with my hands, but I didn’t stop staring. It was like watching a train wreck: you couldn’t look away.
*
Here is the thing about Marvel: they make pretty good movies. Some of them are very good, some of them are mediocre, and a few of them (ahem, Iron Man 2) are flat-out awful. None of them are great (STRONG DISSENT REGISTERED – Ed.) Kevin Feige, who as the head of the studio manages what is known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe – Marvel’s three major interlocking franchises that come together in the Avengers movies, and which is set to expand starting this week with Guardians of the Galaxy – is clearly some kind of mad genius. But there’s a strange sort of pall over the studio, too. They are, for instance, notoriously cheap. They also have a tendency to hire (inexpensive) directors who won’t mess with the studio’s very bland house style. (Wright, who has a very distinct way of doing things, quit Ant-Man – or, one might infer from the sequence of events, was encouraged to leave – after Disney, Marvel’s parent company, insisted that his script be rewritten substantially.)
Because of the nature of their creative project (long franchises that overlap with each other) they contract actors for a lot of movies – often, again, for not a lot of money. Their press tours are long and grueling – not unusual, these days, for movies like this – but they seem to be particularly regulated. Most of the actors have made weirdly similar jokes in interviews about Marvel snipers waiting to take them out if they say the wrong thing or give too much away, and while promoting Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Jimmy Fallon this past spring, Chris Evans explained his ridiculously vague description of the film by saying, “That’s what Marvel makes you do, you have to just dance around it!” He waved his hands around theatrically. “It’s good for the whole family. It’s happy and sad and good and bad!” Consequently, the studio is not exactly known for its high rate of actor satisfaction. (My friend Gav, mentioned above, did an excellent write-up of the rumbling among the ranks here.)
Evans seems to be particularly burdened by his lot. Even in promoting the first Captain America movie, he was grimly talking about the length of his contract with Marvel (six films, of which Age of Ultron will be the fourth) and discussing the fact that he had hired a therapist immediately after signing up for the gig. (Vulture recently compiled a timeline of his disillusionment with fame, which is bleak but illuminating reading.) By the time the sequel came out this spring, three years later, he had gotten to the point of saying, in a long and evidently regrettable feature article in Variety, that he wanted to quit acting altogether and direct films instead. (His debut feature, Before We Go, premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.) Almost immediately after the article ran, he gave an interview “clarifying” his remarks, a sequence of events that read disturbingly like a celebrity hurriedly apologizing after making a racist remark. “This was a big thing!” he says somewhat manically and definitely bitterly in the video clip. “I gotta watch what I say.”
Of all the inherent tensions of being a fan of Marvel’s movies, perhaps the greatest one is the knowledge that the people onscreen often do not want to be there, whether “there” means literally there on that day or “there” in the broader sense of the franchise. Acting, even the weird, hyper-truncated acting of an action film, is at least still acting: press is its own particular tedium, or nightmare, depending on your personality. Usually, though, as an audience member or fan you do not have the physical reality of that publicity machine staring you in the face.
And it is definitely a machine. At the Marvel panel at Comic-Con, each actor answered just one question. They had all been asked these questions many times before. If you were a person who was willing to sleep overnight on a small strip of grass in the middle of San Diego in order to attend the panel, it was very likely that you had already heard those same questions asked and answered in other interviews. The day’s other panels – even the behemoth Lord of the Rings panel earlier in the day – were much looser and more casual. You got the idea that if anybody stepped too far out of line they would be hurriedly escorted offstage, or perhaps tackled to the ground.
In a way it almost doesn’t make sense that watching all of this happen in person would be so much more disturbing in person: it’s not like I haven’t seen it before. Being a fan of a movie or TV show these days generally means seeing a lot of photos, videos, and/or gifs of actors engaged in the act of promoting that thing on the internet. A good part of my March and most of my April seem to have been spent staring compulsively at increasingly bleak gifsets of promotional interviews for Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Tumblr. It’s of course possible to consume this constant stream of content without thinking about it critically, but this is not how I generally do things. As Gav said to me recently in an email, “we are like sports commentators for marvel. two old men in a sports bar having a VERY involved discussion about the finer points of team management.”
I was, relatively speaking, close to the stage in Hall H, but I wasn’t that close, and it wasn’t like anybody up there could see me. There was no dialogue, no exchange. But it does make a difference to have somebody’s body in front of you. You can extrapolate a lot from photographs and interviews, but bodies speak very clearly, even from afar – and so, of course, does actual speech. It was quite clear that Jeremy Renner was barely even pretending to be enthusiastic. Paul Bettany was just waiting to go home. Mark Ruffalo, by contrast, did seem to actually be enjoying himself. I have no idea what on earth was going on with James Spader. And Chris Evans looked like there was literally nowhere in the world he would like less to be than sitting on that stage with over six thousand people screaming at the sight of his face. As my friend pointed out, he got easily the biggest roar from the audience of anyone in the cast, and he clearly wanted it the least. But that’s what happens to you when you get famous: your life doesn’t belong to you anymore.
*
A note about Chris Evans: he is from my town.
It is a very weird thing, to have a celebrity from your town, when your town is small, and boring. The likelihood that the two of you have some sort of minute connection is high, and the level of people’s interest in the celebrity in question is also high, because the town is small, and boring, and nothing ever happens, and nobody else interesting has ever been from there (except, in the case of Sudbury, Massachusetts, They Might Be Giants, improbably enough.) Chris Evans has said before that Sudbury is his favorite place, which makes me sad, both because – god, Sudbury, and also because if there is one place in the world that he is likely to get recognized literally everywhere he goes, that is it. He is a household name everywhere in America, now, not to mention a lot of other places across the world, but he was a household name in every home in Sudbury long before Captain America came along.
When I was in high school, some years after he had passed through, he was sort of laughably famous – C- or maybe B-list famous, Fantastic-Four-is-the-most-prominent-movie-I-have-ever-made kind of famous, I-once-made-a-movie-where-I-had-a-banana-in-my-ass kind of famous. Because we were teenagers we liked to snicker about him to very performatively show how much we didn’t care about him, except that of course we did, because he was famous, and he was from Sudbury. He had escaped, and we did not want to be actors, but we wanted desperately to escape, too: so, simply by virtue of existing, he was an encouraging symbol. Of course, he had escaped to making movies like Fantastic Four, which we viewed (as, apparently, he did as well) as a dubious kind of success, but still. That was better than nothing.
Here’s the thing about a famous person coming from your small town: even if you don’t know him, you probably know some vague trivial thing about him, and probably you do have a connection to him (maybe his sister, for instance, is your brother’s drama teacher), and you can never, never forget that he is a real person who at one point was just a kid who went to the same high school as you did and probably shopped at the same grocery store.
I never thought about this much before Captain America, because before then his fame was a silly kind of fame: but then Marvel made him famous, because they needed to, because that is how fame works. You don’t, despite what teenagers on Tumblr like to tell me angrily and often, “earn” it. It happens because somebody decides it should, and gets you on the cover of more than one major magazine in a single season, or through some other bizarre twist of fate over which you have essentially no control. It is arbitrary.
But people love to love famous people, and so do I: I have spent, now, a truly horrifying number of hours staring at those bleak gifsets of Chris Evans on press tour, and speculating about his psychological state, and watching incredibly, incredibly bad movies he starred in years ago in what can only be described as some kind of horrifically embarrassing additive behavior. (I do not recommend 2011’s Puncture, a film whose dialogue is comprised primarily of endless, unbearably boring discussions of hypodermic needles.) I have even progressed to the point of finding him outrageously attractive, which I never really used to, and which is an extremely uncomfortable state of affairs. I get indignant when people dismiss him as untalented, probably because I, like the rest of Tumblr, have by now watched every second of his performance in both Captain America films in gif form multiple times over. (Look at those microexpressions!)
And I do actually worry about him, to a degree that goes completely beyond logic or reason, because he seems deeply fucking sad all the time, and it seems to me to be the worst thing in the world to want to do something that badly and then to have your love for it slowly leeched out of you to the point where you don’t want to do it at all anymore. And while it wouldn’t be right, exactly, to say that this is fake – the feeling is certainly there – it isn’t quite real, either: I don’t know him. The idea I have of him is based on extremely imperfect knowledge, and I am certainly aware that getting overly invested in celebrities is really just an excuse – or, maybe, a vehicle – to feel things intensely.
But I do care, and I can also never not remember that he is a real person, who exists, and existed in exactly the same context that I did, and had my neighbor growing up for calculus his senior year of high school. And I have never been more disturbed or distressed by the circumstances of his life, or more aware that he is just a guy I’ve never met and don’t actually know, in spite of the strange confluence of our circumstances, than when I was standing in that enormous room watching him visibly struggle to keep himself together.
There is no way to reconcile these two things and no way to turn either of them off, and I don’t really want to – I’d like to maintain my sense of self-awareness, obviously, but talking endlessly about celebrities is pretty much my chief extracurricular pastime, so giving that up would sort of be a bummer, too. And it’s not like I’m not about to stop watching Marvel movies, either.
That, of course, is the whole paradox of being a fan of anything in the mainstream – that’s the whole paradox of Comic-Con, really, because in spite of its reputation, Comic-Con has become the pinnacle of mainstream culture. The geeks, as they say, have inherited the earth. And though there are a lot of troubling things going on at that convention, from the sheer corporate greed on display to the ambiguous position of women, short of rejecting mainstream culture entirely, you are sort of stuck in the system. Capitalism is shitty that way, and Comic-Con is the purest form of capitalism I have ever seen.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: Comic-Con is about capitalizing on people’s love for things and turning that love into a profit, but because the love doesn’t go away and is never going to we keep showing up, digitally or in the flesh, and the money just keeps flowing, and the actors keep struggling through their song and dance routines. In that room full of six thousand-plus people, everyone – the audience, the panelists, and the moderator – are all just cogs in a machine run by the people who control the purse strings. Everybody has a role, and everybody plays it, and that is simply how it is.
But when, at that Marvel panel, we were shown footage of Age of Ultron – which, predictably, looked amazing – and I, like everyone else, stood up to clap, I did so reluctantly. I didn’t want to have to do it in front of him; I didn’t want him to have to witness it – as though that, somehow, would make the weight of all our obsessive love less unbearable, as though it would be easier for him to keep us in the abstract, just like it is easier (though not necessarily better) for us to keep him two-dimensional, or as two-dimensional as possible. I waited a long time – maybe, I thought, some people would stay sitting. I don’t know why that seemed in any way significant – I was clapping either way – but it did. But everybody else stood up eventually, so I finally did, too. It didn’t really matter. There were over six thousand other people in there who were all already screaming. I wasn’t going to make much of a difference.
He took the longest to stand up of the cast, too. When he finally did, he glanced up at the now-empty screen, seemingly baffled, before turning to look out at the crowd, looking slightly cowed and probably also nauseated, as though he just couldn’t understand what on earth we could all possibly be so excited about.
Tags: comics, fandom, fandom anthropology, morgan davies, weird true tales
Related Posts
Prom Impossible: A Texas Story
Letters To Seventeen Magazine’s “Most Embarrassing Moments” Section, If More Teenagers Had Vagina Dentata
A Bug Flew Into My Ear and It Died
The Best Lines From The Summer 2014 Issue Of The New Pioneer
Blind Items of Rural Southern Ontario
The Only Time I’ve Ever Been To Connecticut
This was spectacular. As a Tumblr citizen, I’ve read a zillion long pieces about Chris Evans, but this was what I want– one that doesn’t discuss him as the writer’s poor baby crush object, but as an adult who’s made choices and is dealing with unexpected consequences from those choices in a very public spotlight. I’ve always wanted to go to SDCC, but I don’t know that there’s anything I love enough to sleep on the ground for. My back loves the bed more than I will ever love Buffy/Arrested Development/MSCL.
Haha thank you so much! Sleeping on the ground was definitely An Experience. It actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it to be but I do not think I would do it again. I did it once! And now I can say that I did it. But probably I do not need to do it again, lol.
My worlds are colliding here on so many levels, due to: whom I talk to on Twitter and tumblr; my recent development of a Chris Evans Problem; my being from the Boston area and having gone to summer camp in Sudbury for a while; the fact that my Chris Evans Problem is largely fueled by nostalgia for Boston and a certain strain of its bros; my being midway through a reread of Middletown, which itself brings up a lot of the aforementioned; and, of course, my devotion to The Toast. I’ve seen a lot of this content gestating on tumblr over the last while, and it’s so strange to read something here and feel like I know so much about it already??? And simultaneously to have known that essentially this was going to be written but not that it would be published here????? It’s like some sort of fourth wall has been broken. It should not be as strange to me as it is. This is the internet. There are few walls of any numbering.
I DON’T KNOW THIS COMMENT IS PROBABLY REALLY WEIRD AND I’M SORRY, but it’s also a strange reflection of what the piece is about–the real unreality of the people we know of and know nothing about, and whose behavior we witness sometimes.
In other, less bizarre for me news: poor, poor Chris Evans.
I’m cackling wildly at this comment. EVERYTHING HAPPENS SO MUCH. THE INTERNET IS LIKE 5 PEOPLE. I know what you mean about the fourth wall, except that I essentially have no fourth wall left anymore; all my streams have crossed, there are no more streams. Everybody knows everything about my business. IT’S FINE. IT’S FINE. I’ve accepted my strange fate.
But yes: let’s take a moment. POOR. POOR. CHRIS. EVANS. IN. DEED.
Hahaha, then I have caused you to cackle wildly twice in the last week (a story about a Porn Locker may ring a bell), and at this I am pleased. EVERYTHING DOES INDEED HAPPEN SO MUCH.
My Chris Evans Problem has caused me to watch an embarrassing number of press interviews, and my god is he a sad anxious man. (Though the parts where he talks about how great Marvel is are truly a display of fine acting, probably.)
HAHAHAHA YES. YES. TRUE STORY one of my friends emailed me a few days ago and was like, do you follow [redacted] because she is having a Chris Evans meltdown right now that I think you will enjoy so I HAVE SEEN SOME OF YOUR POSTS RECENTLY, FRIEND. I HAVE SEEN THEM. This is the stage I am at with my life, people email me about other people’s Chris Evans meltdowns so that I can go read their blogs and laugh hysterically to myself. I have become some kind of authority on this subject.
Idk I saw a gifset the other day where he said something about Marvel being THE BEST! that was distinctly tinged with sad desperation. But I try to avoid watching the actual interviews when possible (like, broadly speaking, with celebrities) because I Can’t Handle It. Only at my most masochistic. THE INTERVIEWERS ARE ALWAYS SO TERRIBLE! This is why I like Oscar season, the interviews are long and usually the people asking the questions can actually do their jobs. Truly, a luxury.
wHAT OH LORD IT’S SPREADING. AMAZING. I told [redacted; do not know if same redacted] about it because she and I seemed to have this happen at the exact same moment but I DID NOT KNOW OTHERS WERE SPREADING THE WORD. I HOPE MY MISERY HAS ENTERTAINED. The crossing of the streams is even worse right now because I try to keep my “politics/me” blog separate from my “fandom/pop culture” blog but the late-onset Evans thing has LEAKED OVER and it’s embarrassing. Em. Barrassing.
Your policy re: interviews is, without question, far healthier than mine. I congratulate you.
Thank you for writing this. I often hear people say that we shouldn’t ever feel sorry for actors who are impacted by fame, because they knew what they were getting into, etc. But what if you just really love acting? I can understand wanting to do that thing you love but still be allowed to have some privacy.
Yeah, on one hand I don’t want to hear about a celebrity’s Extremely First World problems, but on the other hand famous people are still *people* and deserve basic human respect.
Also, w/r/t Chris Evans specifically, it seems like the issue is not at all that he can’t handle the fame, but entirely that he has signed a contract with the devil, so to speak – the chokehold that Marvel seems to have on its actors is much more detrimental than the ravenous love of their fans.
This piece is great, and I appreciate more reasons to talk about the magical blandness of Chris Evans in Snowpiercer, or to make Seth Cohen references (since The OC was what alerted me to the existence of ComicCon), but I was temporarily taken out of it because seems like some links are missing (at least in Chrome, in “View all pages” mode)? Like there should obviously be one in this parenthetical: “(My friend Gav, mentioned above, did an excellent write-up of the rumbling among the ranks here.)” But there isn’t, and it seems like the Vulture timeline in the next paragraph should be linked too?
OK, pedantry update over, back to reading!
Yeah, I’ve emailed them and hopefully they’ll be fixed soon. (There are a lot that should be in there, actually.) So I’m sorry about that! I SOURCED EVERYTHING CAREFULLY, sob.
(Omg Snowpiercer tho.)
(Snowpiercer wut. Let’s talk about it please??)
S N O W P I E R C E R
(SPOILERS IF ANYONE HASN’T SEEN IT YET OBVIOUSLY)
I LOVED SNOWPIERCER SO MUCH IT WAS SO GOOOOOOD. Like, the whole thing was so good but also every time Chris Evans was onscreen my brain was just making shrill white noise because I was SO! HAPPY! HE WAS IN! A GOOD! MOVIE! And he was so good in it and HE HAD A MONOLOGUE ABOUT EATING BABIES and aaahhhh, aaahhhh, I loved it. I loved it. Harvey Weinstein wanted to cut his baby-eating monologue because clearly he thought America did not want to see Captain America talk about eating babies BUT HE WAS WRONG. THAT IS WHAT WE WANT.
Also, just, every single person in that film. Everything about it. IT WAS TOO MUCH. Lying down on the floor and staring at the ceiling. Send me a wet cloth. Etc.
The scene with the fish
THE SCENE WITH THE FIIIIIIIIIISH.
Everything was TOO MUCH and it was amazing and gorgeous and campy and HOW MUCH FUN DID THE SET DESIGNERS HAVE, I ASK YOU?
I KNOW. AAAAHHHH.
Also, SO MUCH! SO MUCH! Working on that movie must have been SO MUCH FUN, I can’t even imagine.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed watching him ax people to death and then fall on his ass due to fish slippage as much as I did, but goodness can Evans sell the physical side (as well as far too much emotional depth for anyone so ridiculously attractive, o favored son of nature).
There were a lot of things I shouldn’t have been able to get past in Snowpiercer–what powers the train? where are those cows? who stocks their apocalypse train with all those axes but not enough mechanical parts? how did polar bears end up living in the mountains?–but the sweep of the story carried me past them. For something so gritty, it had an unexpected magical realism in its logic.
Kudos to whoever it was who pointed out that not a single character in that movie was threatened with sexual violence.
THAT SCENE WAS SO GOOD THOUGH. SO GOOD. He really is good at both the emotional and physical stuff. He is a really great actor! I WISH HE WERE NOT STUCK DOING MARVEL MOVIES FOR THE NEXT BILLION YEARS, BUT OH WELL. THAT IS HIS FATE.
I feel like, re. the plausibility issues, that it was so obviously allegorical that I just… didn’t… really… care?? Like, obviously it didn’t make sense on those levels, but also, that train did not make sense, period, so: it’s all fine. It’s all good. I DON’T MIND. And YES to the sexual violence issue. I mean the women weren’t treated romantically at all, which — not that romance is bad, obviously, but it just wouldn’t have fit the story. There was no time for that, you know? It was something from another era, it felt like. God I just loved it. I really thought it was wonderful.
Octavia Spencer has ZERO TIME FOR ROMANCE.
And yes to it being so allegorical that the impossibilities aren’t a huge deal. (I’d love for something else to get into the realities of an Eternal Engine, but that’s something for another story.) I was honestly surprised that the protein bars weren’t people, though.
That was one of the reasons I liked the movie so much, actually — there would be moments like that where you’d expect one thing based on tropes of the genre (like, of course they’re always eating people) and then it would be something else. And then in that instance, like, you think you are safe! Just bugs, which is STILL SUPER FUCKING GROSS, but! Not people! No cannibalism here!
Except, hahaha. Hah. Haaaaah.
Yes exactly! The whole thing kept me on my toes. “Okay, we’ve got this slightly insane super pregnant schoolteacher who is in SOME SORT OF LITERAL ECSTASY about this train [cue Ayn Rand discussion re: trains, sexuality, Harry Potter, yada] and there are hand motions and HELLO NOW WE’RE KILLING EVERYONE.” Faaaaaaantastic.
Well said: The movie looks realistic, but logically it’s basically “yup, this is 100% pure story, get on board or we dump you in the tundra.” And oh the lack of romance or even a hint of it, so wonderful. So deeply implausible (what else is there to do in the back section of the train?), but so refreshing.
I wonder whether Evans is trapped with Marvel for much longer; if his Thor 2 spot counts against the six movies, he’s already at four, with Ultron making five, and Marvel have locked Sebastian Stan in for approximately eternity. Be free, anxious Chris, be free!
It definitely doesn’t count. He’s got to do Cap 3 and then Avengers 3, and then presumably they will kill him off, as they do in the comics (though obviously then he isn’t really dead, because: comics). Sebastian Stan is never getting out, though. Poor dude.
So he’s probably locked in until 2018, unless they don’t do Avengers 3 until 2019, which is possible.
Grim laughter, etc.
Poor guy; I know he’s said that he knew that playing Cap would mean a major change in his life, but there’s a difference between understanding it intellectually and having to live through it. Nobody would blame him if he took off and lived on a mountaintop alone for five years afterward just to decompress.
One of the reasons I’ve avoided cons and associated organized fan events is fear of creeping out the actors and, to a lesser extent, the other creators (I mean, when it comes to fan reaction, there’s Joss and then there’s every other director). At some point hearing how much people love what you do must stop feeling like a gift and start feeling like a gilded cage, right?
I felt like it made more sense than a lot of dystopias, because most of the time the logic behind the society makes no sense at all (like Divergent; I just cannot see multiple getting together and going, yeah, everyone just has one trait obviously, let’s build a society around that), but in Snowpiercer everything is controlled by one unhinged dude so it can be utterly ridiculous.
Also it is on a TRAIN. There is no room for logic on a train, space is at a premium. It is a delightfully unhinged self-contained little weird world.
Exactly, I wish more movies just threw you into the middle of a totally unrealistic situation and just went with it instead of trying to justify everything (this is where the Nolan Batman started falling apart for me).
Re: what else is there to do in the back of the train, I was actually thinking about that the other day. Clearly there are kids who were born on the train. But we don’t really see any couples, except for the violinists. And I was thinking, what with the overcrowding and general misery, that keeping together anything like a recognizable family unit must be nearly impossible. So how does it work? We saw a single dad and a single mom, essentially; so do couples who produce children (if they even know which is whose for sure) eventually agree on one of them being the primary parent and then just go on to pair up or not with whoever? There’s clearly a degree of communal childrearing, but parental relationships are still important.
I have lots of questions on this front, basically. It’s not a plausibility issue, for me; I’m just interested.
I was talking to a friend about the children thing — I think it’s kind of the critical thing in the movie, no? I mean, obviously the underlying metaphor is capitalism, but within the text of the film itself — like, they’re trying to Get to the Front, but they’re also really trying to get those kids. And then of course there are the children in the front section, who are presented very, very differently, and the contrast between the image of Alison Pill’s pregnancy and then, later, Edgar’s mother — and Edgar as another child being brought up. There aren’t really proper family units of any kind anymore but the connection between parent and child then becomes incredibly paramount (which you don’t see in the front, where children are literally used as parts in the machine if it’s convenient). Idk, I don’t have a like, well-thought-out or well-formed argument here, but I think it’s really important — Curtis starts out EATING BABIES, changes by stopping, then lets Edgar die, and then sort of repents for all of that by saving another child, and then dies protecting the last two children left — who are the ones who survive the end.
THERE’S SO MUCH GOING ON. Gah. I love this movie.
Definitely. I also think that among the many indicators as to why Curtis is NOT the one we’ve been waiting for, and is really no different from Wilford, is this: he promises Tanya as she’s dying that he’ll find her son. By the time Wilford’s done with him, he appears to have completely forgotten about the question altogether.
The children are not only parts in the machine, they’re parts shoring up the machine as it deteriorates (despite what the party line has to say about it being eternal). So it’s sort of the inverse of the whole, we have to create a good world for our children to inherit, which is itself a common refrain in discussions of climate change as well as our capitalism-related problems. And then the two kids who survive–not only did Curtis die for them, their single remaining parents died for them as well. And Yona, specifically, is very directly carrying out her mother’s vision and legacy–her father was just basically transmitting it, or preserving it until it could be realized. EVERYTHING TIES INTO EVERYTHING.
NO BUT WHERE DID THE COWS COME FROM, REALLY
I GASPED OUT LOUD OVER FISH SLIPPING.
ME TOO!!!! And grabbed my husband’s arm. He was like, “what is WRONG with you?”
Eeeeeeee I am so glad we are finally talking about Snowpiercer!! (and really, truly excellent piece, BTW) Having read this just now and having previously zero knowledge of Chris Evans’ awful psychological state, I am so incredibly curious how he feels about having done a great movie, with a great cast and great director and that’s getting critical acclaim (mostly). I really hope it makes him feel better. Is that weird?? I now understand what it is to have a Chris Evans Problem.
GLAD I’VE INFECTED YOU (ALSO: SORRY). He seems, like, Very Into Snowpiercer. As would I be, had I been in any way involved with its production. I’m really bummed the Weinsteins fucked it over so bad, though I’m really happy it’s doing so well on VOD. Small blessings, etc. It was so funny, I called up my mother after seeing it, and I think she’s only ever seen him in The Avengers, but obviously is invested in his success for self-evident reasons, and I was just like, MOM HE MADE A GOOD MOVIE! YOU CAN’T WATCH IT BECAUSE IT’S TOO VIOLENT! BUT IT’S REALLY GOOD! and she was very excited. WE ALL WANT HIM TO SUCCEED. Sob. It’s so bleak.
So I hope he takes encouragement from this and does some good films instead of quitting acting altogether, basically. Because that would just be sad.
YES!! It would be really sad if that happened. And seriously, fuck the Weinsteins for eternity. I hope Snowpiercer overcomes their tomfoolery and goes on to be a slow burner that eventually makes a ton of money and makes Chris Evans happy and overturns the world economic system. Or at least two of those things happen.
I would add that not only is Chris Evans Very Into Snowpiercer, but it seems obvious that Bong Joon-Ho is Very Into Chris Evans, which makes me happy. Partly because seeing him wax rhapsodic about Chris Evans and his muscles amuses me, but also because just. A respected filmmaker loves Chris Evans. Good for Chris Evans. Good for all of us.
I am so pleased to say that I was able to see Snowpiercer IN A THEATER as it should be seen. (My historic downtown theater plays all the weird movies that don’t get big theater runs, it’s great. You can get wine and cocktails as long as you want something with bourbon, and popcorn.)
People in the theater laughed at the babies part. I was one of those people. It was just… so over the top and OF COURSE you did. I’m sorry to not be able to join in your appreciation of that scene but I would have cut that bit of dialogue, it was just ridiculous and beside the point.
The first time I saw it, people laughed. The second and third times I saw it, nobody did.
The babies part is key for the kicker of the Edgar-Curtis relationship, which itself is a parallel for the Curtis-Gilliam relationship, and adds a lot to the Curtis character (and the way his losing his arm at the end is this cathartic redeeming moment), so it’s justified, to me; but I can understand how it goes over the top, or it can. I like to think my obsessive viewings of Hannibal prepared me for it.
I read romantic undertones in the Edgar/Curtis dynamic, which in retrospect weren’t very on–I think it’s much more a familial connection they have, either father/son or brotherly.
My husband was surprised and, I think, impressed that most of the main characters died, some quite early in the story (OK, one, Edgar, Edgar died early). To me, the concepts and the setpieces were more important characters than the actual people.
Hmm. See, I came away from the movie not believing what Wilford told him so maybe that’s part of our differences on this. I assumed he was lying, because if not then why would Gilliam give up his arm? Curtis was already doing the work Wilford wanted him to do, and at that time all the engine parts were fine.
There’s no way Wilford could have known about Gilliam’s line regarding holding a woman without an informant, though, right? And I also think it’s possible for Gilliam to both be a true believer in the balance of the train and the need for culling via uprisings, and be a good man who didn’t want to see babies get eaten. After all, that kind of behavior doesn’t really contribute to balance either. It’s like what Mason says about the fish: the population has to be carefully maintained, which includes reproduction. No population that eats its young on a regular basis (not to mention killing off women of childbearing age in order to do so) is operating in balance.
It seems obvious that Gilliam was extremely dedicated, near-fanatical, in his ethics; the arm cutting alone demonstrates that. I don’t see any reason why he couldn’t be just as fanatical about the population balance process. I think he both groomed Curtis for the uprising and cared about him; that would be why he told him not to let Wilford speak when he got to the front of the train. I think he didn’t want Curtis to know who he really was just as Curtis didn’t want Edgar to know who he used to be.
I’m not sure which time you’re referring to? At the time of Wilford and Curtis’s conversation the parts are not all fine. And I don’t really see the connection–what does Gilliam’s status have to do with it? Collecting kids to act as parts isn’t really dependent on uprisings, though it can help foment them.
No, I meant at the time that Gilliam cut off his arm. But looking at it again, I guess the people at the back were potential “replacements” in more than one sense: not just the children but also the violinist, etc. so maybe Wilford saw that he’d need them someday. i had only been considering them as engine replacements so since that was a more recent need (10 years into the start of the journey) it hadn’t made sense to keep the people in the back before that to me.
SNOWPIERCER RUINED MY LIFE TRUE STORY. I saw it three times in the theater and dragged and cajoled so many people into seeing it. (I think, counting my own, I am responsible for something like twelve tickets sold. I’m a monster.) I blame it a great deal for my late-onset Chris Evans shame spiral.
SO MANY LAYERS AND METAPHORS. Like obviously there’s the capitalism thing, and the industrial revolution thing, and the environmentalism thing, and the “fuck ur white saviors” thing, and the just FUCKING COOL STUFF IN IT like the aquarium and the club car and the fish thing and “HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU FILTHY INGRATES” and TEETH, but there’s also, I think, an entire disability reading that’s really interesting and that I don’t see discussed much? Which I think is really cool? (The stuff in the movie, not the fact that it is not much discussed.)
It just makes me so happy to see a ~political allegory~ sci-fi movie that actually handles its interests and messages well. Like, the most recent one I can think of that was similarly billed in terms of its agenda was Elysium, and I hated Elysium with a passion, in large part because it completely flubbed the delivery of what it was trying to say. And Snowpiercer just. Nailed it. And that was such a relief to me. Also it was beautiful and well-acted and funny and so much. It was so much.
YES I AGREE WITH ALL OF THIS.
Also, I would like to put forward, Tilda Swinton.
So it is. So it is.
I would also like to put forward Tilda Swinton’s dental work, which deserves its own award.
AGREED.
IT WAS HER IDEA!!!!
WHAAAAAAA tell me more
ARGH I CAN’T FIND WHERE I FIRST HEARD THIS??? Maybe it’s apocryphal. But it’s definitely true that the overall look of the character was a collaboration among her, Bong Joon-Ho, and the costume designer. There’s an interview with Swinton about it here, and an interview with the costume designer by the much-mentioned Gav here.
And then, when I read it, I said, “There is no one. There is Octavia Spencer and the woman with the yellow dress, and there is nobody else.”
GODDESS BLESS TILDA SWINTON for pointing these things out and fixing them. She is a creature not of this earth.
Fuck Elysium repeatedly. That movie was horrific.
Snowpiercer, on the other hand, was great great great for the reasons you mention. I still can’t really DESCRIBE it, but I’m glad to have found other people who loved it as much as I did.
The amount of time I spent writing about Snowpiercer and scream-writing about Elysium is, sadly, disproportionate, in that more time went into FUCK ELYSIUM than into FUCK YEAH SNOWPIERCER, but: rage is fruitful, I guess. 🙁
This was my first (and probably my last) visit to San Diego Comic-Con, too. It was amazing and overwhelming and I’m so glad I did it and I never need to do it again. I got into Hall H, too, but because it was the first panel on Thursday morning, I only waited in line for about two hours. No way would I have camped.
i was hoping you’d post here! how was it? did you meet BC?
It was amazing and overwhelming. I didn’t meet BC, but I was in Hall H with him! My own diary of the experience goes up on LJ tomorrow, along with my collection of pics which will be on Tumblr.
It was an experience, that’s for sure.
I too was sleeping under the tents for that Marvel panel (after getting in line at 2:30) and have felt really weird about the experience ever since. It’s not THAT different from things I’ve done before at SDCC but for some reason it feels different. Thanks for this piece- I think it clarifies a few things for me.
I’ll still be camping out all night next year if they have a Fantastic Beasts panel.
This is great! I enjoy Marvel movies but don’t participate in the fandom at all, so I had no idea any of this psychological drama was going on behind the scenes. It’s so odd how we feel like we know these people but they do not know us even a little – thanks for your unique viewpoint and your exploration of the idea of fame. Great read!
The part about Chris Evans reminds me of the kpop article the Toast ran a while back about how exploited the performers are. I’m feeling to sad and conflicted right now.
You’ve highlighted the weirdness that is the Marvel Movie Machine. I love much of what they are “creating” (re-processing?)…but the more I learn about the corporate-ness behind it, the more uncomfortable I become. Especially Ike Perlwhatever… I mean, he seems like kind of the worst, right? And he parlayed his chunk of Marvel into a sizable and influential chunk of Disney. Who saw that coming?
On one hand, the movies show such an attention to detail and care for the product and its fans that you just don’t see elsewhere – an actual “awareness” of their brand in way like…maybe like the Lego re-invention mini-doc thing I watched on Netflix the other night (I can clearly see a contrast between the Marvel stuff and the Fox stuff – even the fairly decent First Class movies. The Sony/Spider-Man stuff I haven’t paid as much attention to, especially since that awful scene with Toby McGuiremanvenom angry dancing…or whatever happened there, honestly I’m still working on blocking it out). On the other hand, I can see a leery corporate same-ness lurking behind those very same motions! The hand and the puppet, they are the same?
It’s a weird time to be a geek you know…like all the things I/we liked as kids are being milked and mulched in various ways – some of them *extremely* uncomfortable (Transformers…probably TMNT too since: Bay) and what was once something to be teased about (comics, accompanying shirts and toys) now adorn the chests of pretty much anyone. This is what we wanted? No, I don’t think it was…but it shouldn’t be upsetting, should it? Now people are recognizing what I/We have always known was awesome, right? Or are they just dazzled by the Hollywoodiness of it all? That happens.
yes to all of this — you simultaneously want to be like “this is great, everyone is loving what i love now,” but somehow it is SO hard to feel that way without feeling a little grossed out by the money of it all. i mean, if anyone is gonna be our new corporate overlords, i guess i’d want it to be marvel? because, you’re right, the people in charge do seem to have an actual love for the source material, which is so rare, and their movies are pretty great. and yet….
Ugh god I too share your Chris Evans Anguish. I know he has anxiety, and hates doing press, and I love the hell out of him and respect him as a person and want him to have the privacy to which he is entitled. I, too, see an endless stream of stuff with his face on it on the Tumblr, and yeah, I get how awkward it is.
I’m pretty active in the fandom, though in my circles I associate with people who are more into the characters than we are in the actors; though we do love the actors because they bring our favourite characters off the page and into real life, which gives us great joy, and as such we love them by proxy, they’re a vehicle for a version of that character, which is so strange a concept it’s hard to articulate when I stop and think about it.
That being said, this article kind of broke my heart. I hate to think about how stressful it must be for all the actors in the MCU. We want to think that they’re having a good time and enjoying every second of it, because we’re having a good time and enjoying every second of it and it’s strange and sad to think that something we love so fiercely was made by people who…don’t love it, not really.
I don’t know where I’m going with my comment anymore, I’m kind of rambling. I made myself sad.
I know where you’re going with your comment. I feel the same way.
You made good points, though! I, too, spend my time on Tumblr reading about/writing about the characters and working around the actors. I’ll watch an interview here and there, but I do make a conscious choice to avoid the actors. What is that? Am I rationalizing my geeky behavior with that choice? Do I truly not care about the actors? Does it constitute respect to draw that line? I really have no idea!
I like knowing cute facts about some of the actors (Chris Evans + his dog = awwwww) but I get uncomfortable when it gets TOO personal (people getting angry at rumors of Sebastian Stan dating someone and there’s all these ragey “HOW DARE”-type comments, people writing explicit fanfic about the ACTORS, reporters sharing said fanfic with the actors what is wrong with you jfc)
I guess – I love, love, love the MCU but I read the comics first, in my youth, years before the MCU existed. I was into certain characters long before the MCU was a thing, so I’m more attached to the characters, though I certainly adore the actors too for being so great at what they’ve done with these characters that I already loved.
I just wish Chris Evans didn’t have to do all the press, and the panels, and stuff. Because Tumblr and the results really make it seem like he enjoys the work. It’s just all the other.
Poor Chris Evans.
That’s the paradox of fandom, I think. And I think most people just do not ever get past the point of “Well I love this thing so they also must love making it as much as I love watching/consuming it!” Like, that is very much the tone of Comic-Con, I think. Which is different from regular press, right, because the actors still have to be “on” but everybody understands (or, you hope they do) that it’s a business transaction, essentially. But conventions are… not like that. Except they are, kind of. Which is what is so weird about it. So the effort to feign enthusiasm becomes even greater, because there is so much pressure.
And like, it’s not pleasant to think about the fact that the people who are making the thing you like don’t like doing it! So I get why people don’t like to think about it. But I also think it’s kind of important, particularly when you are… in the room with them. I mean, just having some understanding of where the stuff you are spending your money and time and energy on comes from, in a broad sense. “Important” on a relative scale, obviously, but.
Basically it was just really sad. 🙁
Yeah. It’s just a weird thing to reconcile internally.
Like, “I loved this thing you made, it was perfect and you were perfect, I’m sorry beyond all possible words that you aren’t into it. Because I’m very into it.”
This was an engaging read. Thank you for sharing it. I am a lunatic Tumblr fangirl (though not of Marvel) and have been before there was such a word as “fangirl” or such a thing as Tumblr. I think this piece does a great job at getting at the uncomfortable mix of objectification and empathy that fandom can generate.
Also! I haven’t read the Outlander books but I’m interested in the TV show, so I’ve been reading about the actors, etc. The guy playing Jamie posted a pic on Instagram from the window of his apartment, and several people commented “Hi you don’t know me but don’t do that, the crazies will find out where you live” and I was like, huh. That would suck. Being an actor seems like a tricky undertaking.
Oh man. Yes. DON’T DO THAT. BAD IDEA. It’s kind of encouraging that people were just sensibly telling him not to do that, though. Like. THERE ARE SOME GOOD’UNS OUT THERE. THANK GOD.
This piece was so interesting and sad. I love the Marvel movies (in a very mild, mainstream way) and had no idea about any of this drama. Poor Chris Evans.
Also, can I just say, it’s such a relief to read a piece like this without being hit by a wave of dread when the author starts talking about her gendered experience at Comic-Con because you can already hear the menacing buzz of the swarms of dude-trolls that are going to infest the comments. Thanks, The Toast!
I swear to god, the comments section of this website is like, the best. I never read the comments ANYWHERE and have been, like, happily chatting away here all day because everyone is so pleasant and interesting. GOD FUCKING BLESS.
I hadn’t seen a Chris Evans interview before, so I just watched several.
Never have I ever wanted to give a celebrity a hug so badly. I just want to give him a cup of hot cocoa and a hug (but not a “fan hug” just a human hug) and then let him be alone.
Except he doesn’t know me so that would be weird. But one of his friends should do this.
THAT’S MY EXACT FEELING ALSO. Like, me personally giving that dude a hug would freak him out, so, um, no, but like: someone for whom that would be an appropriate gesture is hopefully doing that thing, because: augh. Augh.
And then he should probably move to the woods or something and get a dog and not speak to a journalist for like 5 months. WOULDN’T THAT BE NICE.
Here is a photo of Chris Evans and a baby bulldog, apparently in his pre-fame/early fame, spiky hair years. I would like for him to be able to return to this again, in the woods if he would like.
DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS DOG. DO YOU. I AM GOING TO FIND YOU A LINK TO A THING I SAW RECENTLY ABOUT THIS DOG:
http://neenya.tumblr.com/post/93595053109
YEARS OF INTERVIEWS TALKING ABOUT THIS DOG
GUESS WHERE THAT DOG IS NOW
I swear to Christ if the dog is anything other than ALIVE AND HAPPY AND CHEWING ON A BONE I am going to LEAVE.
HOW DO ALL DOG STORIES END
YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION
oh honey
1. this was a really great read. i could read pages and pages about the weird machine that is marvel.
2. i have all sorts of guilt about the overlap between appreciating chris evans as an actor, appreciating chris evans as ridiculously good looking, being distressed by his distress, and also weirdly feeling like…his candidness (or inability to dissemble?) re: his anxiety endears him to me (and other fans, too).
3. i actually liked puncture quite a bit.
This is so interesting, it kind of amazes me how different everyone’s experience at this convention are. Also I am in 100% agreement about the Teen Wolf Q&A, I was camping the room for the Hannibal panel and even though I was super excited for Hannibal and didn’t want to lose my excellent seat I was so embarrassed for everyone there I wanted to leave,
IT WAS SO AWFUL. SUCH A NIGHTMARE. I wanted to die. Like, rarely in my life have I ever been so uncomfortable. Thank GOD the Hannibal (and then the Penny Dreadful panel following) was as good as it was because otherwise I probably would have just keeled over and died. TOO MUCH. TOO MUCH.
I wasn’t even at Comic-Con and just /hearing/ about the Teen Wolf panel made me want to curl up and die of secondhand embarrassment. I am marginally involved in that fandom and the relationship between the fans and the creators is so, so fraught.
I have not heard about this panel, but Teen Wolf fascinates me because it seems to me that the fandom almost entirely built their own idea of what the show is, which only has a tangental relationship to what the show actually is. Which isn’t super uncommon but this was at super-fast speed (like before the first season was done). So there’s been tension between the fandom’s show and the actual production growing ever since. It is fascinating.
It is fascinating and I think your impression is accurate. I’m in the fandom for the female characters (Allison/Lydiaaaaaaa) so I don’t interact with most of the rest of it. But from what I can tell based on recent tumblr posts, the show’s cast/creators have been especially insensitive to the fans lately (http://dirtydirtychai.tumblr.com/post/92883026285/enough and http://swingsetindecember.tumblr.com/post/9279434… cover it, if you have an interest in fandom drama).
It’s ridiculous how they’re acting, but I do wonder if they’re trying to get some control over the show again. Doing it poorly of course, but it would make some sense.
The problem with Teen Wolf is that the showrunner, Jeff Davis, acted under false pretenses. He manipulated the shipper fans to win big polls and kept them hopeful by saying he’d consider the ship. Vids of the two actors basically snuggling together (drunk as hell) on a boat got posted and marketing had a generally positive attitude towards it. A few seasons later and he and everyone involved are basically acting like it was all in the fans’ heads.
Another problem, separate from the shipping drama, is that Teen Wolf turned into a show that tried to be more than it was. It dropped hints it never picked up again, alluded to plot points that were never there, introduced characters with lots of confetti only to abandon or kill them later on. At first the fans started out writing interesting meta based on the material the show gave them, thinking they had a decent shot figuring out what things meant. Well, it turns out not even the showrunners know what things mean most of the time. They don’t even have a show bible. Some characters don’t even have known ages or known full names. It’s a mess.
I’m not implying the fans haven’t done questionable things themselves, but I know for certain that if Jeff Davis had set them straight from the beginning it wouldn’t have gotten the way it did. /end OT
Eh, that’s just basic ship-baiting. Maybe Davis shouldn’t have acknowledged it at all (I much prefer a fourth-wall approach between fandom and creator, but that’s just me), but it doesn’t sound completely horrific. The backtracking also sounds like an issue around a loss of control with the show- seems the marketing (and show runner) embraced the fandom because they thought it would help them win polls and buy things, but it turns out that it can’t be “controlled” in a corporate sense and makes its own meaning out of the show, which is not what was intended. If anything was ever intended, which it probably wasn’t.
The fandom thought it was a different, and much better, show than it actually was, and they’ve made in their own works what they’d like it to be. It’s a shame that the show doesn’t itself live up to what they’ve done.
This was such a great read. And as a fellow Captain America tumblr fangirl, this really hit home with the strange mix of admiration and pity that I feel for the actors, especially Chris Evans. I’m so grateful for his portrayal of Steve Rogers but it makes me so sad to think about how anxiety-inducing the rest of his life must be.
This was fantastic, thank you for sharing. And good god, 130k-160k in attendance? And I find DragonCon’s 20kish attendance overwhelming…
I haven’t done SDCC, but I’ve been to DragonCon twice and love it. The attitude is, from what I understand, remarkably different–because it’s fan-run, not corporation-run, it’s just about loving the culture.
Plus, Rob Paulsen sung all of “Yakko’s World” in a panel on voice acting my second time out. So, you know.
Dragon*Con has over 50K in attendance, and, yeah, it feels crazy huge! It’s not as bad now I’m not staying at the Marriott anymore. I go every year, and won’t even consider going to SDCC. From everything I’ve heard, SDCC is just way too commercial, with corporate media controlling their messaging to attendees. D*C is by the fans, for the fans. Also, D*C clears every room after every panel, so there’s no room squatting through panels you don’t want to see—that’s just basic common sense!
I’m not too up on the fan coverage, but surely someone has drawn the obvious parallels to Captain America selling war bonds and Chris Evans selling Captain America. Yes?
The meta levels are so real. Particularly since Captain America 2 is all about Steve Rogers’ Great Depression, not to be confused with the actual Great Depression. BLEAK. B L E A K.
Yeah, at times during Captain America 2 I felt like I was seeing a little bit of Chris Evans up there: he had no idea who to trust. Sigh.
This is magnificent and gets to the heart of why I’d rather look at gifs of Comic Con than go to Comic Con.
just wanted to speak up for ‘not another teen movie’ (the banana movie briefly referenced), an underappreciated gem, often unfairly lumped in with all of the “[genre] Movie- ‘brought to you by the producers of [other genre] Movie!” dross.
This was a fantastic article, than you for it. For years now I’ve been wanting to go to Comic Con, but then when the video of the Marvel Panel was uploaded and I watched it – I felt almost nauseated. It’s not that it wasn’t exciting in a way – I love each of those people and the movies they represent very deeply. But that’s the catch I guess – I felt like they were performing (for the audience and for the studios) and were pretty miserable about that (maybe not RDJ, I’ll admit). It all seemed so pointless – the questions were bland, the answers were painfully dragged out (same questions, same answers, I felt both embarrassed and in pain because the actors were forced to say inane things over and over again, without the chance to ACTUALLY speak their minds. Heil Hydra indeed.). I cringed when Cobie’s turn came (god, she possibly got the worst question), and Jeremy Renner clearly thinks this is all very dumb and has even stopped pretending (I can’t really blame him). But obviously what broke me was Chris Evans – the blank stare into nothingness that every now and then claimed him, the abject terror, the way he kept himself, trying almost to be smaller, a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. GOD. The whole thing was very very painful and I can honestly say that I don’t feel like flying half the world and spend a whole year worth of savings for this. I want to but I also…don’t.
Which obviously feels very hypocritical when I think about it. I spend 80% of my time online obsessing over MCU movies and actors, even when I can clearly see how fucked up Marvel is, even when my inner feminist recoils at the very thought of how blind the studios are when it comes to its core audience and the representations it deserves, even when rationally I know MARVEL IS NOT RUN BY GOOD PEOPLE. I feel for Chris Evans wanting to do more, be more than a piece of meat and a very firm butt, AND YET I REBLOG GIFS WHERE IT LOOKS LIKE HE’S HUMPING. And this is very distressing. This feels very wrong. And while I can reconcile my love and my ideals online, could I not feel incredibly torn once at Comic Con?
What I loved about this article is how close to home it hit. Not denying the general awesomeness of the cult process, but not afraid to disvest it of its aura of greatness. And not lying about what Comic Con really is about: money. And they don’t even to sell stuff we can buy. Sigh.
(ALSO OMG 24 HOURS OF LINE? I read the average was 14-17. This is getting worse and worse.)
I’m a SoCal native and a geeky type who could get in for free, but I don’t go to SDCC because spaces like CONvergence and Geek Girl Con have spoiled me for female-friendly, non-overly-packed yet awesome spaces.
Interesting article, I enjoyed how much you talked about the lack o marketing targeted for women and how much it is directed toward men, though half of the demographic attending where women.
I do have to disagree a little with your views on Evans on some parts, I say it is a matter of different points of view: seeing the “half empty glass” instead of the “half full glass” of the circumstances.
Evans has anxiety issues and panic attacks, he admitted this himself; anyone who knows about this things, know people with this, can have a perfectly happy life and yet at the minimum stress, something is triggered; a CC like this was stressful for you as public attendance, imagine for him as an actor required to do perfectly tailored PR answers; for example, you describe Mark Ruffalo as the only one who wanted to be there, yet in an interview he did with Evans, Ruffalo was the one who looked under anxiety, while Evans was the one giving the coherent answers.
Evans is not asking people to feel pity for him, I think he suffers from being honest, once sharing with the press that he feels anxiety and he did therapy and then having to deal with the press and fans go “OMG tell me about it” for the 1000th time and all those times we see Evans expression go “oh here we go again”, he actually has to make an effort not to role his eyes at the questions, when he stated several times “you make your own bed” regarding fame, as to trying to say that he is not complaining, but that is how things are.
I wasn´t there at CC, so I trust what you say, but from the video of this event compared to others, he is more comfortable compared to how he was during the first Cap film promo or the first Avengers; last year when he was there promoting the second Cap and now for this he was fine.
I think all the actors were acting a little “off”, even RDJ, who enjoys the attention too much, was acting off and then in an interview he interrupted Evans´, he half jokingly commented to the journalists ´this is his year´, we know for RDJ´s ego there is something behind that comment. Then Hemsworth was also blah, Jackson was blah… Evans was nervous, yes! but not in a bad way.
Also, regarding the snippet showed, they all have seen it the night before, so it is obvious that Evans preferred watching the people reaction than watching the snippet he already saw. and what seemed to you as a “horrified” look from him, maybe it was shocked looked…a matter if interpreting things in a different way… specially considering he might had been shocked that the moment in which the fans were screaming the most, were related to Cap and I think he is still surprised people would care about him and the character he plays.
I think what bothers me the most about this article is exactly what you say here:
“And while it wouldn’t be right, exactly, to say that this is fake – the feeling is certainly there – it isn’t quite real, either: I don’t know him. The idea I have of him is based on extremely imperfect knowledge, and I am certainly aware that getting overly invested in celebrities is really just an excuse – or, maybe, a vehicle – to feel things intensely.”
Being a giant fan of something is pretty weird–I theoretically know more about Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki than I do many of my co-workers, who I *actually spend time with* five days a week–but I don’t think you really CAN diagnose exactly how sad Chris Evans is unless you talk to him directly. And I think trying to do that through the article does a huge disservice to Mr. Evans as a person, as I think trying to measure anyone’s happiness without directly asking them would be a disservice to them.
…but judging from the quote above, you seem to realize that already on some level? And yet you keep on projecting things onto him like “looking… probably also nauseated” without seeming to realize that you keep doing the thing that you have already said is based on “extremely imperfect knowledge”?
Sorry in advance for hijacking, but I think you made a really good point here. When I was a teen (and younger) I got super emotional about bands and actors. Now as an adult I don’t want to get invested in someone I will never get to know on a personal level, so I made a point of avoiding actor interviews and gifsets from cons and whatnot like the plague. It’s basically a form of self protection because it’s not like I’m not vulnerable to stuff anymore. If I let myself I’ll probably get a pathetic celebrity crush again.
So what I do now is get invested in the characters instead. (You should see the amount of fanfic I consume. And yup Morgan, I binge read yours as well; terrific work by the way). Them, I actually do get to know and they won’t be affected by whatever I do because they don’t really exist.
Of course, some things slip through, because I still read blogs in which people for example talk about Chris Evan’s supposed state of mind. Which is probably even worse because now I’m not even getting my info close to the source (which even then is still dubious) but from people who consumed that information and interpreted in their own way. So thank you for that reminder, because knowing you don’t know people is one thing, but realizing you’re projecting stuff onto them is another.
I agree, I think that to assume that Chris Evans looking nervous over a promotion such as the one they have to do at CC, is that of a guy who is having some issues regarding his anxiety, it is too much, we don´t know him, what we get about him as lousy write ups from journalists, even when we get on video the actor rejecting what was said in an article, people still would rather believe a magazine´s description than the actor´s own words.
it’s getting harder to appreciate chris evans’s perfect hair/bone structure game when his eyes won’t stop screaming
SOMEONE GIVE CHRIS EVANS A REAL LIFE
but seriously, this was fascinating and sad, and captured a lot of my gag reflex while watching marvel liveblog their own panel. ugh. UGH.
“it’s getting harder to appreciate chris evans’s perfect hair/bone structure game when his eyes won’t stop screaming”
THE GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER READ
okay I may be exaggerating but AT LEAST the greatest thing I have read TODAY
for real though :((((
To be truly honest with you I do not get what it is about acting in Hollywood that attracts anxiety ridden people like Chris Evans like a moth to a flame. Why in the world would you want to get in a profession where you’re owned by others at the pinnacle of your success?
When you start out you’re not famous (which in his case is good) but you’re also getting shitty parts, if at all. So your goal is to get bigger parts, because if you truly love acting, then you want to get a role that challenges you. I mean, that’s how I figure it works anyway. Then when you start climbing the ladder your parts start getting bigger and maybe a bit better, but you also get more famous. And now, when he is really getting good parts, he’s famous at a level he’s very uncomfortable with and I just…don’t get it.
People talk about love for acting, but how can one truly love acting in the Hollywood system if you cannot love the side effects that inevitably come with being in that position at least a little bit? (Why not do theatre instead?) Of course these musings are useless now because Chris Evans is where he is, but I can’t help but be baffled every time this happens.
That said, your description of comic con really saddened me, and I do not understand why events like this cannot be what they are marketed to be. Greed is an ugly thing indeed. I don’t get why Marvel is so strict with their actors on their press tours; give them more free reign, lessen the pressure and not only do you make the whole experience more enjoyable for them (because even if they are still puppets on a string, at least it doesn’t always feel that way), it also makes for more a more enjoyable fan experience, ergo, more money. Win-win. Lastly, the attitude towards female fans would probably make Captain America cry. Maybe they should act more like the character they’re promoting.
Now of course I am not very informed on such matters, so maybe I am very naive for thinking like this.
Oh this article is just too amazing. As a fangirl of many things (including Marvel) I feel constantly torn between wanting to read about the celebrities involved in the stories I love, and feeling almost sick with myself for not just letting them live their lives. I felt so sad reading this, and so many of your instincts and feelings are the same as mine – I have also, against my better judgement, developed a Chris Evans Problem since Cap2 – and it’s so hard for me to love the guy so much, and love the character so much, and feel so, so bad for him at the same time.
Anyway, thanks for writing this – it was fantastic, and very informative, and really hit close to home.
Thank you for sharing this — it’s sort of the reverse of being a scapegoat — you made the sacrifice so we didn’t have to 😉
And thank you for verifying my take on Mr. Evan’s emotional state — “is it just me, or is he really off?”
I think the hardest thing about being a fan, is realizing that frequently, the best thing you can give someone, who has given you so much through their performances, is not to give them anything at all.
Aaahhhh, WHAT A GOOD COMMENT. WHAT A GOOD. THANK YOU.
I always think about this when I think about like, running into actors on the street, which is in any case not something that ever happens to me; I am, like, actor-repellant. (I have been in proximity to Chris Evans one singular time, years ago, and had no idea he was who he was until he was leaving the shop we were both in, lol. Very meaningful.) Because like — well, one thing, I’m from New York, and it is VERBOTEN to ever say anything to anybody. It is just Not Done. But also, I just have never been able to understand why people feel the compulsion to stop people and talk to them, or ask to take photos, or whatever. Like, WHAT DO YOU SAY IN THAT CONTEXT? There are a lot of actors whose work has meant a LOT to me but just saying that is such a kind of meaningless thing, in a way. Like, there’s no context for it, so — what’s the point? Why bother them? And the photo thing just boggles me.
During the overnight camp-out Lee Pace and Andy Serkis came down the line — I wanted to include this anecdote but it didn’t fit — and were taking pictures at three in the morning, and the handler came down the line to where we were to give instructions if we wanted photos, and I was just like, NO, from my place on the ground, and he just could not fathom that I was passing up this opportunity. But like — I don’t care about those people! I mean, they’re fine! I like Gollum as much as the next girl! But even if fucking — RDJ had been coming down that line, I would not have fucking gotten up. It’s too weird, it’s a fake interaction. Like, quite obviously, from the above, I’d find it really interesting to sit down with any of these people and have a real conversation with them, because I find the mechanics of fame and the psychological effects of fame fascinating — but that kind of thing holds no appeal for me whatsoever. And yet clearly to many people it does, and so… hence… Comic-Con, I suppose. I mean I like hearing people talk about their work etc too, I love talks & Q&As etc, I go to them a lot in New York. But. BUT.
Anyway I’m going to stop now, lol, that got out of hand. I JUST HAVE A LOT OF OPINIONS ABOUT THIS. Also seriously the line story was so funny. The dude just COULD NOT BELIEVE THAT I WAS SAYING NO TO HIM. Dude, it was 3am and I was trying to sleep. Take your random middle-aged dudes and go, thank you.
I agree with this!! it is also worth mentioning, that Evans was paying attention being seated at the end of the panel, two times!
when they were told to be seated he noticed she was at the end of the table and made gestures to those close to him trying to see if they could make room in the seats… then while the rest were giving awkward answers he was waving at Olson and smiling at her in a manner of "compassion" for her, she was making faces at him for being there alone at the end; he also spent most of his time either laughing off with ATJ, or Bettany and at some other point he was making sleepy faces to Smoulder!! so yeah I don´t think Evans got it worst, the one I feel had it bad was Olsen, who is really gracious and tried to give interesting funny answer to horrible questions and yet she got boohed by fans for saying the word "mutant".
Wow, this was a great article, thank you! I’ve been to a couple of nerd/marketing-to-nerds cons in the past couple years– PAX and NYCC– and despite trying really hard couldn’t really enjoy them all that much despite being super into the stuff they were about. There was certainly the gender element, especially at PAX (which I honestly regret attending at all), but it wasn’t even that so much as a weird feeling of distance from everything going on. And I, like, draw fan art on the internet. I should eat that shit UP. But it sucks.
THAT UPSET ME TOOOOOOOOOO. And then once she'd said that, it was like there was no going back. People were just SILENT toward her, even though she was articulate and said smart things, I thought! RDJ definitely tried to rescue her. It only halfway worked.
(This is all based on viewing video, I have no idea if it seemed different in person.)
I’m actually a bit surprised by this. I didn’t know Evans got this bad about fame. I don’t really watch him doing press, except for gifs and pics on Tumblr, but I did listen to a radio interview he did during Cap 2 promo, and he sounded so genuinely excited about Cap 2 & 3, and the good character work he was getting to tap into with Steve, like he basically dismissed Avengers as “fun shooting with those guys, but” and went on to say he was so excited to start work on Cap 3’s story. But now this has me wondering if he was just faking enthusiasm, and that sucks. I love his portrayal of Steve and no one will be able to compare, but if he hates it, then there’s just no point.
It’s weird because from watching SDCC pics and gifs, he actually seemed more relaxed and into it than ever so I’m surprised that in person he came across the total opposite. He seemed to have so much fun with the cast. But again, now I’m left wondering if he was faking it all and extending his acting abilities to off-screen shenanigans, too. Hell of a thing with actors. When are they acting, and when are they not? How can one tell? Even with promo they have to pretend. It’s such a downer.
In person it was actually very good-natured — not boos so much as "oooh!!" I mean, I am sure she felt awkward and obviously can't speak for her but it was actually one of the only moments of levity — like, it felt sort of like an in-joke? Because we all know what was up and the moderator… did not, lol. And then Ruffalo made his comment and we all laughed. Like, IT WAS THE ONE BRIGHT MOMENT OF THE PANEL FROM MY PERSPECTIVE. She seemed nervous but okay. Aaron Taylor-Johnson was worse. But I find him… generally… worse, lol. I do not envy that woman having to deal with him on that press tour. IT'S GONNA BE A LONG MONTH FOR HER.
This is a side of conventions I never see, truthfully. I’m a cosplayer and spend more time wandering the halls and merch booths than sitting and going through panels. Well, that and the cons I typically attend (save for NYCC) are on a much, much smaller scale.
Thank you for sharing this!
This is a side of conventions I never see, truthfully. I'm a cosplayer and spend more time wandering the halls and merch booths than sitting and going through panels. Well, that and the cons I typically attend (save for NYCC) are on a much, much smaller scale.
Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you for this. I was so bummed because she seems like A Solid Human (inasmuch as this can be determined, lest we forget the essay above) and the weird rejection I thought was happening seemed like a shame. It's a relief to know that's not what happened.
Yeah he seems, uh. This is the second time she's had to do this with him, even.
I hate this “now the demand we’re filling is for you, so be your genuine self. Oh, you genuinely don’t want to do this and it doesn’t fit who you are? Sucks to be you, it’s in your contract, act. But be yourself. But not the parts of yourself that aren’t shiny and lucrative!” mindset. It’s such a gross aspect of capitalism, that you’re expected to sell not just your labor and your passion (because you’re supposed to “do what you love”, right?) but your actual identity. I have to say I empathize with Evans, I’ve been trapped in “This is what I keep saying I want to do with my life but it doesn’t seem to want me, and I don’t see any way to give people what they want; also I’m miserable” situations too.
Thank you so much for writing this. This is a really…really good article and thought process about all of the feelings I feel towards actors and marvel’s handling of them, and the emotional strain that gets put on actors who have gigantic or reactive fanbases. thank you.
Phew! My heart just stopped for her and I felt so bad cos it wasn't like she was going to have another chance to speak what with the one statement per actor thing they had going on. I was really impressed that she came in with a smile and a goofy dance where I would probably have turned tail and fled at the prospect of sitting there in front of so many people!
A friend of mine worked on a film that starred ATJ, and while she didn't come into contact with him thaaaat much, she did say that he was being a massive diva about being sent the right meals (mainly steak) because it was super important for his 'great' bod.
omg this ATJ story. omg. I'M SO NOT SURPRISED TO HEAR THIS. THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL. I dislike that dude so much for basically no reason at all except that I get general bad vibes from him so THIS PLEASES ME TO HEAR. I seriously do feel so bad for Elizabeth Olsen. can you imagine. godddd.
This was both interesting and depressing to read.
I actually really liked Push, though it doesn’t seem to have a great rep. It was a visually arresting movie, the colours were gorgeous, and I really enjoyed the friendship between Chris Evans’ and Dakota Fanning’s characters.