Shining a Spotlight 4.13.12: Entitlement

I don’t know how much crossover we get between the various 411mania sections. Specifically, the video game section. If not, you’ve been missing rather lively debates over the last few weeks over Mass Effect 3. The highly anticipated video game has been gaining a backlash that’s gone from merely grousing to absolute outrage over its ending. I won’t give away details due to some folks not playing it yet but the key problem for fans is that after three games where your every choice altered the game play and storyline, producers BioWare gave an ending that seemed to take any choice away and force you to the ending BioWare wants. This has gotten a lot of folks upset, slews of petitions popping up and BioWare is now working on a downloadable extra this summer but even that’s gotten fans upset as it’s more an “extended cut” than the alternate endings they want.

I won’t go into the debate on the merits of the finale, plenty of talk on that already. What I find interesting is something a recent Entertainment Weekly online article nailed, which is that this entire thing is showing, more than ever, the sense of entitlement of video game fans. The issue of these fans is that the ending they wanted wasn’t given and BioWare should be punished for that. It’s something that’s popped up in a lot of entertainment, including wrestling and something worth exploring.

Being Entitled

Being entitled as a viewer is nothing new. The Simpsons had a classic episode where Comic Book Guy rants on a bad TV show and Bart responds with a speech on how you should appreciate the hard work the show’s creators and actors put in but CBG simply shrugs “Worst. Episode. Ever.” The reason the Comic Book Guy works is because every single comic book store in the world has a guy exactly like that, either owner or customer. It’s why The Big Bang Theory is popular, there really are guys super-smart who spend hours debating the most trivial aspects of comic book characters or sci-fi films. There’s nothing wrong with being a fan like that. The problem is that some of these fans start feeling entitled to more than their favorite properties can give them.

The Star Wars prequels best show that attitude off. I don’t mind the fact that there are a lot of people who hate the prequels with a passion, that’s perfectly their right. What I hate is the elitist mentality that’s come in that you have to hate them if you love the property. I have literally had people tell me that because I don’t loathe Episode I with a passion, that means I can’t be a “real” Star Wars fan. Ditto for the last Indiana Jones movie, you have to feel Lucas raped your childhood with it, not like it better than, say, Temple of Doom. When Battlestar Galactica had their finale, fans were yelling about the lack of real closure to things and how meta-physical it all was. And most recently, The Killing created an outrage by daring to wrap up their first season without solving the key mystery after fans felt they would (which was never actually said).

I understand that feeling, I do. I’m of the camp that when Lost had its final episode, I just sat watching the screen with “what the hell was that?! I waited six years for a crap ending like this?!” The producers kept talking of wanting to give fans the endings for characters, missing that it was the mysteries of the island that drew us in and we wanted answers to that, not some spiritually uplifting final scene. So I can understand the frustration of people wanting a better ending, I do. However, despite my anger, I never really felt I was entitled to the perfect ending because I recognize such a thing is impossible. As much as I hated it, I understood that the ending to Lost was the one the producers wanted and were working toward and, as much as I hated to, I accepted that. The EW article pointed out how, had the Internet existed when, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey came out, fans would be up in arms over its ending as not being satisfying. There’s still talk of how The Sopranos just cut to black rather than the bloody showdown fans wanted. It’s not easy to give the perfect ending, even the great ones (Harry Potter) leave some things unsettled.

It’s not just endings either as it seems the rule that sooner or later, popular shows will experience a backlash. I remember reading a nice roundtable discussion back in 2007 between the writers and producers of Lost and those of Heroes where the Lost guys warned that “the moment you go in a direction the fans aren’t ready for, they’ll turn on you.” Sure enough, when Heroes spent the early part of its second season setting up a big plot rather than big action, fans and critics turned on it big-time. True, the writer’s strike cut it short but damage was still done so by the time season three started, hating Heroes became the “in” thing to do, despite the fact it was nowhere near as bad as critics made it out to be. Then again, the first season was never as perfect as fans talk of, something else that effects things. You can be sure it’ll happen with other shows as the entire “jump the shark” mentality has been sinking in thanks to viewers ready to declare “this sucks so bad” at any moment. To be a fan means taking good with the bad, not just enjoying things when they’re great and then dumping them the second they don’t meet our lofty expectations of near-perfection. These show runners will do what they plan and quite often, it’ll work out although some fans won’t accept it because it’s not what they would have done.

I find it very interesting that even some of those who didn’t like the ME3 ending are saying that BioWare giving in to the fan outrage is a bad move. Whatever you feel about it, this was the ending that BioWare wanted and they should stand by this risky endeavor. Did Lost or Galactica reshoot new finales after the outrage? No. The geek culture goes insane every time George Lucas does a little tinkering on the movie saga he created and owned but now they’re perfectly fine with a giant alteration to a video game simply because it doesn’t meet their lofty expectations? This may be opening the floodgates, making game designers question themselves less on what they can offer and more on fans want, a move that can stifle creativity. When creators start catering to just the vocal folks rather than the entire fandom, we’re in trouble.

Wrestling Entitlement

In wrestling, this sense of entitlement has risen further and at times, gotten pretty out of control. Now, yes, we are expecting a good show but to expect near-perfection week in and out is pretty impossible. I agree, both WWE and TNA should be stepping up the product more but it seems to me that a lot of fans (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) are expecting far too much and taking it as a personal insult to each one of us when promoters don’t pay off our expectations.

Wrestlemania showed that with the Bryan/Sheamus match getting folks up in arms at the insult of the World title changing hands in a twenty-second opening. Fans couldn’t enjoy most of the show because of the bad move which was seen as a shot on Bryan and the belt. It’s the same as last year when Christian lost the World title after just two days, I read a lot of comments on how he was entitled a longer run and all that. Of course, quite often such complaints are less about the worker being entitled and more on what the fans should be getting. Given the wide range of opinions of fans, that can be harder to tell who is or is not deserving of a run but saying a guy is “entitled” is something else altogether.

A highlight of Randy Orton’s recent DVD was his being open over how much of an asshole he was in 2004-05 with his attitude of being entitled to the main event and all that. He’s not the first to feel that way and won’t be the last, a guy who thinks he deserves a lot more than he gets. However, I remember a common comment made that quite often, the guys who complain the loudest over “being held back” are often the ones who really didn’t have main event star quality to them. Jeff Jarrett honestly thinks he’s on the same level of stardom as Hogan or Flair despite the fact most see him as a mid-card talent who needed a best friend running WCW to get to World champ there before starting his own promotion to dominate. Fans spent years talking about RVD entitled to a run at the top in WWE and it took him a few weeks to blow it when he got the chance. Then there’s Jeff Hardy, who’s blown more opportunities at the top than any star I can think of in the last decade. Yes, wrestlers should be striving to rise more but when you start feeling you’re entitled to a run, you’re not doing yourself a favor.

The leads to the fans. Yes, we are deserving of a good show, of respect and not having our intelligence insulted. But entitled? That’s something else. Look, promoters are going to do what they want to do. This is not a shot on WWE or TNA, it’s been like this for years. Were fans entitled to not have to endure the endless Dusty finishes during Crockett’s tenure? Or the agony both WWE and WCW put out in the early ‘90s? Saying we’re “entitled” to something is a bit arrogant of us as promoters do listen but at the end of the day, they’ll push who they want to and do what they want. Keep in mind, just because some fans feel this way, doesn’t mean the entire fanbase does. Just as with TV and movies, the internet has led to a rise in people who take their complaints to the next level to feel they deserve far more than what they’re given. Read the IWC lately and it’s less about what the show was than what it wasn’t, what fans think should be. That’s one thing for a fictional TV show, another for something that deals (at least in part) in reality. I’ve heard from more than one guy who does booking at indy feds that when you start second-guessing how fans will or will not react to a storyline, you’re shooting yourself in the foot right off the bat. That’s my problem with BioWare giving in to the fan outcry over ME3, it’ll make future developers gun-shy over taking risks and just churning out the same type of games, which is not a creatively great move. Again, we fans can jump the gun a lot, ripping an angle to shreds before it even really begins, not the best way to handle things.

Yes, wrestling is in a creative rut at the moment but they still try to take risks now and then such as Punk’s arc of speaking against the stale stuff in programming. We deserve to have our voice heard and all but as many a guy is fond of saying, “if the ‘smart’ fans got the book, WWE would be out of business in a year.'” We may deserve something better but entitled? I don’t know about that as we’re a group whose opinions sway and shift constantly and can’t always be depended on for long-term building of trust. Is the Rock entitled to be treated with absolute reverence for basically being the same character he was seven years ago while Cena is raked over the coals for not changing? Is Brock entitled to a main event run off the bat just because of his MMA tenure? Are Flair and Hogan entitled to dominate in TNA because of the good will of what they did nearly thirty years ago? Fans can debate this but at the end of the day, no one is really “entitled” to almost anything. That’s a mentality that basically died out when royalty stopped ruling countries. We fans are important to the business but we are not the entire business, there’s more to booking and planning than most of us understand. We may deserve a lot better, I’m not arguing that but entitlement is something else as fans have to remember that sometimes a little trust in what’s to come can pay off a lot better than merely complaining over what we want to happen.

For this week, the spotlight is off.