I donāt mean to be rude; but I donāt think Iāve ever seen this, does anyone have any examples?
Supernatural
Doctor Who (Steven Moffat specifically)
Sherlock (Steven Moffat specifically)
Actually Steven Moffat is basically just this sentiment given human form.
A version of this happened with The Magicians, tbh. Though instead of expectation: men, reality: women it was expectation: smug nihilists, reality: mentally ill queer folks.
Arguably Game of Thrones.
If we broaden it outside of televisionā¦I think Star Wars falls into this, at least the sequel trilogy. Maybe the MCU as well. And I canāt help but think of every band thatās ever complained that their fanbase is mostly women. 5 Seconds of Summer comes immediately to mind.
In general, most white male creators seem to have this massively entitled mindset where they wantāand think they deserveāthe time, attention, and enthusiasm that creative fandom (i.e. the side of fandom more dominated by women) is known for.
They want our eyes for ratings, our word-of-mouth for free publicity, our metas for social media buzz, and our spending power for merch and cons. But they donāt want us. And they donāt really want the responsibility of telling a story to a thoughtful, engaged audience, regardless of that audienceās demographic makeup. They just want to be praised for whatever schlock they cough up.
And like any other spoiled brat, they will break their toys before they share them.
It goes all the way to the top for kids shows. Toy sales will crash a show. Makes sense, but if those toys are gendered for boys instead of the female viewers, they wonāt usually switch up the marketing and move them to the girl aisle. They cancel the show outright.
Mind you it is perfectly possible to make the switch in marketing, but execs would rather throw it all out than have something that doesnāt perform well with male viewers. For example the Rey merch was not expected to be popular, for some reason, there had to be public outcry to get merch of one of the main 3 protagonists. A PROTAGONIST. The fact that she wasnāt a huge part of the 1st launch says a lot already.
And what happened when female fans got too invested in the Sequel Trilogy? The entire writers room didnāt necessarily lash out, but they sure forgot how to behave.
Young Justice
Paul Dini: Superhero cartoon execs donāt want largely female audiences
#WhereIsRey (initial)
#WhereIsRey (ongoing)
The older, male generation of 'Star Wars' fans may be losing interest in the franchise, but female fans are stepping up.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was designed to be the opposite of The Last Jedi
Youāre all sitting on the hot take of the decade tbh
And yet when they fond out that boys were watching MLP:FIM in droves, they had NO PROBLEM with it.
#SONS OF ANARCHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!#LITERALLY SONS OF ANARCHY IS THE BIGGEST EXAMPLE OF THIS LIKE EVER#kurt sutter wrote that show for MEN and ended up with an overwhelmingly female audience#because heās actually a good writer and knows how to develop characters well and wrote excellent female characters#but once he realized that his audience was almost entirely women he literally took it out on tara and gemma in the show#but like tara specifically#he resented her character for being a huge draw for female viewers so he tore her development to shreds and killed her#in the most brutal gut wrenching way possible#kurt sutter you will pay for your crimes#i actually wrote a manifesto about this on one of my old blogs i should try to find it sldkjsldfjsdljf#long post (via@m-oonknight)
OMG YES. I LOVED Sons of Anarchy, especially the women and then I got to season 6 and it was like - everything was just tossed in the trash? And like, why did Sutter hate that Tara drew tons of attention? That should have been a good thing! He should have been like āHey folks, this girlās getting us more viewers, letās put her in more scenes!ā It just doesnāt make sense to me. MEN donāt make sense to me.
The 100 too. Iāll never forget how Jason Rothenberg would attacked female fans on Twitter and mock them in interviews, and then post links to male fan discussions on Reddit to praise and thank them. In his goodbye letter to the show he SPECIFICALLY thanked Reddit and it was so disgusting.
Star Trek from TNG on was also a boyās club, even though the TOS fans were mostly women. Women, in fact, who literally created modern fandom with their zines. But after TNG it was all, āWomen donāt understand Star Trek, only smart men hur dur.ā
I think it would be harder for us to find examples of when this DIDNT happen than when it did. It happens all the time.
Doesnāt stop it from boggling the mind
(though it could probably start to make some sense if you follow the money past audience bases to maybe a couple of investors or like a rich patron ā¦ š¤)
Stooooop I just wrote a masters thesis on this shit. Media creation and distribution is a means by which dominant power structures consolidate their hegemony. Dominantly situated creators get upset when the audience they attract isnāt the audience they wanted, because they view the whole creation and sharing of the fiction as an exercise to sustain kyriarchal conditions that benefit themselves. When the audience is Other, they see it as a failure of those efforts and lash out.
Simply, theyāre trying to assert a particular worldview via fiction, and upon getting confronted with something else, begin foot stamping. Itās not just men wanting male attention and gatekeeping. Itās that the fiction in the first place was an attempt to curate dominance and whoopsie! they miscalculated.
(anyway if anyone wants to read 35k words of philosophy about this, hmu)
Hey folks, for anyone that was interested in the thesis (firstly thank you so much for reaching out I really appreciate the interest) the following is an open access link to download it. Please let me know if it doesnāt work for some reason. Comments are now restricted so canāt put it there, but I hope you see this if you were interested!
Iād also love to hear your thoughts, as I literally wrote it for communities like ours to read, so, thanks.
Fictions are a cornerstone of human cultures: they are created, shared, discussed, modified, and valued. Yet, philosophical accounts which p
