I agree too with fuck the audience. Though I don't know about the distinction as
you draw it here between pandering to an audience and writing legitimately for
one, because it's often seemed to me, in practice, that various people, for
instance, poets may say that genre writers of westerns 'pander' to a market for
even considering the constraints of genre, and yet those genre writers I've
known have all written out of their legitimate imaginations and preoccupations,
trying to tell a real story within the constraints of the form. So I'm a bit reluctant
on this one, it seems in some sense the way one takes all the light for oneself
while allowing the others only illegitimate shadows. There is no way to know
from outside whether the one writing the story is intensely engaged,
imaginatively engaged. If everything that is is holy, and it seems to me it is, then
better to act out of that belief and measure one's own heart not everyone else's.
best,
Rebecca
---- Original message ----
>Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:20:23 +1100
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Audience
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Hi Doug
>
>On 20/2/05 3:31 AM, "Douglas Barbour" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
>> But this leads back to how much you trust an audience, or what kind of
>> writing (& its audience) you find yourself exploring. Alison has a very
>> different audience for her fantasy trilogy than for her poetry,
>> although in a few cases, me for instance, they overlap. And I suspect
>> she approaches the concept of audience & what kind of writing she
>> attempts for each in different ways as she takes up one or the other
>> (n0ot necessarily consciously).
>
>Quite consciously: I'm very aware that the fantasy series is _for_ an
>audience, and that I want that audience to be wide. This is (I realised
>with a certain surprise when I started writing this series) the first time
>the idea this has entered my thoughts in this way. I haven't found it
>diminishing; the reverse, rather, since it throws my other work into sharp
>relief. Its primary effect (and I expect this sounds ridiculously banal) is
>to make me increasingly aware of getting my grammar right, so whatever I
>write is absolutely clear. Getting pronouns/nouns invisibly unambiguous
>when, for example, I had three male characters in the same scene, nearly
>drove me mad in the last book. Also, there are places - extreme sexual
>violence, say - where I will not go.
>
>This kind of links up with what Richard was saying, about what it means to
>write for an audience. I spent a couple of hours with Josh the other night
>going through a short story he had written (my kids are very demanding in
>employing us as a on-site creative writing teachers). I only ever ask
>questions about what he meant, and talk about the grammar: if he gets the
>grammar right, other people will be able to read and understand it, which is
>what he wants. The process of getting him to understand that, to be precise
>and to read every word, since people don't usually have ESP, is actually
>quite interesting. The rest is up to him.
>
>On the other hand, my audience is always myself, even with the fantasy
>series, when it's me at around 17; I write the kinds of things, I suspect
>without exception, that I like to read. I write poetry (when I do) for
>reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, and I can't imagine concretely who
>might read it, apart from a few friends; the best metaphor I know for that
>is Celan's "message in a bottle". Most of the time I don't think about
>audience at all, since it's impossible to know what it is.
>
>I remember working on an experimental theatre piece with a performer when
>the director raised the question and my collaborator looked up with a very
>dark expression and said, Fuck the audience. In many circumstances, that
>attitude is the only way to respect the audience. I have always been
>troubled by the pandering to an audience, to the idea that an audience means
>that work ought to be shaped in certain standardised ways. You get that in
>extreme ways in the film industry. These are actually formal questions,
>although they're usually disguised as "market" expectations, and usually
>they're pretty fatal to any art.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
|