Online fandom: Have we gone too far or not far enough? - Page 6
© Michael Martinez
Some people are just like totally hyped and want to groove on the good vibes coming from New Zealand. And I have no idea of why the majority of readers visit our Web sites, except maybe to see what's happening, or perhaps to see what Tolkien and Peter Jackson have to do with Britney Spears (you'd be surprised at how some people find our Web sites -- or maybe not).
The bottom line for the fannish Webmasters, however, is that we have to produce. We aren't just gossip columnists, however. We are court reporters, recording for posterity the prosecution of the innocent by both sides in a bizarre proceeding that leaves all the wacky commercial courtroom shows gasping for breath in a cloud of dust. And the weird thing is that we are also one of the sides in the dispute. Isn't it about time we questioned ourselves over what we are doing? Everyone else seems to be. What about us?
Tehanu brought the issue into focus for me in a convention report at TheOneRing.Net where she wrote:
"Other than that, it was an interesting experience. There were about 80 people in the audience; some of them weren't up on the Net's reportage of LOTR because they didn't have computers; others of course knew more than me because they were involved in MAKING the movie. Well, you'd expect to see them at a Con anyway. Somebody later described the whole excercise as a rather interesting cat-and-mouse game between them and me at times. The folk from WETA sort of stiffened when some of our exclusive images came up on the screen."She goes on to sum up the delicate balance between the various parties by saying:
"...The way business, the commercial media, fans and the Internet interact is volatile and not well-predicted. The way a group of amateurs governs itself in something like TOR.net is experimental, as is the way it relates to the more well-understood hierarchies of business and power. Which in turn are balanced against the desires of fans worldwide. It's fascinating and not particularly easy, and there really wasn't time to do it justice as a topic."This interaction was noted by Tolkien Online, where they reprint an article from "The Evening Post", which discusses the recent hullaballoo over Gollum. Once again TORN found itself at the heart of controversy when Xoanon posted some screen captures of the CGI Gollum on TheOneRing.Net. He quickly took them down when 3FootSix and New Line Cinema protested.
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