(image borrowed from videogameblogger.com)Last year, I fell in love with Dollhouse even though I didn't know much about Joss Whedon's work, and I'd never watched a full episode of Buffy. About a month ago, I decided to watch Buffy from the beginning. Oh, the magic I was missing! I've managed to burn through six seasons on Netflix. I'm gobbling up the seventh season now. How I missed seeing a woman kick ass on my TV screen. I'm in love.
But the news that Angel, government name David Boreanaz, cheated on his wife breaks my heart. Really, Angel? Really? As soon as I type those words, I'm aware of my reaction, of the fact that I'm conflating the character and the actor who plays him. And this makes me think about the nature of fiction, of film, of reality and fame, and while I can't come up with any valuable conclusions on why I'm conflating the actor with the character, the creator with the creation, I can resolve to continue loving the character and ignoring the antics of the actor, who inevitably disappoints.
That is to say: the current culture of fame exhausts me. I don't want to know that David Boreanaz slept with one of Tiger's mistresses. I don't want to wonder why said mistress needs a celebrity lawyer. I don't want any of it. Give me Buffy and Angel and Bones, and keep the insanity of your bizarre, solipsistic personal lives to yourself, famous people. Please. I'm begging you.
Joss Whedon makes it easy for me to love his characters because they're so full-bodied. I love Oz because he's so scrappy and sweet. Willow and Tara were endearing near the end of their relationship (Tara, the one outlier, was like a wet cotton ball; there are few things that annoy me more than wet cotton balls). Zander is sometimes really, really funny. I'd stalk Angel if he existed. Buffy is kick-ass awesome. Dawn has the perfect scream. Spike is hot. And the 7th season blows without Giles. There. I said it. I'm so invested in the continuity of the story that I'll admit: yes, I'll probably buy the Buffy Season 8 canonical comics. Scratch that, I will. Jesus, I'm a nerd.
Speaking of nerds: I went to a free, impromptu N.E.R.D. concert this past Saturday in San Francisco. While Pharrell sang "She Wants to Move," he leaned over into the front row, shook hands, grabbed arms, crooned to the women shoving and reaching for him before addressing me for a line, for two lines, crouching closer, caressing my temple, my hair, from the top of my head to the bulb of my skull and down to my neck before moving on to another ecstatic fan, and I swooned.
Logically, I know the concert was about performance and engaging the fans, but on Saturday the groupie in me responded to Pharrell as a teenage animal with weak knees and supplicating palms raised plaintively like why? I'm surprised I didn't faint, and I'm sure I looked like I might cry. Pathetic. I know I'm conflating the creation and the creator again, but when I'm at a concert and I'm sweating profusely, shouting lyrics, being smashed into the railing before the stage, following the singer's every command (put your hands up! jump! make some noise!), the music floods my brain and makes me mindless. So, it seems that while my edict about separating the character from the creator is firm for film, it meets music and it dies.
Simply put: I'm a hysterical teenage girl for N.E.R.D. and a number of other musicians, perhaps most notably, Prince. I cried the first time I heard him play Purple Rain in concert. And the second time. And the third time, too. There's something about the relationship of the fan to the musician that encourages that. There's an undercurrent to these types of performances that reeks of sex, or of a hint of availability, or of familiarity. In the first Prince concert I went to in California (it was around 98 or so, which means it was before he lost his delicious dirty mind), Prince leaned over, palmed his ass, and asked the audience, "Do you like my ass?" I saw Ginuwine in concert in New Jersey once and he flirted with the women in the front row. I saw Common last month in Mountain View, CA, and he dedicated an entire freestyle to a random girl in the audience. I know this, and yet I still feel like I'm suffering from a failure of logical thought and intellect when I swoon at concerts. I'm resigned to my part in that interaction. I sometimes relish it. But keep it out of my film, my TV. Don't tell me who Anthony Stewart Head is having sex with, because really, I don't want to know.
But here's where the quandary of the relationship between creator and audience gets really interesting for me: what about fiction? About writing? What is the relationship between the writer and his or her audience? I do think that fiction fosters a sort of familiarity, that readers, if they respond to a work strongly enough, can feel that the author is someone they'd like to know, could be friends with in everyday life, would like to have a beer with. That this writer knows their life. I read The Color Purple in high school and immediately wanted to know the woman who'd written a book that affected me so strongly, who made one poor Southern girl recognize the pain and beauty in another poor Southern girl as I read. But then she spoke at the university I attended and I was too shy to speak with her, and she seemed absentminded and distant, and suddenly, the author had little allure for me: the heat, the love, the attraction, was for her work. But I've met other writers whose work I admire, and they are lovely human beings, and they are the folks I most love to have many beers with. And it is always a pleasant shock to encounter readers who've enjoyed my work, who find something to love in it, who leave the reading of it richer than when they arrived, and I've spent many hours speaking with them over a beer or two, sharing something of who I am with them. And for some of them, knowing me and reading the book enriches the reading experience. And I am always happy to encourage this. But who knows? Perhaps if I became insanely popular and famous, I'd be a narcissistic terror to my audience, but if that was the case, I think I'd be a worse writer as well. Writing fiction requires me to be open and intuitive about human desire, love, belief, hope, and fear, and it'd probably be difficult to open myself to witnessing the spectrum of human emotion unfold around me if I were an egotistical, dismissive asshole.
Then again, I'm a woman who is still tenderly touching her concert bruises and blushing at the memory of the direct gaze, the insincere caress, and her nerdy hysteria, so what do I know?
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