me + Marlise Boland + Richard Armitage

Let me agree fully with the relevance of the question Perry puts here. It was one reason I took a poll earlier this week:

Because I wanted to know. Marlise Boland thinks she’s a journalist and she’s said so. Readers of this blog think she’s a fan.

The reason the question was important to me was the following: if she’s a fellow fan, I’ll hold fire — and have, since February — under the assumption that my regular negative reactions to what she does are simply secondary embarrassment and my criticism of her behavior would simply be policing, which I am on record as opposing. Armitage is a big guy and can take care of himself. Other fans do plenty of things that embarrass me and I’m for live and let live. I do plenty of things that embarrass other fans, and I ask them simply to stay away from here: DL, DR (don’t like, don’t read). What she does is neither illegal nor immoral.

If she’s a journalist, however, then I would be allowed to point out the ridiculousness of what she does, as I have in the case of other journalists. I could point out the lousy rhetoric, the poor videography, the sloppy editing, the fact that her interviews don’t flow, that questions seem disjointed, that although she keeps saying she’ll ask new questions she never does, the fact that she keeps touching him all the time, the weird requests she makes again and again that he look into her face and critique her mascara that are ?? flirting? Seriously? You know, there are plenty of fan interviewers who are satisfied with a handshake.

Frustrating, because she keeps saying “the fans, the fans” — the fact that she seems to know almost nothing about the fandom as a whole, beyond a single facebook page with whose owner she seems to be friends — and which owner won’t stop hassling me about my failure to act as a publicist for Richard Armitage and also for Marlise Boland — or its larger history, or the history of the interviews Richard Armitage has done in the past. It’s a relief to know that Armitage has witnessed the history of his own fandom at least in part and knows more about it than she does. I honestly never thought a journalist could make Richard Armitage seem boring, but she’s managed it today. Her interviews reveal that she’s not really that interested in what fans want to know, as much as she seems to expect us to identify with her. In 15 minutes of questions published today, she gets out one question that tells us something new? Two? She speaks of “the fans” and “your fans” in a condescending tone that means she seems to imply she has a comprehensive knowledge of us — or that she somehow speaks in our name.

I don’t care what underwear Thorin wears — sure, it’s funny, but is that really all you can think of to ask?

Of course, many fans are love with her work, and so criticizing a fellow fan risks the generation of a wave of rage.

But I’ll say it anyway, because it’s starting to get critical with me — if she’s a journalist, hopefully she’ll go away eventually. We’ll never hear from Tanya Gold again and that’s fine. I have this secret fear, though, that because she isn’t really a journalist, because her amateurish technique means that she will always lack bigger fish to fry, that when Armitage isn’t doing blockbusters anymore she’ll be one of few people interested in interviewing him. I have the growing suspicion that what she wants is somehow to take over the fan service of thousands of fans who have watched Armitage’s career and kept their own websites — not because we were building our own little media empires, but because we loved his work and sharing our impressions of it with his friends — because she thinks it will get her something.

The thing is what she wants isn’t what I want, and I suspect it is not what a lot of other people in the fandom want, either, if they thought about the consequences. Admittedly, the persistence of Marlise Boland is just a symptom of a larger problem that’s been apparent since August 22nd — someone or something doesn’t want our fandom to be created by and for us anymore.

It’s weird because I was thinking this stuff last night and went to the theater and was completely mesmerized. Didn’t think about my frustration with Marlise Boland for one second in six straight hours. Leaned my head back and stared at the screen and lost myself.

Mr. Armitage, I will always love your work. But if Marlise Boland is going to be your press secretary? In preference to the amateurs who have cultivated your career for so long? It’s going to demand a reassessment of the nature of my own commitment.

Continued here.

~ by Servetus on December 18, 2014.