Like most fans of Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, I’m looking forward to the feature film version with a mixture of excitement and trepidation.
One of the articles that caught my eye while surfing idly performing important research for Lateral Action was The business behind The Watchmen by Dan Matthews. The author gives some of the back story of a production process that has lasted over 20 years, and argues that ‘the film’s success was sealed off-set’:
Like Cloverfield and the Dark Knight before it, box office receipts for The Watchmen will be inflated by events leading up to the film’s release. In Cloverfield’s case it was a clever marketing campaign, in the Dark Knight’s it was the untimely death of Joker actor Heath Ledger.
But The Watchmen will enjoy a few more bums on seats thanks to a high profile court case between Warner Bros, the studio behind the film, and Twentieth Century Fox, who claim the original distribution rights…
…the case has turned the film from a niche geek flick into box office alchemy of X-Men proportions. It may turn out to be the biggest film of the year. The legal drama allowed marketing to start earlier than usual and sales of comic books and related paraphernalia have soared.
Throw in a big social media campaign, in the UK led by the Picture Production Company (PPC), and you have the ingredients for an absolute smash.
Reading this, it reminded me that I first heard about the film version of Watchmen via an interview with Alan Moore, in which he said ‘I will be spitting venom all over it’ and even suggested he had put a magical curse on the film.
So far, I can go along with Matthews’ argument that off-screen events will have a big influence on the film’s reception. But he goes further and argues that there is something wrong with this:
Early reviews suggest it is visually stunning although the translation from comic to film is not as smooth as modern classics such as the Batman, Iron Man and the X-Men.
But with the cult of business media so firmly behind the film, who cares about the critics?
Call me cynical, but I’m not sure what the problem is here.
Matthews seems to be suggesting that a film ‘deserves’ to succeed or fail commercially based on its intrinsic artistic merit (as judged by professional critics). Marketing, PR and even social media are part of ‘the cult of business media’ – so if they turn Watchmen into a box office hit it will be a travesty.
It’s a nice idea, but I can’t think of any creative field where this is how things work. Even in the fine arts and sciences, those who achieve public recognition are invariably either good at marketing and self-promotion (like Shakespeare) or have ‘champions’ who do this for them (as Thomas Huxley did for Darwin). As a seasoned journalist and author, I’ve no doubt Dan Matthews knows this, and is being deliberately provocative.
Yet there are a surprising number of artists and creatives who seem oblivious to the need to promote their work. These are the ones who spend their time complaining about not being ‘discovered’ and carping at those who achieve fame and fortune – instead of working out how to bring some art to their marketing and show the world how great their work really is.
I’m not saying artistic and commercial success are the same thing. But if you only care about artistic merit, surely it shouldn’t matter whether anyone notices your work or not?
What Do You Think?
If Watchmen succeeds, will it have gained an unfair advantage from the pre-launch controversy?
Should commercial success be linked to artistic merit?
As a creative person, do you believe it’s your responsibility to promote your work?
About the Author: Mark McGuinness is a Coach for Artists, Creatives and Entrepreneurs. For a free 25-week guide to success as a creative professional, sign up for Mark’s course The Creative Pathfinder.
Artistic merit and a commerical agenda will always cause a divide, and I think you have two distinctions to think about.
1. Where commercial agenda pushes an art form into the limelight
2. Where commercial agenda influences the creation of the art with commercial marketing in mind.
I can understand the frustrations of an artist who is forced to modify their creation beyond their choice so that it will “sell”
But for someone to be happy with their work as a stand alone piece, surely grumbling about too many people seeing it of is bizarre sour grapes snobbery?
How can you pre-determine what motivations for seeing the film “should be”.
The final beauty of art is its reception, and I don’t believe that can be influenced by the artist, but by the audience.
Looking forward to watching the film!
I agree with you that I fail to see the problem. The controversy provided an advantage because it increased awareness but I’d don’t think it’s an unfair one.
Let’s start with artistic merit and assume for a moment that everyone agrees what that is. Imagine a grid with low/high merit and low/high awareness. High awareness and lower merit might make more money than high merit and low awareness. If someone doesn’t know about the creative work they can’t decide whether it’s worth more of their time to experience it.
Since we all have different ideas of merit (as a side note, phbbbbbbt to Matthews for his implication that only the judgement of critics is valid) that adds a new layer of complexity to the idea. There’s only so many people that are a potential audience.
If commercial success or the spread of an idea matters, then it’s the responsibility of the creative person to either find, or get someone else to find, that audience and increase their awareness of the work in question. Something fantastic may spread from person to person without help, but even then you need to touch those first people.
BTW, my husband and I are going to see it tomorrow as the in-laws are babysitting. Yay! Alan Moore hates the idea of his stuff on film but they’ve all been fantastic, imo. I hope this one lives up to the others. I can go on for some time about the interaction of marketing, subject matter, and audience of some popular movies and ended up cutting a couple examples from this comment….
Exactly. And I think in most cases it should be the artist herself. Maybe not always, but the artistic vision needs to gel with the awareness campaign or things tend to go askew.
Amy, Beth – thank you, you’ve each introduced a useful distinction, in Amy’s commercial agenda/artistic creation and Beth’s merit/awareness matrix.
I might ‘borrow’ them – with attribution, of course. 😉
We are all in sales whether you admit it or not. From the high school english teacher who thumbs her nose up at “trashy popular novels” to the fast food fry cook. We all had to sell ourselves to get the job. If you think about it even “artistic merit” is used as a “sales tool”.
The biggest issue most creatives have with seeing success driven by marketing and not merit is that they are not good marketers. The romantic notion of most creatives is one of a recluse. A person whose sole focus is creating wonderful work. How that work gets discovered is a different matter entirely.
In reality, a successful creative, as Mark points out is someone who does great creative work and can get it marketed effectively. Jealousy seeps in for creatives who might be better at the creative part, but worse at the marketing part.
The other thing you need to look at is how you judge the value of a work. Is something good because it makes a lot of money? Is something good because a lot of people like it? Or is there some other objective standard that makes work “good.” That’s a tough question. I hated the Da Vinci Code, and I thought it was terrible writing, but hundreds of millions of people around the world disagreed with me, so maybe it really was good…
I don’t know enough to pass judgment of the artistic merit, whether it deserves success or any of the other issues, but….
I just sat thru 2 hours and 40 minutes of raw, graphic violence, mixed up with blue man porn and lotsa words and I can tell you this one, simple thing…
It was worth $8.
Does anything else really matter ?
Ryan – OK, I’m sold on that idea!
Adam – Rest assured, millions of people can be wrong. 🙂 The whole area of evaluating artistic work is fascinating. I don’t think there’s an objective standard though – the element of subjectivity is what makes things interesting.
A while back I wrote about the question of whether artists should give the audience what they want: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2007/12/17/should-artists-give-the-audience-what-they-want/
Mike –
That’s cool, but have you seen Watchmen yet? 😉
Great comeback Mark !
I believe the director and producer gave the true fans of Watchmen exactly what they deserved…a film version of their graphic novels.
Those of us who had never read those 12 volumes were a bit pressed to keep up or catch on.
I was okay with that, for the sole reason that I can separate the facts that:
a) it’s only gonna last 2 hours and 40 minutes
b) it’s only $8
c) art hangs in the Lourve, not necessarily on the big screen
d) I came in there voluntarily
e) it’s GOTTA be better than Snakes On A Plane 😉
All this film “deserves” is a chance to make you forget about real life for 2 hours and 40 minutes.
It did that completely.
I never had a single thought outside of the screen.
How many movies can you say that about ?
@Mark – thanks for the link to that article. Intriguing notions, and yet they seem to sort of stand opposed to the concept behind Lateral Action. You talk about commercial art (like advertising) being set near the audience end of the spectrum, while other art is set more towards the artist end of the spectrum. You also seem to suggest that the art that endures is that which comes from the artist end of the spectrum, yet I think we both agree that in order for an artist to endure, he must first achieve some form of success (a la Shakespeare, Darwin, Cobain, etc.) and in order to do that, he needs to market himself, which often involves moving towards the audience end of the spectrum.
It’s an interesting balance to say the least. One that I think I will be giving more thought to.
@Mike – That’s probably one of the best reviews of Watchmen I’ve read. I’m sold.
Mike – Funny you should mention the Louvre…
Adam – Good points, but I don’t think there’s any contradiction with Lateral Action. We’re encouraging you to engage with an audience but without pandering to the lowest common denominator.
Lateral Action is for the greedy ones who want to make cool stuff AND sell it! 🙂