On actor interactions

[nny]

Okay, now I've had the time to discuss this with a whole bunch of people, to clarify my point in my head as well as on screen, I'm going to expand on what I was saying in my earlier post. But first, some context for the uninitiated.

A while back, Joe Flanigan was at a con and was telling a story about how sometimes, when other actors are filming reaction shots, he'll screw around and feed them a completely different line. And for an example, he said "I love you, Dr McKay." Naturally there was a huge amount of squealing, applause, all that sort of thing, and fans have since ripped the .mp3 and made it phone friendly and all sorts. It was an awesome fandom moment and it's made us happy for a hell of a long time. Then, at Shore Leave, some fans asked David Hewlett for a response to this, feeding him the line 'I love you too, John Sheppard'. This was filmed, posted on youtube and is linked to on mckay_sheppard if anyone wants to see it.



Here's the thing. I have nothing against the people who filmed it and posted it, but I disagree with their actions; I don't think that it's something we should ask for. Actors are aware of fan culture - it's what they live off, especially in sci-fi shows like Stargate: Atlantis because we are big geeks. It's what we do. And sometimes actors will play along with it, and they'll acknowledge it, because they're also aware of how ridiculously happy that can make us. See Joe Flanigan's comment, see Michael Shanks lisping happily, see Paul Gross talking about how much slash will be written about the new guy. Fandom is a secret that they allow us to keep, in many ways, and it seems to work.

The key thing, though, is that we must allow the actors to establish their own comfort zones with this. It's awesome to have Joe tease the McSheppers, even if he's not aware exactly that that's what he's doing, but asking David Hewlett to buy into and directly condone the subset of fandom is a different thing altogether. Yes, it makes me uncomfortable, since it crosses a line that I've drawn in my head between acceptable and unacceptable fannish interaction, but that's my personal reaction and that has little impact on you. There is the potential, though, that incidents like this can have an impact on the status quo that we love, and that's something that has the potential to affect a hell of a lot of people.

David Hewlett's an awesome guy. He's the most incredibly fan-friendly celebrity I've come across, and he's ridiculously generous with his time and with his life. He has been a fanboy and he gets us in a big way, so something like this is relatively 'safe' to put to him. But if he goes back to the SG:A set and talks to Joe Flanigan - who is far more reticent and has shown himself to be less understanding of the fan culture surrounding the show - about what's been going on, that might have a knock on effect on the kind of things that Joe feels comfortable saying in interviews and at cons. I'm not saying that this will happen, but it's something that should be considered.

We invest a hell of a lot of time, effort and emotion into fandom. But that doesn't give us rights to push for what we want from actors who are individuals, and not the people we build them up to be in our heads.

Personally? I prefer for them to relax with fans as a whole, to be able to joke, to be able to give us the occasional nod and sly wink when they feel comfortable doing so, because it's so much more awesome when it's off the cuff and unexpected and an acknowledgement of what we do and think and create. It's fannish life to extrapolate and twist things to fit and to occasionally take what is offered to us on a silver platter. To ask for more when there's already so much on offer doesn't sit well with me.

I really hope that that made sense, and that I covered all the points that I meant to. More than willing to discuss in the comments because, as with any and all posts made within fandom, your mileage may vary.

Comments

[khyrra.livejournal.com]

I actually got the feeling that he was a little uncomfortable with the request(it's hard to tell, he might have just been giving the requester a hard time). I felt like he was only playing along(and obviously not giving exactly the lovey dovey portrayal they were looking for) because he is that nice and accommodating to his fans. But it weirded me out just watching.