Watch out, Richard Armitage fans. We’re a market segment again!

Pursuant to this. I have a lot of the same reactions. And, as history repeats itself, a lot more weariness about it all. And two additional points to make.

Twitter #richardarmitage tag before August 2014 — how I miss thee. Full of funny exchanges, sexy remarks, links to great fan art, and some real discussions. What do we have now? A non-stop stream of smarm and fundraising and polls about James Bond with Armitage’s occasional self-promotion put in there and some pretty pictures. No discussions that involve anything like differing viewpoints; everyone always already agrees with everyone else. I haven’t been there much lately because I remember when it was fun and joky and it was okay to make some racy comments about Armitage’s body and I don’t want to lose the memory. The current state of affairs is what we get, though, when the occasional swear word provokes a fan to insist that “Richard asked us to keep it clean,” when we are asked regularly to follow Richard Armitage’s “teachings,” or told that his words are particularly valuable and should be given our full attention, when people who ask honest questions are set upon by others who weren’t part of the discussion (something I may or may not write about in a bit) with the intent of shouting their point of view down.

It’s not entirely clear what this means. I hope you become, too, whoever you are, in the direction of always Urban. Not very effective marketing. Most Germans understand at least simple English.

Into this soup of sentimentality stirs: a suddenly revived Twitter account for Urban and the Shed Crew. Make no mistake, this isn’t Candida Brady or whoever was running it up to just a little while ago. That account shared new pictures and the occasional piece of information. It seemed to be run by someone who had access to information and shared it when they had a second. This account broadcasts a non-stop barrage that includes mistranslated replies (hint: don’t use a machine translator for languages that you can’t read; on the other hand, malapropisms often make the day of a native speaker); of directions as to what fans may or may not do, and irrelevant information.

On the other hand, it’s clearly not the work of a professional marketer, because it’s coercive and off topic way too often. It spends a lot of time telling fans who they may or may not tag (really?); it engages in long arguments with tweeps about whether Periscope is an appropriate marketing technique; it occasionally even hints unsubtly to fans that their reaction to photos it tweets is wrong.

I don’t think a professional marketer would do this kind of constant arguing and disciplining. Moreover, I think a professional marketer would believe enough in his/her own product not to have to tell people how to interpret it. I also think a professional marketer would be able to accept that maybe not everyone is going to share the same ideas as s/he does. Not this tweep — s/he’s clearly insecure and worried that if she doesn’t rain down a ton of pronouncements on how we are all to behave, she’s going to lose control of the situation. Fans are supposed to help market Armitage — but not, according to her, by making any suggestions about film festivals or marketing. Only by doing what s/he wants. Other fans shouldn’t post general Richard Armitage content there, but she can and should. Hint: if you want to crowd source something — or even work successfully in the average U.S. workplace these days — you need to accept that other people may have useful ideas.

So, yeah, I don’t think this is a professional marketer; in fact, I am sure it’s a fan and I’m pretty sure it’s one I know because I’ve observed exactly this style before. (Haven’t you? There are a few other random traces here and there that suggest who it is.) Maybe you like this, or you think at least that it’s worth putting up with in order to gain information, but it’s a style that leaves me cold. I may occasionally call myself part of the Army but I don’t appreciate being told where and how to march and you know, while I haven’t been tweeting about this film, when I do tweet about it, I will tag whoever I like and I will say whatever I like whether or not it conforms with this particular fan’s idea of what I should or should not be saying. I’ve been the target of attempts at creating a market segment before (cough) and I might be again but my opinion about it hasn’t changed in the least.

Whatever. You like this stuff. As long as you like it, why should we care?

Two reasons.

First, I think the account as it is now involves a fundamental misrepresentation and one that gets to the heart of some issues with Twitter. Armitage’s fans debate over who’s actually tweeting at @RCArmitage, with opinions falling here and there, but the assumption among most is that at least some of the tweets are authentic Armitage, even if we are not sure which ones. People participate in celeb Twitter streams because of the illusion of access. Well, I think most of have realized that Twitter doesn’t give us real access to Richard Armitage, but with these smaller accounts — people in the crew, etc., of projects he has worked on, there is an even greater expectation of authenticity. I may not be able to talk to Armitage, so the thought goes, but I will be able to talk with someone who worked with him, or observed him.

But this account isn’t authentic. If it’s a fan, and I think it is, then I can’t stress enough that s/he wasn’t there. This is a good example of this kind of lie, or rather, marketing:

In which the Tweeter describes a scene she never witnessed.

Because we don’t know who the narrator is, but claims to speak on behalf of the whole film, we believe him/her. What s/he should be saying is, “I’ve been told it was a happy set,” or even “I believe it was a happy set.” So what do we believe of what this person says, if we know that fundamental affirmations it makes are misrepresentations? If we want to evaluate the veracity of information we need to be able to determine who is speaking. Twitter relies for its effect on the effect of non-mediation. And when s/he lies like this, it undermines fans’ belief in the utility and sincerity of the account. I think it’s obvious who the fan is, so I don’t know that s/he needs to out him/herself, but admitting that s/he’s a fan and not someone originally associated with the production would go a long way to making the information the account distributes more credible.

Since I pretty much think that person is never going to admit that — until perhaps forced to, and I am not going to be the person who forces him/her to the wall — it bothers me less than the other thing.

To wit:

Chop the hero. It only takes one person! Except that’s kind of the opposite of what Bernard Hare argues in the book.

This is one of the other things that identifies the new Urban and the Shed Crew tweeter for me — the stream of unrelenting, heartwarming treacle s/he pours over everything.

I dunno, maybe s/he’s seen more than the trailer, although I doubt it (and maybe that’s what s/he’s angling for, who knows). But, you know, I read this book, and I bet you have too. In fact, you will remember that it’s not one solid stream of unrelenting, heartwarming treacle. It’s frighteningly disturbing in places. Chop is not a conventional hero. He participates in risky behaviors — he does drugs — he occasionally refuses to be Urban’s hero — he does morally objectionable things more than once — he’s violent — he watches the Shed Crew twock cars and does nothing about it. The book is interesting precisely because it’s not one solid tale of redemption and Chop is an interesting hero precisely because he’s not morally clean — something that some Armitage fans were troubled by when the announcement of his role in the project was first announced.

The other facet of the book is that it’s an indictment of an entire economy and social system gone wrong (the trailer hints at this when we see Chop marching toward the police — remember that?)

Caps from various trailers distributed from the film. There seems to be some social unrest here! Dunno, but I think Chop’s participating in a riot. In one place I see the cops kicking him.

I don’t think what Bernard Hare was saying in that book was — look how I saved this kid. (If he was saying that, he turned out to be wrong insofar as the real Urban ended up an adolescent father and in jail, too.) In fact, throughout, Hare concedes that he can’t save even Urban, he can’t cope with the problem — that it is too big for one person. One person who cares isn’t enough, in the face of an entire society that has thrown away these families and their children because they don’t fit into its economic forecasts. Depending on your politics you may or may not agree with that diagnosis of Urban’s difficulties — but no matter what, the book is not a syrupy, heartwarming story about how one person makes a difference.

Well, I haven’t seen the film. So maybe that’s what the film is about and maybe this “marketer” is right. If that is what the film is about, I’m going to hate it. But no matter what the film is like, by potentially stressing a tilted picture of it that corresponds with an apparent need to make Richard Armitage into a hero, s/he’s doing none of us any favors. First of all, it’s fairly clear in remarks that he’s made for years that Armitage himself struggles against that heroic, handsome lead image — probably one major reason for him to take this role in the first place is that Chop is so manifestly, openly flawed and isn’t even really trying to change. Finally he gets to smoke and drink and be the opposite of who he is — a sort of nonambitious everyman dropout. But second, a marketer who missells a film does it no favors at all. In my case — by beating the sentimental drum so loudly and insisting that this is how the film is to be interpreted, she’s actually making me start to dislike a project I was very interested in.

No one can resist the constant chirping message of a fangirl or fanboy forever. I’m going to try. I just hope that Urban’s new “marketer” doesn’t ruin the film for me months or years ahead of when I can expect to see it.

~ by Servetus on October 20, 2015.