The King of the Nerds, Joss Whedon, is featured in a fantastic Entertainment Weekly cover article this week. The story covers everything in the Whedon-verse, from Roseanne to Buffy to Firefly to Avengers: The Age of Ultron. I found Whedon’s comments on film and television as media and as narrative most interesting and revealing.
On confidence and narrative:
“But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back. Somebody once asked me if I have anything like faith, and I said I have faith in the narrative. I have a belief in a narrative that is bigger than me, that is alive and I trust will work itself.”
This right here, my friends, sums up why Joss Whedon is the King of the Nerds. Comments like this and essentially everything he says in the article align with the core of fandoms and media love and obsession: we have faith in these narratives. To the Doctor Who or Sherlock or Teen Wolf fandoms, the show is truly much more than a show. Like Whedon states, the show is alive in a way that we might never be able to truly understand. It has heart, it has breath, and it has soul. It even feels sometimes like it loves us back.
Which brings me to my purpose for this post: why do I love television and film so much? What seems at first like a simple question and a simple answer is actually one that I consider constantly and find both a million answers and no truly definitive answer. My first reaction is because I just do.
My second and most honest answer is that television, films, books, and basically any story in any format allows me to live a million lives. The human condition limits us to one life, one story, one trajectory, one narrative. Our lives begin, we live them for the most part through limitations and boundaries and narrow paths, and then they end. We experienced that one life and we filled it as best we can. But as oral stories first told us many centuries ago, our imagination and interest is also captivated by the true and fictional stories of others. Through paintings and oral traditions and books, we found ourselves defying our own human limitation: we got to live and breathe in another narrative.
Film and television took that magical ability to a new level, permitting our visual senses to join the party and creating a more immersive experience. When I sit down in front of the TV and watch The Walking Dead or Star Wars, every part of my mind joins in on the action and the narrative. It’s not necessarily that I feel like I’m fighting the Dark side too (though some times I do feel that way and it’s the best feeling ever) but it’s far more subtle than that. It’s like I’m a fly-on-the-wall; I get to be a part of the action and feel everything as each character does but I do not have to be the one behind the wheel.
While most people seem to watch television and film in a similar manner, I think those of us that are truly fans and identify under monikers like “Whovians” and “Trekkies” find even more in the platform. We get more out of a program than another life: we get that life and we get lessons, values, and insights for our own being. We take these elements and then we do more than just identify and share in a character’s experience – we literally extend the world that we read about or see on the screen. We see every possibility for our main characters and instead of demanding more from writers and showrunners and studios (which we also do), we take it upon ourselves to create more. A program becomes infinite; we don’t just live in new lives with a new film or episode, we literally move in. We live on board the TARDIS, or Serenity, or the Enterprise and we set course for new planets and new universes where we imagine all new species and galaxies. We adopt Tatooine or Asgard as our own planet, and see their entire society and their enemies. We exist here on planet Earth, likely on our couch or streaming from Netflix, and we exist in this other place.
I watch TV and films because it allows me to live a better life: I get my own life, family, friends, job, and home but through these programs, I live in other planets or alternate universes, I travel all of space and time, and I get to step outside of human limitation. Most amazing of all, thanks to the internet and Tumblr and Twitter and the like, I get to share these experiences with people just like me. It seems silly (and somewhat unnecessary) to say but this extension of life and this viewing ability makes me happy. These stories and narratives fill my soul with a greater understanding of myself, my friends, and humans. These narratives make me better and they make our world better: they enrich us, entertain us, and ultimately teach us more about being human and being ourselves.
This is why I watch television and films; this is why I’m at the cinema on the first weekend of a film release and why I pay a ridiculous amount of money to get a million channels and why I countdown for a program release. Just like Joss, I put my faith in the narrative, and let me tell you, it is so worth it.
The Nerdy Girl 