2013-05-21T04:10:48-04:00 Richard McCulloch http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=richard-mcculloch Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Richard McCulloch Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1391743 2012-04-01T19:00:00-04:00 2012-06-01T05:12:01-04:00

Richard McCulloch http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-mcculloch/ Anchorman. Ferrell broke the news during a brief appearance on US talk show Conan, leaving the stage to rapturous applause from the studio audience. To refer to the internet's collective response as 'enthusiastic' would be an understatement.

Take a cursory glance at film and entertainment blogs, or search Twitter for the hashtag #Anchorman2, and it soon becomes clear that there are very few people objecting to this sequel. My own reaction, however, involved several expletives and a contorted face.

I loathe Anchorman, and dislike the majority of Ferrell's work. Christmas for me has become an annual struggle to avoid watching Elf. These opinions have often been met with incredulity, and are frequently followed by a relentless barrage of 'hilarious' quotations from the film in question. Unsurprisingly, this only exacerbates how I feel.

The purpose of this article, however, is not to tear Anchorman to shreds, assert my own views as gospel, or speak ill of those who do like Will Ferrell. Rather, this seems an appropriate opportunity to reflect on the ways in which our responses to cinema - or indeed any cultural object - are increasingly forced to operate in relation to consensus.

Would any die-hard Michael Bay fan really feel free to vocalise their love of his work, knowing how much the director/producer is despised by cinephiles? Why do we not hear from more people who think that Van Gogh or Eisenstein or Mozart is rubbish? I seriously doubt that this is because those people do not exist. Taste is often talked about as being subjective; of course everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. But if that really is the case, why is it so difficult to admit when our views go against (what seems to be) everybody else's?

Toy Story 3 is arguably one of the most striking recent examples. The animated sequel was almost unanimously lauded by critics, nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and delighted global audiences to the tune of more than a billion box office dollars. There were, however, three critics who disagreed, and all were berated by bloggers and online commenters for doing so. As one writer put it, "Most of the time film is subjective. This time it's not."

Users of the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes were particularly angry, demonstrating their colourful use of the English language and accusing the men of being deliberately contrary. The message was clear: If you disagree with popular consensus, you are either an attention-seeker or an idiot.

In the interest of transparency, I should add a caveat to my stance on Anchorman. It was three years after the film was released that I finally saw it, and everything I had heard before then had convinced me I would hate it. Its alleged brilliance had been impressed upon me by too many people, and I had heard the most popular lines countless times already. My response was also unquestionably shaped by my viewing context: I watched it half way through a 24-hour coach journey, surrounded by people that I didn't like. I mention this not to explain away my 'misinterpretation' of the film, but to highlight the relationship between taste and context.

Our cultural preferences - for art, fashion, music, hobbies - are closely related to how we see ourselves in relation to other people. But which people? Lamenting the existence of Justin Bieber seems to be a favourite pastime among users of most of the websites I visit, but clearly there are copious online and offline spaces where he is unequivocally adored.

Central to this question of subjectivity versus consensus, then, is visibility. The reason why I feel so strongly about Will Ferrell is because I'm constantly faced with people telling me how funny he is. It is not the opinion itself that bothers me, but the fact that I feel unable to escape from it.

Accessing or producing online content is becoming cheaper and easier, and the internet's increasing ubiquity is in some respects making it harder to ignore the views of others. Just how representative (or even genuine) those views are, however, is another matter. In the opening paragraph of this article, I used the phrase 'the internet's collective response' to make my point. I return to it now to make a different point: my use of it was incredibly misleading.

The internet is by definition a system of interconnected networks, which perhaps explains the tendency to think of it as a singular entity. In reality though, it is like any other audience - extremely diverse and difficult to understand as a whole. Condensing audience data and presenting it as consensus removes this complexity, which in turn skews results. As Nick Davies puts it, 'omission is the most powerful source of distortion.'

In one of Anchorman's most-quoted moments, Ron Burgundy proudly proclaims that he's 'kind of a big deal'. He appears to be telling the truth, but as we have seen, consensus is at least partly an imaginary construct. Maybe there is hope for me after all.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1278996 2012-02-15T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-16T05:12:01-04:00

Richard McCulloch http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-mcculloch/

Last weekend, more than 3,000 people flocked to see a film that has frequently been described as one of the worst ever made.

Directed, produced, written by and starring the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau, The Room tells the story of a San Franciscan banker who discovers that his fiancee and best friend are having an affair. It is so terrible that early screenings reportedly prompted most of the audience to ask for a refund before even 30 minutes had passed.

Yet the Prince Charles Cinema in London hosted 14 sold out screenings between Thursday and Monday this week, each one preceded by a Q&A with Wiseau and co-star Greg Sestero. I personally travelled for nearly three hours to be there on Friday night, despite owning the film on DVD, and having already seen it three times in a cinema. What, you might legitimately ask, is wrong with me?

The answer is that ineptitude has never been this much fun.

The Room has come a long way since opening at a handful of LA theatres in July 2003, steadily acquiring a cult following that now extends across North America, the UK and even to parts of Australia. Demand is so high here in the UK that it has played at the Prince Charles every month since July 2009, and it nearly always sells out. Even the most successful of Hollywood blockbusters would struggle to generate such enthusiastic repeat business.

Last year, I conducted some research aimed at explaining the relationship between the film's appeal and the behaviour of its 'fans'. What began life as an apparently serious romantic drama - its original tagline was 'a film with the passion of Tennessee Williams' - has effectively been transformed by audiences into a riotous comedy experience. Theatrical screenings more closely resemble a football match than a film. Attendees laugh hysterically throughout, but also sing, chant, heckle, and most famously, hurl plastic cutlery at the screen.

Journalists have tended to assume that, because this behaviour is so unusual and enthusiastic, those who attend must know the film like the back of their hand. As filmmaker and writer Peter Rinaldi has put it, "It seems like the film world is split between people that haven't heard of The Room and obsessive fans that have seen it many times, and not much in between." Actually, however, my research showed that first time viewers are common at these screenings, and that 'in between' audiences are central to understanding what has made the film so popular.

Importantly, it is almost impossible to discover The Room without also hearing about its reputation as 'the Citizen Kane of bad movies.' Those who turn up to the cinema to watch it are therefore primed to expect a certain type of comedy - one they will be laughing at, not with. Rather than being a fairly rigid performance of amusing 'rituals' between audience and film (as is the case with most Rocky Horror screenings, for instance), seeing The Room in a cinema is a collective attempt to find as much humour as possible in the film.

Newcomers learn to do this by listening to and observing the more experienced fans. Almost like an exaggerated version of a sitcom laugh track, the behaviour of the group draws attention to comic moments, as well as demarcating 'right' and 'wrong' ways for the audience to respond. Ordinarily of course, talking or throwing things during a film would prompt angry reactions from surrounding patrons. Here though, it is actively encouraged. If you have a fresh observation or a well timed heckle, an entire room full of people is waiting to hear it. The likely outcome is that your feedback will be instantaneous: yes, you are indeed brilliant!

Part of the appeal is that The Room's incompetence is just so incredibly spectacular. Its numerous plot holes, continuity errors, nonsensical dialogue and histrionic performances provide plenty of raw material for attendees to laugh at or respond to. Some moments stand out more than others, but none speak for themselves, and all require an audience's laughter to turn them into 'jokes'. As such, no two screenings are ever identical. What one audience finds funny will depend upon the group dynamic and the level of their familiarity with the film.

At one point during the Q&A I attended, Wiseau inexplicably segued from a question about marriage to mankind's future, "on another planet, when we are Martians." My instinct was to laugh, as I do at most of the bizarre comments he makes. But in many ways, the experience of watching The Room in the cinema turns most understanding about film, and indeed life, on its head. Bad becomes good, drama becomes comedy, anti-social behaviour becomes social, and Tommy Wiseau is hailed as a hero. So I guess I'll be seeing you all on Mars.

The research mentioned in this article was published in Participations: Journals of Audience and Reception Studies, and is freely available here.]]>