I’m not sure when it happened, but happen it did: The world woke up one morning and decided that individuality is a bad thing.
The sage advice of, “Be yourself,” was replaced with, “Don’t be selfish. Scoot over. Make room.” Political candidates preach to the choir during the primaries, then move to the middle for the general election. PG and R ratings are no longer sufficient to adequately inform the population as to movie content, whereas the new, coveted rating of PG13 is paradoxically more informative. Horror sections disappear from the bookstore, but copies of The Shining can still be found, filed between The House of Lost Dreams and The Lathe of Heaven.
Even Stephen King himself has been writing more fantasy than out-and-out horror, but that’s not how he got his start. He started like this:
Remember that one? While that commercial didn’t help King write great books, it did create an identity, and a very specific one at that. After this commercial, Stephen King became an icon; a brand if you will. No longer Stephen King the man, he became STEPHEN KING, SCARY DUDE. The man wasn’t just a writer, he was a horror writer. When someone wanted to make reference, they no longer said, “It’s like a ten-penny horror novel.” What they said was, “It’s like a Stephen King novel.” Without this particular commercial, without this branding of his identity in the culture of the time, the question must be asked as to just how popular he would have become. I’ve no doubt King would have made a fine living because he wrote good books in the beginning of his career and great books at the end of it, but would he have become a household name? I somehow doubt it.
Steve wrote horror novels, and he wrote them well. He wasn’t afraid of creating an identity that attracted a specific crowd while alienating another. A Christian himself, he wasn’t afraid of alienating other Christians. He didn’t try to tone anything down to keep fundamentalists from branding him the anti-Christ. He just shook his head and, in the vernacular of the time, Kept on Truckin’!
Fast forward a couple of decades. Television has gone from a handful of channels to hundreds. Despite frequent dire prognostications, more books are being published and purchased than in any time in history. On-line role playing games spring up almost every month fighting for your subscription dollars. So, with all the choices out there, we should be happy! Anyone can find any niche item they’d like, right? For example, I want Science Fiction, I can go to the Sci-Fi Channel!
Here’s what Mark Stern, Creative Director of Original Programning for the Sci-Fi Channel had to say:
I think our big frustration with a show like Battlestar Galactica has been, it’s a great show. Because it’s on the science fiction channel it’s kept people away, that we felt like would come in and love that show. So it’s made us a little more hesitant about going too hard scifi. Because hard scifi on the scifi channel is almost like this double whammy. Now that we have a brand that is a little broader and we’re embracing a lot of things we’re already doing.
First off, a correction: Not Sci-Fi, but SyFy.
Second: WHAT THE FUCK? In order to feel confident producing hard science fiction on the channel that named itself the Science Fiction channel, they feel that they have to change their name to a more generic, pseudo-word that rhymes with, “syphilis,” or, “Sisyphus,” before they can produce original, hard, science fiction.
Third: Why do I feel as if I just listened to a Sarah Palin news conference?
In a world where more brand identification seems to be a good thing, everyone wants to diversify to the point of extinction. As pointed out very aptly by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in her column at, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, the genre-crossing, mass market spanning GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL really is no more.
Stop.
Trying.
Find your niche, and fill it like no one else. You don’t have to please everyone, but you do have to please someone. Turning the Sci-Fi channel into the weird little brother of Lifetime isn’t going to win you Lifetime viewers and will lose you Sci-Fi viewers. Toning down the graphic violence in your crime novel won’t get Nora Roberts readers to buy your book nor will it endear you to James Ellroy fans.
Do your thing. Do it well. Go forth and be awesome. Your audience is waiting. They’re not waiting for who you think you should be.
They’re waiting for you.
