The Author's Responsibility to the Audience

Yesterday I pretty beligerantly told you that you as an audience have a responsibility to the people who make the things you love. Now for the flip side of the argument. The responsibility that the people who make the things you love have to you. A lot of you might assume I'm going to take this time to rant about George Lucas but I won't. The problems I have with Star Wars have been addressed in so many other places that I want to take some time later on in this blog to go into them. But not now. For now I'm going to stick to the point at hand.

What does an artist owe their audience?

When you think about it, a lot. Your audience are the people who actually spend time on what you have created. They are the people who will give life to your characters, who will tell other people about the good time they had with them, and let's just be flat out honest here, they are the people who might even pay you for what you've done. But we'll get to that detail later. What I'm driving at here is that your audience is not a thing that you can piss all over and expect to get away with it.

As an audience we all have expectations. If I pick up a science fiction book, I have different expectations than I would have from a drama. If I watch a movie, I expect different things than from TV. Reading my blog you have different expectations than other blogs. Because I'm witty and more handsome than those other bloggers.

My point is that audiences have expectations and one of the responsibilities an artist has to their audience is to satisfy those expectations unless I have a really really really really good reason to do otherwise. I'll get into those reasons in a moment. First some example rants. I'm going to steer away from movies on this one because there tend to be more hands in the pot than can manage a good product.

First an example of a failure to meet an expectation.

Have you ever given up reading a book because you just lost interest? Ever walked out of a movie (ok, I can't avoid the movies). Quit a video game halfway through? When you did, was it because you had initially set out to experience something bad, or was it because the product was no longer satisfying you?

I'm willing to bet the second.

Whatever it is we give up on, it is because the product has generally forgotten its responsibility to the audience. To entertain us. I will eventually have a huge rant on how post-modern art in general has done this to its audience. There are long debates which can be held on whether the artist needs to entertain their audience and to those who oppose I say start an argument in the comments section otherwise I win.

Any media/art I consume must entertain me in some way. And let me clarify something here. I am entertained by thinking. I am entertained by asking questions. I am entertained by emotional responses to things and I am entertained by things which simply entertain me. Sometimes I demand knowledge of what I'm getting into up front, and sometimes I enjoy being surprised by what I've gotten. But something has to be delivered to me.

Media for medias sake sucks. It is simply words, or sounds, or vision swhich enters and exits a brain without delivering anything. And this almost always happens when the thing is created without an audience in mind. Creating something without a target audience is as useless as creating food with no flavor. It occupies a space, but it doesn't do anything.

Now, let's look at a different example of failing the audience. I'd like to talk about the videogame Braid.

First off, I love this game. It has a beautiful atmosphere, it's challenging, it has an interesting mechanic, and it is deeper than most other video games I've ever encountered. I'm going to provide a clip from a fantastic movie that I recommend you check out, which is free to download. In the movie, Braid creator Jonathan Blow is discussed, including his habit of going onto the blogs of people who reviewed his games and correcting him.

If you didn't watch the movie, what the creator is essentially doing is complaining that his audience did not understand his vision. That they got something different out of the experience then he intended. This seems like a perfect example of what I discussed yesterday right? That the audience has a responsibility to the artist to understand his intent?

Not to the point that you can go around trying to explain to people what you didn't make obvious in your work.

There is a trend in media now to make things unclear for the sake of being unclear. This happened in Lost most predominantly, but is a large tool in media of all types today. And it's fun to not know things but you also have to understand that the audience will then insert its own meaning. Braid never explains the plot beyond the fact that you are pursuing the princess of sorts. There are some vague texts and some pictures that are assembled, and apparently (though I haven't actually done this) a collection of ridiculous hidden items that unlocks a special reward. But some of those hidden items require extremely convuluted lengths to get there.

In creating something so complicated, you as the artist can celebrate when members of the audience get the whole picture, but you can't be mad if someone focuses on the dog in the corner. This is evident in the visual art world as well, where I have a bad habit of focusing on details in the margins as opposed to the main point up front. If you gave me something to look at, don't get mad if I focus on that instead of what you wanted me to focus on.

So basically what I'm saying in this second example is, don't get mad when your audience doesn't focus on exactly what you wanted them to focus on. Braid had a fascinating gameplay element and if you get upset that people are focused on this rather than your complicated plot, well then you're kind of being a jerk.

However, if you had simply explained your plot out either in the story or on some sort of blog which I hear all the best writers are maintaining these days, maybe there's some wiggle room.

This post has already reached a considerable length, so I'm going to wait to go into ways you can break expectation for another day. I hope you've enjoyed this rant. Come back tomorrow for some more when I decide to tackle one of the main issues addressed in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt quote from yesterday. That's right, I'm going to talk about Love.