It was a Richard Armitage fan thing, but now it’s just a marketing thing. Whatever.
I kind of feel like I’ve already been marketed to hell by Digital Theatre. Sitting this one out. What I doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things but it does make stuff about “our” identity clear. Remember that question I asked a few months ago?
Q: Who owns the fandom?
A: Whoever is marketing Richard Armitage this week
I will tweet 5 quotes. Put a name to each quote and email answers to competition@digitaltheatre.com #TheCrucibleGlobalView
— The RA Fan Page (@TheRAFanPage) April 10, 2015
**Please note that by entering this competition you are agreeing to receive future communications from Digital Theatre.**
— The RA Fan Page (@TheRAFanPage) April 10, 2015
Me + Richard Armitage 
I have to agree with you here..I’ll sit this one out a well…Love the guy, but its enough
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Only sorrow and sadness .
A feeling of dispossessing , manipulating . No more fee-will , my thinking in jail . Some predigested news , that I have to swallow without thinking . I am becoming a brainless fan , who is still able to wonder, what is happening to her , but for still how long . Was I dreaming of freedom ?
Thank you to open my eyes . I have to rest, to have a break , then perhaps I should find a new way to think about .
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I think this is a fairly complex problem — I’ve been thinking about it since about a year after the blog started. It’s not going to go away.
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Je suis fière d’avoir pu exposer des sentiments personnels , qui ont fait ultérieurement partie de votre reflexion , oh combien plus profonde et intelligente que la mienne.
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erreur: précédemment (à la place de ultérieurement) sorry
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Not at all. I think there’s a piece that’s about the individual (what am I doing), a piece that’s about one’s membership (or not) in a group (what is the fandom doing), and a piece that’s about commodification (what is DT doing) and that makes it hard to sort out exactly one’s own position. I know where I am on at least one of those questions most days 🙂
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Yes, I’ve been wondering about all this as well. Every day it seems like I have something else from Digital Theater and it isn’t just that they are marketing the heck out of RA. It is for everything. They are in the business of making money in order to continue to put out the plays and such they do so I understand but I agree I feel like I’ve had enough and the more they do this for RA (not really for him) the less interested I become.
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I had already planned to view The Crucible with Richard Armitage on Saturday. But with the global view, I’ll watch it from my desktop–to avoid any crashes that might happen to the DT streaming system when RA fans all get online over the course of a day. Ha!
And I haven’t received/viewed what I deemed excessive or annoying marketing by Digital Theatre. Sorry that you have. Besides, my excitement level for Sunday’s Olivier Awards Ceremony–and RA’s nomination in the Best Actor category–cannot be dimmed by anyone’s ad campaign.
But I will say that I am “over” the contest/competition frenzy promoted by anyone out there with a select survey or polldaddy account. Ha!
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You may already know this but unless you turn off your wifi you will still be streaming The Crucible. I verified this with DT. There is no way to watch offline if you are connected to the internet.
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wow, that is a serious pain.
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Hi Tree, Yes , Happily I remembered that. But thanks so much for the kind reminder to unplug when viewing The Crucible on my desktop! And others will also be able to take note for their viewing plans. Cheers! Grati ;->
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My enthusiasm for him winning the award, and my enthusiasm for the production itself, are not dimmed. When a for-profit entity takes over a fan initiative, apparently with the consent of the participants, then my enthusiasm for doing things with fans dims significantly.
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I understand you .
But are really all these fans consent or and conscious of how DT and other proceed? Are these fans knowingly joining , adhering those DT’s intentions ? . I think they are only happy to find something “new” , overwhelmed by various info .
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Si j’ai compris les explications de mon fils, passionné d’informatique et mon conseillé pour les téléchargements légaux ou illégaux, DT garde non seulement la main mise sur la lecture directe achetée , mais également sur tous les visionnages ultérieurs après téléchargement acheté en HD ou non du film du ” Crucible”.
Je comprends que DT veuille profiter financièrement du succès et de la popularité de cette pièce de théâtre . Beaucoup de pièces de théâtre ne sont pas rentables .
Mais malgré une énorme frustration , je ne chargerai pas cette oeuvre et donc ne la regarderai pas aujourd’hui . Comme pour la projection à Strasbourg ( seul visionnage personnel de RA en JP ) , j’attendrai la sortie éventuelle d’ un DVD . C”est le seul moyen de payer DT, financer la production , le metteur en scène , les artistes … et rester définitivement LIBRE de DT ensuite .
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yeah, DT is starting to be a pretty serious pain and I have to say I wish we could get free of them as well.
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But I have to admit , that I easily forgive DT . Many people would not watch “The Crucible” without DT’s movie spread all over the world . I have to keep in mind , that I remain among the privileged elite .
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Sure. They did people a huge favor. I certainly agree with that! (I just don’t think that means I need to get on board with everything they do as a consequence.)
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I do wonder how the event organizers view their event being taken over like that by DT…
Another question: can a fandom be ‘owned’? Although I am a Richard Armitage fan I do not like to be seen as part of a homogenous group called a ‘fandom’, that is too general a term for me. To me ‘fandom’ suggests the fans are an organized entity and I prefer to adhere to no one else’s rules but my own when it comes to admiring Richard Armitage. So, for me, it doesn’t matter who ‘owns’ the fandom as I don’t see myself as part of that. I see myself as a fan but not part of a fandom – but maybe that is too naive a distinction.
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I assume they were d’accord, as they continued to promote what they were doing. I also think it’s not entirely the case that their interests are separate from the fandoms or DTs — potentially if you’re a small venue or a new Twitter account you probably do want to make more people aware of your group or what you’re doing. My position has been pretty clear and constant since the beginning of the blog, and while I’m invested in having an audience, I’m not invested in the same way. I’m not selling anything, for starters, and I’m not trying to provide a service for fans. I’m trying to provide a service for me, and that (a) gives me certain kinds of freedoms and (b) also means that there are certain kinds of activities that I am not that interested in and for which I don’t come into mind as a potential advertiser. There are reasons with my own past that the blog is conceived that way — and / but it does make me look at this kind of thing with a lot of skepticism.
re: the fandom — I think this is a good question but I don’t think that we as fans can really separate ourselves fully from the fandom at large. (This may be different for me, being notorious and apparently being seen by some as an opinion-maker, which wasn’t really my goal and if it’s true, has been more of an inadvertent consequence of what I do.) That is to say, I don’t like the tag “Army” for Armitage fans but that existed before I was a fan, is a tag that many fans do identify with, and most importantly, is the label that the media puts on Armitage’s fans. There’s also a sub-group of fans who use the tag “Armitage Army” as a label for everything they don’t like about what other fans of Richard Armitage do, and insist that they are not part of it. In short, I suppose: our identity as fans may be partially, but not entirely, separate from how others see is. Another sense in which we are undeniably and inevitably group lies in the perception of us as a market segment. How “we” are thought to behave, what “we” are thought to want, becomes a consideration for marketers in thinking about what to provide. You may not see yourself as part of the fandom, but in fact what is made available to you as a fan (or whatever you want to call yourself) of Armitage is in fact determined by what “the fandom” wants.
Finally, there is the sense in which, if one participates in a group, one develops a certain identification with that group even if against one’s will. I used ot feel a lot of identification with fellow Armitage fans (particularly people I encountered toward the beginning of my process) and I used to make a lot of effort to empathize with and/or be considerate of them. As I’ve learned that there will always be people (perhaps more and more of them) whom I can’t please, my interest in that has eroded, to the point that I don’t much care anymore about what fellow members of my group think of me in the sense that it influences what I publish. But I can’t deny that there is a sense in which I participate in a group and feel that I do so. Otherwise there would be (for example) no readers here. And that would matter to me, I’m afraid.
To make a parallel that seems increasingly apt: I’m a Jew, which for me is an elective affinity. I am a “Jew by choice.” I disapprove of a lot of what other Jews do (especially politically). That doesn’t stop others from thinking of me as a Jew, it doesn’t stop me from having to consider what others Jews do, and it doesn’t stop me from feeling the occasional desire to experience solidarity with fellow Jews.
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I had a feeling I’d get a long response on this fandom thing and I kinda threw that comment in there on purpose just to see what the response would be. 🙂 Sorry, don’t mean to taunt you but I really was curious. That’s what I like in my interaction with you, Serv… you make me think things through more (which sometimes frustrates me as I don’t always want to go so deep but then I end up doing so after all and am grateful!). There is much to think about and much to say – also about rebelling against being part of a group when you clearly are part of that group… Anyway, thank you for this!! It makes me want to write about this fandom thing on my blog (after I have thought about it a little more) – would it be OK if I used your post / quoted some of what you say here on my blog?
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Thanks. I always worry a bit that I’m a pedant. But I really have thought through a lot of this stuff over the years so I’m rarely speaking off the cuff. And go for it, you’re welcome to cite me.
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Thanks. 🙂 It’ll be a little while, though. Life is a little challenging at the moment and I find it hard right now to think a thing through well enough to write about it. I stick with fluff for now, but am listing some things I want to get back to once I feel I can. Thanks again!
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Hang in there!
I think this is a problem a lot of fans experience and I’m always interested in reading how each of us manages to navigate it.
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