The Audience is Present
RDJ as Dr. Doom. Also: The Camera Roll, Sotheby’s on Operator, and Enclaves
This week, the MCU announced that Robert Downey Jr. was coming back to play Dr. Doom.
While we don’t know exactly what form this will take, this felt like a confusing move to me. A new level of meta-inter-ness that’s been left undescribed.
In it, it made me wonder: is this good, or bad? Where is this heading?
I’ve described before that in modern media, creators get ahead by bringing themselves into the media. But, by doing so, they inevitably wrap it into an additional layer of complexity.
And therein lies what I feel matters. We enjoy media by ourselves, but we also *use* media to communicate. Am I being spoken to by the piece of media, OR is the media speaking for me? In this era, the latter is increasingly more relevant because of the ability to share the extra context around the media (the fandom). It’s not that the piece of media has to have a particularly salient social message, but rather that the media can more readily stand in as a replacement for what we feel.
…and thus, some communities treat it as a social venue that they need to protect. Lore is a third place.
But, it’s understandable why *some* fans treat lore so seriously. I think it’s in part because media itself has become “third places” and lore is treated as secular Bibles. Third places are venues outside home and work where we usually interact with the rest of society. Pre-internet it was the bar, public spaces, library, community clubs, etc. Now, every show has a fandom and sub-reddit. With lore being elevated as third places, it attracts primacy that is seen by some as sacred, and in need of protection.
In analysing Robert Downey Jr’s recasting, I think it helps to reframe it by instead looking at the opposite frame: the involvement of the audience.
Particularly along two axes:
Is the audience actively or passively involved? That what extent is the audience, present**? Active involvement entails reaching out and having the audience become aware of its audience-ness. A part of the story itself is the audience. In the extreme, it’s directly breaking the 4th wall. A more passive involvement is when the media knows its audience exists and its playing up to them, but not piercing the veil. The audience feels acknowledged, but the story remains in itself. Another way to frame it: media that actively involves the audience will figuratively (and sometimes literally) reach out and combine both audience and story. Media that passively involves the audiences is a hat-tip. It’s saying: “I know you’re there. This one is for you.” It keeps its distance.
Is the audience getting involved through the story itself (internally) or externally (through meta aspects of its production or context)?
Passive Audience + Internal Awareness:
This is fan-service. It’s the story that knows that the audience is there and does an in-universe gesture to play up to the audience. A great example is Han Solo in The Force Awakens saying to Chewbacca when they enter the Millennium Falcon again: “Chewie, we’re home” as a mega nod to fans coming back and watching the smugglers for the first time in almost 30 years.
Adaptations also fall into this quadrant because the media will make nods to the original work. It’s this Leo DiCaprio meme:
The audience is passively present inside the story.
Passive Audience + External Awareness:
This is post-modern territory, where the media itself exists only in context of what came before it (🥥). Thus, to make it entertaining, it needs to be aware of the audience’s expectations and know how to break it. Pastiche, irony, intertextuality, subversion, is all domains in this quadrant. The audience is passive because it is nods to the audience, but they don’t call out to the audience.
Another example of this domain is when actors are cast in stereotypical roles, knowing that people will come watch the film for the actors. This used to be substantially more popular, but less so today. Some actors that still have pulling appeal like this, are people like The Rock.
The audience is passively present outside the story.
Active Audience + Internal Awareness:
This is metamodernism territory. It’s Everything Everywhere All At Once and Nathan Fielder’s work. In this quadrant, the media is actively calling out the audience and making them aware of their audience-ness. The audience deliberately becomes a part of the story and the experience of the story itself. On the one the side, it’s breaking the 4th wall, as in EEAO where in the middle of the film, it looks like the film itself is ending, but it’s instead viewed from the character watching a film (I couldn’t find a video of it unfortunately and a still doesn’t do it justice).
But, it’s also making the audience aware that it’s a story and they are a part of it by watching it. In The Curse, a scripted show about people making a reality TV show, there’s a scene where the camera explicitly pans and zooms to the camera man, as if it pierces through the screen and makes the audience aware of its involvement as the audience. You become aware that you are watching a show about a show and the camera man is almost ‘filming’ you.
A lot of Nathan Fielder’s work puts the audience in the show with him. In Nathan For You, it blurs the boundaries of what’s real and a story and ends on that note in the show’s finale. Same with The Rehearsal. It constantly asks you to evaluate the work by recognizing yourself as the audience.
The audience is actively present inside the story.
Active Audience + External Awareness:
This quadrant is where the audience interrogates itself. It’s, for example, actively engaging as a fandom outside the story. It’s cosplaying, subreddits, and discourse. It’s usually driven by the audience themselves among each other, but they can be sometimes ‘activated’ by promotional material. A 4th wall breaking here that’s fun is when promo material is in-character (like Deadpool vs Wolverine):
The audience is actively present outside the story.
This is where I put RDJ’s recasting as Dr. Doom. Even if there’s an eventual in-universe reason (somehow it’s a Tony Stark variant or something), it treats a usually passive awareness in cast choice as now actively engaging its audience. The audience is present in the story through a strange meta-attachment to the story itself. Regardless of what the in-universe explanation is (or isn’t), fans will relate to their feelings of OG RDJ as Iron Man. It’s not breaking a 4th wall, but some 5th wall, because it asks the story to not only leave its domain into the audience, but to bring it back into the story. The audience isn’t just present, but has become a conduit.
While there are other debates about the recasting, such as, seeing it as a desperate move on Marvel Studios’ part, it begs the question whether this kind of recasting is something that can actually work or might come to be expected? It’s not recasting the same actor in the same genre, but recasting the same actor in the same universe. I feel like there is a there-there here, but it’s all filled with a fog of war. Maybe it’s something AI-related. The act of recasting a grounding figure in the same extended dreamcore AI universe energy. But, it doesn’t feel like the Dr. Doom casting choice is of this time, yet.
As the bridge between creator - story - audience collapses and morphs more into itself, it’s important to understand where and how they interplay. I think there are bad ways to do this and maybe that’s something for a future newsletter.
**yes, if you follow performance art, the title is also a reference to Marina Abramovic’s famous installation called “The Artist is Present”.
Bonus Content!
Not much change this week on the personal front. :)
📚 Reading - At the Existentialist Café by Sarah Bakewell
🕹 Playing - Balatro
📺 Watching - The Curse
Finished it this week. It takes a while to get into it, but around episode 4 it fully hooked me. It got weirder and more intense as it went on and I loved that. A particularly important theme throughout is the demons we are internally running away from: the part of us we hope to not be. The parts of us we wish we could sometimes prove to not be. In some sense, ‘the curse’ isn’t some external force, but ourselves. The ending and finale is unlike anything I’ve seen. If you’re a fan of Nathan Fielder’s work and Emma Stone’s acting, watch this.
👨🏻💻 Work - New Novel
This week has been a bit on the tougher side. Quite in the deep end and choosing to rewrite some sections more dramatically than anticipated. But, I think it’s all in favour of a better story. Some days it feels like I’m holding and carrying too much complexity at once and it becomes a bit overwhelming. But, that’s usually a sign for me to cut and make it leaner.
🏃🏻♂️ Running - Too Damn Hot
Same as last week. It’s been damn tough. Focusing on strength and conditioning instead. But, I miss a good run where it feels like I’m not swimming through soup. Hopefully the last week of this.
🌐 Links
The Audience is Present, Continued - The Camera Roll
I wanted to work in this article into the main body of the newsletter, but felt it didn’t entirely fit. Regardless, it speaks to the fact that we are accidentally editorializing our own life for a fictional audience that might not exist anymore.
Years after I deleted my personal social media, my camera roll still resembled a curated archive, as if I were crafting a personal "brand" or "aesthetic," striving for marketability or commodification. There were many photos of empty places that I thought looked better without people, way too many photos of myself, and a heavy emphasis on the things I consumed rather than the people I loved.
It’s why I’ve always been wary of social media, particularly when it engages you into a mould that you aren’t ready for. Many people have become micro-famous and then get stuck into that feedback loop and becoming caricatures of themselves online. It then feeds into your day-to-day. Dangerous loops.
Sotheby’s On Operator
One of my favorite artistic duos. Being a fan of dancing and merging performance art with generative art on the blockchain in the form of “Human Unreadable” is still one of my favorite art pieces.
Campione
I love weird borders. In planning for an upcoming EU trip, I stumbled upon this part of Italy that’s in Switzerland: near Lugano. As with each enclave, it has a strange and unique story. Lucky for us in the 21st century, someone made a great video about it. Enjoy!
🎶 Music
Casino Versus Japan - Szene
I’m a huge fan of Casino Versus Japan and to my surprise, he dropped a new album. The most magical and otherworldly ambient music.
Enjoy!
Hope you get to see a sunset this week. :)
Simon