Episode 202: Dylan Marron
In Episode 202, “Dylan Marron,” Elizabeth and Flourish talk to the creator and host of the new (and very fandomy!) podcast, The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks. They discuss the threads of his career that influenced the project—including his early encounters with fandom as part of the Welcome to Night Vale cast and his viral video series on racism in film, Every Single Word—and talk through the many layers of Jar Jar, which details what happened when some Star Wars fans on the early internet declared war on Jar Jar Binks—and destroyed the life of the man who played him.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:45] You can find information about all of Dylan’s projects as well as links to his social media at his website. The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks is here.
[00:02:04]
[00:05:12] Our interstitial music throughout is “Try anything once” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:12:16] Elizabeth interviewed Dylan for a 2015 article entitled “‘Your fave is problematic’: why are we so bad at talking about diversity in pop culture?” You can check out other press and some of the videos on his website, but here’s a sample:
[00:16:18] Not only did Facebook wildly inflate video viewing metrics, they had to pay a $40 million settlement with advertisers as a result.
[00:17:50] Conversations with People Who Hate Me—including episode transcripts and links to the book that came out of the podcast!
[00:37:32] The academic paper referenced here is “Weaponizing the haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation” by Morten Bay at USC.
[00:51:21] The creator of Your Fave Is Problematic, Liat Kaplan, wrote regretfully about the project in 2021.
[00:52:54] That “someone” was Allegra Rosenberg: “The Ever-Mutating Life of Tumblr Dot Com.”
[01:04:37] If you’re headed to SDCC, add us to your schedule via the official listing! And here’s our flier:
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #202, “Dylan Marron.”
FK: Ah! I am so excited to talk to him on, among other things, on this, the occasion of his new podcast coming out, The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks.
ELM: OK, so Dylan is a writer, producer, actor, multi-hyphenate.
FK: Yeah! A many-threat.
ELM: So you may be familiar with him from a variety of things that he’s done that have touched fandom. He was Carlos the Scientist on Welcome to Night Vale, the very popular podcast of a decade ago. I first encountered him when he was doing a project—actually, probably through Night Vale, but when he was doing a project called Every Single Word, where he edited down movies to just the words spoken by characters of color.
FK: Extremely memorable. [laughs]
ELM: Yes. I first interviewed him for that. And then he did a podcast called Conversations With People Who Hate Me that was very popular, and he wrote a book related to that as well. And the last thing he did before this podcast that I’m aware of, is he was a writer on season three of Ted Lasso.
And now he’s made this podcast, which is extremely relevant to fandom. It is about fandom. And so I kind of feel like, you know, we recommended on social media that people listen to it, because we are, apologies, delayed by a week on this episode. But I bet most people have not heard it yet. So maybe we should kind of summarize the situation.
FK: So, I mean, I think that probably a lot of people are familiar at least with the name Jar Jar Binks, the character—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, who is—
ELM: Wasn’t he in the other ones too?
FK: Yeah, he was in the other ones too. But, like, most—
ELM: But his big debut was in the first prequel.
FK: His big debut was.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And he is, uh, definitely annoying [ELM laughs] to adults. Arguably, a racist stereotype—
ELM: Right.
FK: —and beloved by many children, and all CGI.
ELM: Motion capture, specifically.
FK: Motion capture. Early motion capture.
ELM: Pre-Gollum.
FK: Right. Basically, the first all-motion-capture character that I can think of. Certainly the first big one.
ELM: Right. And I feel like Gollum was the example of, like, “Oh, this is—this could be really good.” [laughs]
FK: [laughs] Right?
ELM: And that one was like, “No! No, no one wants this.” You know? Right?
FK: Right. And specifically—I mean, obviously not “no one” wants this.
ELM: Sure.
FK: Because it turns out a lot of people do love him. But at the time, all of the people who had grown up with the first Star Wars trilogy saw Phantom Menace and many of them decided that they hated him, and made the life of the actor who played him miserable. Online.
ELM: Right, and so the actor who played him is Ahmed Best, and so a part of this podcast is about him, and this kind of idea of these fans being super hostile to the character, and also to some degree to him, and kind of ruining his life, basically.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: In the sort of really fraught element of this potentially playing into racist tropes inadvertently and Ahmed Best is a Black actor who comes from a very artistic Black family.
FK: Not a person who’s not in touch with his roots.
ELM: Right. And so this kind of thorny idea—and also, he was a huge Star Wars fan. So this kind of, like, many, many layered thing of this actor and the motion-capture elements and the people’s response to him and this very early fandom online kind of hitting the mainstream media.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And getting reported on. That’s a big part of this podcast and this story.
FK: Right. And Dylan interviews the actor, and he interviews fans and anti-Jar Jar people and also at least one, like, expert on the early internet and so it’s—I mean, I thought it was actually an incredible podcast, and I mean, I know that, I mean, we’ve said that you should listen to it. So you should listen to it, [ELM laughs] dear listener.
ELM: Yeah. No— [laughs]
FK: Go listen to it, and then come back here! [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, I would honestly consider, if all this appeals to you, I would consider pausing this right now and listening to it first, because I think our interview with Dylan will be richer if you have actually listened to at least part of this. Even the first one or two episodes.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Just to get a sense of, like, how he tells the story and the empathy that he brings to it.
FK: Totally. All right, well, having gotten that out of the way, should we take a little break and come back to Dylan?
ELM: Yeah! Let’s do it.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, let’s welcome Dylan to the podcast! Welcome!
Dylan Marron: Whoa! Thank you for having me! This is so fun.
ELM: I’m so excited to see you again. Thank you so much for coming on.
DM: It is a joy. I am thrilled to talk about all things fandom and all things Jar Jar Binks. [FK laughs]
ELM: All things Jar Jar Binks.
FK: All.
ELM: All right, actually, this is only—it’s not gonna be about, like, fans. It’s not gonna be about Ahmed Best. It’s going to be about the character of Jar Jar Binks. And let me say off the front, I have not seen the Star Wars prequels. [laughs]
FK: No! I had forgotten you had—
DM: Whoa!
FK: I had forgotten this, Elizabeth. I knew this, but I had buried it.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: Wow.
ELM: So my knowledge of this is purely through osmosis. [FK laughs]
DM: No, listen, we support. You’re bold and brave, and we celebrate your truth.
ELM: I don’t like Star Wars very much. I don’t feel— [laughs]
FK: Wait, before we fall down a Jar Jar Binks-shaped rabbit hole— [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: We should probably get Dylan to talk about himself a little bit. Like, you know, his story.
ELM: Yeah, tell us your story.
DM: My story. God. Oh, I’m just free—it’s—you’re sending me out to sea, and I’m starting from the beginning.
ELM: Yeah, so when you were born— [FK laughs]
DM: When I was born—
ELM: What day, what time, what’s your chart? [laughs]
DM: So I, God, how do I even begin my story? [ELM laughs] I was born in Venezuela. I moved to New York City when I was five. Then speeding forward many, many years, because your listeners are great people who don’t deserve this. [FK & ELM laugh] I would classify myself as a writer/producer. What I classify myself as is always really complicated, because, like, every IRS statement that I file changes, you know?
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: The first year that I was doing full-time creative work, it was because I booked a commercial that was picked up and I was able to pay my rent and write a play off of that, and then the next year I made a video series, and I was touring with Welcome to Night Vale, and then after that I was a video maker, so, like, the exact term of what I am has changed quite a lot, but I think writer and producer is the most succinct way to put it.
ELM: I respect this, because there’s another world in which you’d call yourself a capital-C “creator.”
FK: Yes!
DM: And I did that for a while, although I felt that that moniker was too—it encompassed too many people.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: And I was like, “Oh, am I creator?” Especially because creator people use that simultaneously with “YouTuber.” And I say this as someone who loves YouTubers, but I don’t—I have put work out on YouTube, but I don’t know that I’m a YouTuber.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: I actually find the label—you’re calling an artist the software they use, you know? [FK laughs]
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: So it would be like calling a writer a Microsoft Worder.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: And that just feels not right. So anyway, this is weirdly something I struggled with for quite a while.
ELM: Hmm.
DM: Not something I seek sympathy on, you know. [DM & ELM laugh] This is not a struggle that you need to feel for [all laugh] but it’s something that I’ve wrestled with of, like, “What am I?” Like, “How do I define what I do?” Especially because I’ve jumped around so many mediums for so long.
ELM: OK, but, all right, you mentioned Night Vale in passing, and that was where I first met you.
DM: Yeah.
ELM: Because you were doing, I mean, I feel like we met, IRL, at GeekyCon? Do you remember?
DM: Yes. Yes yes yes. In 2015.
ELM: [laughs] 2015 was a long time ago. Yeah. And so I was really, I was curious about that, because, you know, I’m wondering, that’s such a foundational fandom.
DM: Oh yeah.
ELM: And I’m wondering, you know, especially on Tumblr, you know, and people still are referencing it, and this is the kind of, like, there’s a certain generation for whom this is how they kind of—
DM: Oh yeah.
ELM: —got into fandom, right? And I’m wondering how that looked from your side, as one of the—I mean, you were—were you in the main cast?
DM: Yeah, I, so I was cast in Welcome to Night Vale in 2013. Jeffrey Cranor had voiced the character of Carlos for a few episodes and, you know, they decided that they were like, “Well, this thing has blown up. We did not know that this was gonna blow up.” And when it did blow up, I think they wanted to find an actor who was brown and queer for a character who was brown and queer. And, you know, those are guys who, Joseph and Jeffrey, who think very deeply about all this stuff and want to get things right, and often get things so right [laughs] and it works out so well, I think they’re brilliant, and I celebrate them. And so they cast me, and my first show was the “Condos” live show in 2013.
ELM: And what, like, what was your impression of fandom at the time? Because I mean, this is all building towards, you just made this podcast about fans, right? You know? So it’s like, I’m wondering how that kind of shaped your foundations. Like, your foundations.
FK: Right. Were you—did you have previous experiences with this, and then you were like, “OK, now I’m on the other side.” Or was it like, “Welcome to this world.” [laughs]
DM: Great question. For me, it was a total “welcome to the world.” And I, like, I mean, it was through meeting and getting to know the Welcome to Night Vale fans that I learned the word “fandom.” You know, I also think that that was, like, it coincided with the era when the word “fandom” was coming into the lexicon. But at live shows, I was seeing, like, incredible cosplay, I was getting to know what fanfiction was. And I had been a viewer of many things. I had ingested a lot of media, [all laugh] you know? But I never had an identity as a fan of anything. If I had any identity as a fan of something, it would have been, like, Britney Spears in the ’90s and early aughts. But the truth is, that was such a private fan experience for me. It was, like, taping her live performances and then scurrying home so that I could go learn the choreography. It was such this—
ELM: Aww. [laughs]
DM: —private worship that—
ELM: Yeah.
DM: And what’s so beautiful to me about fandom, and there’s no right way to be a fan, but to me, what I’ve observed is, like, it is people forming community through something they love, and that, I’ve actually never done. And it’s both something I’m not a part of, but something I still love. That’s possible, right? You know? To be like, [ELM & FK laugh] “I don’t do this, but holy moly, do I love that it exists.”
But you know, like, I’ve kind of approached everything with a pretty sociological lens. Which, like, the minute you say the term “sociological lens,” like, already I start falling asleep. [ELM laughs] But, like, I think I was just so mesmerized by what was happening in the audience that I was so interested to learn more about what fandom was and what was coming out of it.
ELM: And then, this is my second interview with you, because the next project you did was this thing called Every Single Word—
DM: Yeah.
ELM: —where you edited down these movies, like—I remember the Harry Potter ones—to the—
FK: Yeah, it was painful.
ELM: It was only lines from the characters of color.
DM: Yeah.
ELM: And they were brutal videos.
DM: Yeah.
ELM: And so, like, did that come out of that, or is that a totally different project?
DM: Well, I was cast in Welcome to Night Vale through a theater company I was in, called The New York Neo-Futurists, and that’s how I met Joseph, Jeffrey, Cecil, Meg. And that—we were making a lot of short-form work for the stage. One of them was the early prototype of Every Single Word, where I was—there was one night where I was the only performer of color in that night’s show, so I wrote a short piece called “Every Single Word Spoken in the Julia Louis-Dreyfus Romantic Comedy Enough Said [ELM laughs] As Spoken by the Only Person of Color in Tonight’s Show.” And I found, like, “Oh, this is—I think this could be a video series.” Right?
FK: Hmm.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: It wouldn’t be me performing the lines, but it would be every, you know, like, what if I applied this treatment to actual movies? And then that video series totally blew up. And I have to credit the Welcome to Night Vale fandom, because it was the Welcome to Night Vale fandom that ushered me into and introduced me to Tumblr. The series lived on YouTube, and I was very lucky to get, like—the series got a ton of press soon after it started. But it was Tumblr where the messaging—where it was able to really spark a conversation.
ELM: I feel like it was, like, peak Tumblr vibes at that moment, too. [all laugh] Also, like, 2015, 2016, right? You know? And everyone was like, “Proof!” [laughs]
DM: Yeah, 2015. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yup.
FK: But that’s interesting, because it must have been, like, a moment of, like, extreme adulation from certain corners of the world—
DM: Yeah.
FK: —and, like—I mean, I know, because I know what your next project was, [FK & ELM laugh] that you also got extreme hate, right? And I’m really interested in how that seems like it’s been driving a lot of the things you’ve been doing since.
DM: Well, there was a big step, and actually, I didn’t get a ton of hate for Every Single Word. The videos did. But my face wasn’t in there, you know?
FK: Hmm.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: So many people engaged with the Every Single Word videos as this, like, kind of floating object in space that wasn’t attached to a person. Which I’m actually really happy with, because I think the message was much bigger than me and, like, it wasn’t just about my experience as a person of color. It was, like, what representationally is happening.
And so the next step is that after the Every Single Word series, I got a job professionally making videos for a short-lived video company called Seriously.TV. And it was there that I started being in videos that took off, and it was like, I was making satirical videos from my progressive perspective. A lot about social justice in that 2016-2017 era. And it was there—and this was also, this feels like a weird detail, but a very specific one. [ELM laughs] This was on Facebook. Remember that short, short period of time—
ELM: Hmm.
FK: Oh—
DM: —where Facebook video was blowing up?
ELM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
FK: The turn to video, famously. [laughs]
ELM: It’s a—Flourish—
DM: The pivot to video, yeah! The pivot to video.
ELM: Pivot. It’s called a pivot, not a turn.
FK: [laughs] OK.
DM: Turn to video—
ELM: Flourish is not extremely online anymore.
FK: Excuse me. I clearly was not working in—
DM: Yeah.
FK: —news media at this point, [ELM laughs] or else I definitely would have known that. [laughs]
DM: But listen. Pivot to video, turn to video, honey we can reclaim whatever we want. [FK & ELM laugh] And I share that detail, because these videos were blowing up in massive numbers. Now, it has to be said that Facebook has since come out and been like, “Yeah, we were inflating some view counts by up to nine hundred percent” [FK & ELM laugh] which is profoundly humbling for someone to be like, “I was so good and viral!” But the truth is, I have to include that caveat, but it’s also like, even if you account for the most they admit to inflating videos, which is nine hundred percent, these videos were still going viral, [FK laughs] you know? It was just like—
ELM: Mmm hmmm. Mmm hmmm.
DM: —not these behemoth numbers that you thought you were getting, but it was still, like, huge numbers. And so these videos were getting big, but this was Facebook. So unlike YouTube, where it’s really anonymized—like, I couldn’t really know who was saying a negative thing about Every Single Word, nor did I need to find them, because it was so depersonalized—on Facebook, because my face was in the videos, I could see the person who wrote the hate. A lot of it was coming directly into my inbox, and this was attached sometimes to every photo ever taken of them in the last six years.
ELM: Mmm hmmm. Mmm hmmm.
DM: As a balm, as a kind of self-soothing practice, I would click on their profile picture, learn everything about them, or learn what I could about them, to kind of form this three-dimensional human in my mind, so that the hate felt less scary. And then that eventually evolved into calling some of the people who had sent me hate messages, which became the podcast Conversations with People Who Hate Me.
FK: Can I just say—
DM: Please.
FK: —that I am so intrigued that your mind went to, like, learning about them and empathizing with them as a balm. Because, like, pardon me, future priest moment: this is why I need Jesus, because I would never [ELM laughs] ever think to do that. I would be like, “And then, they suck, and here’s all the reasons they suck!” [laughs]
DM: So that was my first inclination. That was. [FK laughs] I did the whole thing of screenshotting—
FK: OK, good, you’re not a saint.
DM: Yeah. [FK & ELM laugh] Not a saint. I’m just a human like you. Find me relatable, please, audience members! No no no. That wasn’t my first impulse. My first impulse was to screenshot the comments, make fun of the typos. [FK & ELM laugh] But that ultimately didn’t feel helpful to me.
FK: Yeah.
DM: Do you know what I mean?
FK: I do.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: It’s also, it does this unfair—God, this is such a talking point now, but I don’t use the word “trolls.” Not out of some, like, extreme allegiance to political correctness, [ELM laughs] but because I think the word lulls us into this fantasy of who writes negative comments online.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: When I was going through this when my videos were blowing up and the videos were, yes, getting a ton of love but also getting hate that we all know comes from online popularity, the balm that all of my friends would give me is, “Ignore them, they’re just sad, lonely guys who live in their mother’s basement.”
And I need us all to disabuse ourselves of this notion. That is actually not who is writing negative comments online. Is that some of them? Of course. But also, living in their mother’s basement is relatable, as I lived with my mom for a bit after college. Being lonely, I’m like, “OK, that is actually an in that we could, [laughs] you know, like, reach ourselves in.” [ELM laughs]
And I found that it was like, because of that exercise, because I was able to see who they were, it’s like, a lot of these people had pretty robust social groups, you know? And so that made me realize, “Oh, this problem is a little more systemic than just this fantasy we tell ourselves of, ‘Oh, it’s just those people over there who do this horrible thing.’” It’s like, “No, it’s everyone, and it could be all of us, because these platforms encourage us to do this.”
And I hope this is an actual transition, it is in my mind, but [FK & ELM laugh] in the five years of making Conversations with People Who Hate Me, I was dealing with what we would all agree is quote-unquote “unacceptable hate,” right? Someone calling me a gay slur, we can all nod our heads and say, “That is unacceptable, but how brave of you to talk to them,” [ELM laughs] you know?
In the course of that project, what I became so much more interested in was acceptable hate. The kind of hate that is passed off in present day as jokes, but two decades later, we see headlines where everyone shames themselves and is like, “We owe an apology to this person.” The kind of hate where if any of the three of us went online right now to make a joke about a certain person, we would not only not be shamed for making that joke, we would be celebrated for making that joke if it was funny enough. You know, that’s the kind of hate, the kind of shame machine that exists online that Conversations with People Who Hate Me made me a little more interested in than the kind of unacceptable hate that we can all agree is bad and wrong.
FK: I mean, that’s interesting, too, because it’s like, you know, I mean, I think about things that even feel, like, kind of righteous in the moment, [laughs] you know what I mean?
DM: Uh-huh.
FK: I don’t know.
DM: Yeah.
FK: When, like, the submarine blew up and there were a bunch of people being like—
ELM: Mmm.
FK: “Well, kill all billionaires, so ha ha ha,” and making all these jokes and it’s like—
DM: Yeah.
FK: Lots of people I saw were being, like, “Yeah, don’t tell me not to make these jokes. They’re literally destroying the planet.” And I’m like—
DM: Yeah…
FK: I don’t know how I feel about this, [laughs] because this feels really great right now—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: —but is it? I don’t know.
DM: I—the way I feel about it is, like, it just kind of doesn’t feel great, and I’m also aware that, like, that makes me sound like this profoundly uncool school marm—
FK: Yes! Yeah. Exactly. [FK & ELM laugh]
DM: —who is just shaming people for having fun. But it, like, those jokes really bum me out.
FK: Yeah.
DM: And I feel like we should be able to have a conversation about, like, wealth gaps and the inordinate ways that, like, being a literal billionaire might be unethical, [laughs] you know?
ELM: [laughs] Right.
DM: Without, like, making fun of human beings who are at—like, I don’t know. I can’t imagine what it was like for those family members. And listen, I do not want to take on the mantle of being like, “Let’s have empathy for billionaires.” [ELM laughs] I do think we create a weird signal when we are mocking people at such a dark time. And again, I’m hearing myself, and I’m like, “God, when did this soapbox get so boring?” [DM & ELM laugh] You know?
FK: Yeah, but there’s also something instructive too about, like, who we pick, right?
DM: Right.
FK: Because you saw people mocking this and then also, like, cheering on James Cameron for—
DM: Right. Right.
FK: —yelling at this guy, and it’s like—
DM: Right.
FK: OK, like, I actually—you know, whatever. I have positive feelings for James Cameron.
DM: Yeah.
FK: But if you’re saying that we should kill all billionaires, you really should be saying that about both these people. Why are we doing this?
ELM: Sure.
FK: And I think the answer has something to do with, like, being the main—something that you use all the time in the Jar Jar podcast.
DM: Yeah.
FK: Someone’s the main character of the internet. [laughs] Right?
DM: Right.
ELM: Right.
DM: Right. The internet—you know, to speak about the internet as one monolithic place, which it is, of course, is not, but you know, the internet is really good at speaking in extremes. Someone is either the G.O.A.T. or someone is trash. Someone is the internet’s boyfriend, or the internet’s villain. And there’s very little gray space, where people come to the dais of the public square. It is only kind of for one of those extreme reasons. They are the greatest of all time, we worship them, or they’re the worst thing ever, let’s mock them, at a time when they could probably use a helping hand, [laughs] not mockery.
I also recognize that to be a member of society includes taking part in the conversations that society is having, and sometimes those conversations mean taking part in jokes. I think what my work, especially the work with, you know, The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks is trying to do is to realize when we take part in it, our individual joke is not poison. It’s just that we’re joining this collective and that we don’t know the line between individual and collective—the journey, I should say, between individual and collective is so accelerated now that, like, we don’t realize that thousands of other people are making the same quote-unquote “joke,” and that that creates this barrage for the target. And that has devastating consequences on the target.
ELM: Well, is it time to talk about—
DM: Honey, it’s time.
ELM: I mean, I feel like we’ve been seeding—
DM: We’ve got to talk about it.
ELM: We’ve been laying the ground the whole time. So…loved it.
FK: Yes.
ELM: Flourish loved it.
FK: I did love it.
DM: Oh my God! [ELM laughs]
FK: Yeah. I was super, super into it. [laughs]
DM: Whoa!
ELM: Not just saying that because you’re here.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Genuinely, if you weren’t available for this, I think we still would have recommended it on the air, so…
FK: Yup.
DM: Wow. That’s an honor. I have to share those compliments with the team I’m in this with. My producer is Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith, and everyone at TED who made this happen, so thank you. I appreciate it.
ELM: Yeah, please do.
FK: It’s pretty rare to listen to something that feels like it is both lovingly critical of fan culture and fandom and also, like, has a really nuanced take on it—
DM: Hmm.
FK: —and, I don’t know, enters empathy for all the people involved, and that did that in a great way.
DM: I’m honored that you say that, because that is 100% the goal. You know, as I said at the beginning about Welcome to Night Vale, like, I think fandom is one of the coolest things that people, you know, we complain a lot on the internet that it’s like, people hate everything way too much. It’s like, fandom is the answer to that. Fandom is like, this is a group of people who are united by loving something. How cool is that? That’s amazing! [ELM laughs] Every time humans get together, there will be human problems, [FK laughs] and when people gather to love something, there’s gonna be gatekeeping, there’s going to be toxicity—and I’m hesitant to use the term quote-unquote “toxic fandom,” because I think any group of people ever could be toxic. Toxic workplace, right? It’s like, I just think that is an inevitability when humans gather. There will be unsavory elements of that.
You know, I spent a year working on this show. Six months working on this show full, full, full time. I leave this project in awe of the Star Wars fandom. I think, you know, it’s like, great people who fell in love with something and were cast in a spell by this universe and wanted to exist in that universe and found a lot of, like, amazing teachings and lessons and stories in that universe, and a lot of relatability in that universe. There is nothing not good about that, [laughs] you know? That is just awesome.
And I think when something becomes so beloved the idea of something quote-unquote “ruining” that is very scary, and that can have really negative consequences when people decide that there is one thing that ruined the sanctity of that universe, and for some, Jar Jar Binks was that thing. But of course, Jar Jar Binks is a fictional character, and the person who played Jar Jar Binks is Ahmed Best, and he paid the price for the animosity and hatred that was being targeted at pixels.
ELM: Yeah, so there’s so many places to start, but I feel like one of the fandom things that really struck me, and I think you were so successful at drawing parallels with the creators on the Star Wars side, Lucasfilm and Ahmed Best, of intention versus outcome.
DM: Hmm.
ELM: Because, not to give too much away, but it’s, like, the very first part of the first episode, you talk to this fan, who—
DM: Yeah.
ELM: —I love that you found one of these fans who camped out for weeks. A wild snapshot of 1999.
DM: Huge credit, my producer Amy, Amy Gaines McQuade, she found him through literally a stock photo. Like, an archive photo.
FK: Amazing.
ELM: All right. A champion producer.
DM: Yeah. Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, I loved her detective moments all throughout.
DM: She’s great.
ELM: TL;DR, I mean, this is a slight spoiler, but it’s, like, right in the beginning so I don’t feel bad saying this, but one thing I found fascinating with this, this is, you know, the fans that you’re talking about in the abstract, or also the specific fans that you bring in are people who are of a certain age, who saw it when they were kids, who had all this anticipation building up, and this guy’s response was kind of like, “Oh, this sucked. It must be a ‘me’ problem.”
FK: Yeah.
DM: Hmm.
ELM: Right? And then you see how that’s a rare response, and how most fans are like, “Oh, it must be their problem, and now I’ve got to find a target to put it on, right?” And I feel like the depiction of fans and the one you talk to later, I don’t want to give too much away, the people who really dislike Jar Jar Binks, the takeaway from the episode were the people who were giving honest, real critiques about the, like, racist tropes of the character, right? You know, I was just really struck by this kind of idea of, like, none of the fans that you spoke to intended to cause harm, right?
DM: Hmm.
ELM: And on the flip side, you have this whole great lead up showing how they conceived of the character on the Lucasfilm side and how everyone was so excited about the new technology and, “Oh, I’m gonna try this, I’m gonna try this!” No one intended—
DM: Hmm.
ELM: —to create this [laughs] racist, this character that drew on every racist trope in the history of American cinema. You know what I mean? And I feel like that lack of intent—I thought it was really powerful to show that that exists and on all sides.
DM: Hmm.
ELM: That you were successful in showing that there weren’t really any bad actors.
DM: Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, I think the claims of racism that some people read in the character was a really, really hard part of the story to tell. Like I said, actually, with Conversations with People Who Hate Me, it is very ethically clear to speak to someone who called me a gay slur and to find empathy for him. It’s like, I look very brave, [ELM laughs] and I look very saintly. And that person looks reformed. And if they feel reformed or they don’t…I think what feels a little murkier is when there’s not such a clear transgression. And I say that with Jar Jar Binks because, like, Ahmed is this just like, his life, and I spend all of episode two—we spend all of episode two really, like, going through his entire artistic upbringing.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: And it’s to show, like, this was an artist just oozing with creativity. Like, the arts was his foundation growing up. And he had these very Afro-centric Black parents who not only were Black artists but, like, celebrated their identity in their art. You know, like, and he was raised to do the same thing, and he did that, and so he gets this huge break in a franchise that he was a superfan of as a kid, and he’s drawing from all of these elements of pop culture and so is George Lucas, and they put it into this character that they’re so excited about, and then it’s read as something totally different, is so hard. And I had a hard time talking about this, because I know this element of the pushback against the character—the blowback, I should say—this was the part that hurt him the most. You know, because as he says, it was coming from his own people. And yet, if I didn’t talk about it, it would be an egregious omission, you know, that people would have been like, “You really did not tell—” [laughs]
FK: Yeah.
ELM: [laughs] Right, right.
DM: I don’t think any story can tell a complete version of anything. You know, stories have to edit something out. But, like, that would have been impossible to tell the full story without.
FK: I thought it was really interesting how you were, like, how do you balance talking about that with then the other element that other people really hated, which is the new Star Wars movies were kids movies. So I had professionally done some study of this in the past—
DM: Hmm.
FK: —and it’s really interesting, because it’s not just that Jar Jar was in them. It’s also that especially The Phantom Menace has a child protagonist who lots of people found annoying—
DM: Yeah.
FK: —but the point was for children to have a point of view into the world. And when they rolled out everything, if you look at all of the games and so forth that they made, they made all these educational games around The Phantom Menace.
DM: Yeah.
FK: They made, like, 40 games specifically for children under the age of 10.
DM: Huh.
FK: And almost nothing for adults.
DM: Interesting.
FK: So all of these adults complaining about this, I felt like, you know, I was really interested to see you being like, “Well, there’s this pushback on the race stuff.”
DM: Yeah.
FK: And then there’s the pushback on the “I’m not a child anymore—”
DM: Yeah.
ELM: But—
FK: “—and this is for children.”
ELM: I love that, though, all this, like, it’s like, “Oh, I saw it when I was seven, and now I’m an adult, and I want it to be for adults now.”
DM: Yeah.
ELM: It’s like, “You were seven. These movies are always—”
FK: They’re for seven-year-olds! [laughs]
ELM: The first one’s also for children. [laughs] It’s just, you all liked these adults, and now there’s an actual child in it.
DM: And I also think it speaks to what a powerful drug nostalgia is.
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: Mmm hmmm.
DM: And it’s, nostalgia also, like, changes narratives. You know, like, it makes you see something that is flawed—I’m not, you know, calling anything out here, it’s just everything is flawed. You can find a flaw in anything that exists ever. But nostalgia makes you see something that is flawed, because everything is flawed, as flawless. And it makes you remember things literally—like, through, this is the whole expression. Through rose-colored glasses. You’re not seeing it clearly. You’re seeing it with a tint. You’re seeing it with a gloss.
And it feels like we as humans, we hate the present and we love the past, [laughs] you know? We’re like—well, generally, I think many people are openly like, “Yeah, the past was very bad for all of us. The present, I’ll take the present over the past.” But whatever scale we’re talking about, whether we’re talking about years or whether we’re talking about weeks, it feels like there is something tidy about the past, and there is something so messy about the present. [FK laughs]
And I think that is really hard for some people and in some instances, I include myself in that, you know? Not in macro history, I think any person who has any marginalized identity, you know, like, they inherently know that, like, the laws are kindest to them now. But at the same time, I do that with eras of my life. If I’m having a low moment or maybe a stretch of time where I feel, like, in a creative rut, I think back totally falsely to a time when I was just, like, “God, I was making things all the time.” And it’s only outsiders, who are insiders in my life but outside my brain, who have to remind me like, “You were miserable that entire time. [FK laughs] What are you talking about?” [ELM laughs] You know, and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m just like, that period, I just get to see in flashback.” You know? In a composite best-of and not clearly. And we have to live the present moment to moment, which, living moment to moment can be beautiful, and it can also be so challenging.
ELM: It’s so interesting, because I feel like you’re so successful in this podcast of laying out the foundations of, like, you know, it was interesting thinking specifically about Star Wars, right? You have these characters. They’re real people, right? You know? But the filmmaker’s intent, and the fans’ reactions and the fans’ intent, the fans making the Jar Jar hate websites, right?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: Just trying to go viral, right?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: And you think about how much shitty, [laughs] provocative, fan-oriented content exists on the internet now that obviously just exists to go viral, right? And then you also have this—you’re so good in this at articulating that cycle of the mainstream media picking up a few comments or a few sites calling it a trend, and then it is a trend, right? [DM laughs] I mean, this is one thing that I want to underscore. You know, and it got me thinking a lot about The Last Jedi and there were some researchers that—I don’t know if you saw any of this—but some researchers found the majority of the racist tweets directed towards the cast were coming from just a couple of accounts.
DM: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: But then, you know, it’s a headline in The Guardian that’s like—
DM: Yeah.
ELM: “Huge racist backlash against this!” Right?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: You know?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s like, well, now it is, because you made it that way, right?
FK: And it’s also hard because obviously, like, one racist comment is enough to feel like a huge racist backlash to the person who receives it, right? So it’s, like, extra complicated there too.
DM: Right.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Because it’s like, the experience of the individual person is, like, one is too many. But the experience on the scale of the world is, like, one is one guy. [laughs]
ELM: But to make it a story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DM: You both just perfectly articulated the complicated nature of this, which is like, it is true that it is both a few people and it is falsely reported to be Star Wars fans, when so many Star Wars fans see that and they’re like, “I didn’t do that! [ELM laughs] I didn’t even think that. And even if I did think, like, ‘Oh, that’s not my favorite character,’ that doesn’t mean that now, don’t make the jump that I then [laughs] wrote those things.”
ELM: Right.
DM: It’s like, people should still be allowed to like and not like elements of stories, you know, that are shown to them. But I also think, Flourish, what you were saying about, like, and then when it’s self-reported by the person receiving it, it’s like, that is the most natural thing that if you find ten people in your inbox saying, “God, this is so, I’m getting all of this hate, look at this hate.” Then we process it the same way they’re processing it, of, like, “Oh my God.”
And so, like, I want to be clear, like, other than the people, the few people who are sending these truly hateful things, I don’t think there is someone at fault in the media ecosystem, the target coming forward with the hate. No one’s doing anything wrong. I think the target needs to come forward and be like, “Look what I’m receiving,” as proof that this is happening to them, you know? And I also think that, like, it’s worth reporting on because it’s like, yeah, that’s, I think, a thing we should talk about.
We haven’t yet fine-tuned the language of how we talk about scale. And so our sense of scale, especially when we’re talking about the internet, is so skewed. Look what I just said in my sentence: “When we talk about the internet.” What is the internet? [FK laughs] Well, it means something different to me, it means something different to you, Flourish, and it means something different to you, Elizabeth. And so, I don’t know, it’s, we as a species, our language has not yet fully caught up with the vastness and not-vastness of what the internet is.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: I will say something that, Elizabeth, you articulated, something I was really hoping people would get from this show, which is, like, all of this is about intent versus impact. And the Jar Jar—the story of Jar Jar Binks, what I hope I’ve outlined in The Redemption of Jar Jar Binks, is it feels like the most devastating intersection of intent versus impact and intent versus impact, [laughs] you know, like, meeting each other and combusting, right?
Because it’s like, they wanted to make this entertaining character that they had no idea in their mind was even going to be remotely offensive, you know? That was not only not a goal but, like, not even on their mind from what I can tell, from my interviews. And then fans, when expressing their opinions, that they are entitled to have, and academics, who I certainly think are entitled to express like, “Hey, I see offensive tropes in this character,” that is not only not a crime, I think we have to foster that kind of conversation. It’s just that, all together, everything added up to create this very, very weird combustion in pop culture that centered around one character and as I’ve said, now a few times, one person.
FK: I think where it leaves me is, you know, you do address this somewhat, but I’m still struggling with, what do we do on a daily basis in our lives? Because one of the insidious things about this is that we can’t necessarily see when we’re trapped in that conversation.
DM: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, you know, that reminds me, what I was thinking about is, you know, you’re talking about now, and in the podcast, at length, there’s this idea of these two groups that had an issue with Jar Jar Binks, right? You know, you had the people who were like, “This is racist,” right? And then the people who were like, “I fucking hate this guy!” You know, “I want to behead him.” And then you rightly say, there was a Venn Diagram, and there’s a place where they overlap. I think that Venn Diagram is much, much larger now, and I think the people sitting in the middle often it’s a big, murky space, right?
DM: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: And so you see people having the mantle of social justice arguments, when really they just hate that guy, right? You know what I mean?
DM: Yeah. Yeah. Yup, yup, yup.
ELM: Or they hate the opposite ship or, you know, they don’t like a character for whatever reason. And so I felt like, I don’t know. It seemed like it was like, oh, you present this 1999 problem, and it seemed really hard to sort out, and now I look at where we are 20, almost 25 years later, which is wild to think about, and I’m like, “I don’t know how you start to untangle that,” right? You know? And then you have this pattern in the media, you see the foundations being laid. Now, that is the media ecosystem. That’s the “geek media” sphere. “Fans are discussing…”
DM: Hmm.
ELM: “Fans are arguing about…” Garbage publications, not, like CNN.
DM: Hmm.
ELM: But, like, you know, just the bottom feeders, just glutting the system. And so it’s like, you laid the foundations, and you’re looking for hope, but I felt very cynical, thinking about how these foundations have manifested. Sorry, I took that in a negative, negative direction. Go ahead. [laughs]
DM: You actually didn’t. I think, once again, I think you both perfectly worked together. You guys are a great duo. [ELM laughs]
FK: Thanks!
DM: Because you worked together to create, like, actually, you’ve illuminated stuff for me. You know, and it’s like…
ELM: Oh!
DM: My big takeaway with Conversations with People Who Hate Me is that, like, these—the very simple take that sounds so obvious, but it is so obvious, and yet something we haven’t internalized, so it bears repeating as much as possible, is voice-to-voice conversations are so different than online conversations. We can boldly fling something at someone who we’re never gonna get the immediate consequences of hearing their reaction to what we said to them, whereas on the phone, we temper ourselves, and there’s something really magical about that voice-to-voice communication.
So ultimately, it was like, moving conversations offline allow us to actually wade through very murky, murky questions and considerations so much more elegantly and with so much more love and empathy than we do online. And I think actually, that, like, the solution, and again, credit to you both, because I think you’re helping me connect the dots here, is I don’t believe that we need to abolish negative thought in our mind, you know? I think we have to have negative thoughts. [laughs] It is good to critique things.
The way social media is currently set up in the Year of Our Lord 2023, when we record this, and probably the Year of Your Lord, of whatever year you’re hearing this in, is things blow up so quickly. And so I still think that we should be able to bounce critiques off of each other. I think bringing that to a digital public square, where you could either be talking to eight people or 8 million people is really, really, really dangerous. And the most dangerous part about it is that it can make you go really, really, really viral, which is intoxicating to all of us.
So it’s so—I think it’s about, like, foster these conversations. Have these things, bring them to the public square when you think it’s appropriate, but so many times, we don’t know how many people we’re talking to, and we’re actually talking to a lot more people than we think we are, and finding ways to delineate between what we’re keeping a group conversation, you know, between a smaller group of people, and then these massive platforms, where our ideas can be just projected out into the massive ether.
ELM: My cynical follow-up is do you think that’s even possible now, though, when so many people, especially younger people, have grown up on an internet where the goal is to make your personal opinion scale? Do you know, I mean—
DM: Yeah—
FK: Don’t you—Elizabeth, don’t you think that, like, there is, that you can get internet poisoning? Because I feel like you can get internet poisoning, and at a certain point you’re just like, “I need to get out of this.”
DM: Hmm.
ELM: What do you mean? You? Me? Are you talking about me, or what?
FK: I don’t know. People, in general. One can get internet poisoning.
ELM: I know, I’m just thinking about, like, [sighs] just people thinking of their whole lives and every opinion they have as content, and things like that. And I feel like, it’s, like, a harder—it was just so interesting to think about 1999, right?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: Which, we were both on the internet then. We were in fandom then, you know?
DM: Yeah.
FK: I remember going to the Jar Jar hate sites. I remember actually—
ELM: Stop it.
FK: Yeah!
DM: Yeah.
FK: I remember Jar Jar Sucks.
ELM: Because you hated him?
FK: I mean, I don’t think I particularly had an opinion on him, but I remember it being in the air.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: But that was a cultural moment, and you had to, like, visit these sites as a tourist even, you know?
ELM: Yeah, yeah. Not me, because I didn’t see those films. [DM laughs]
FK: There was also a lot of Barney hate sites. And there were images of, like, Barney with Osama bin Laden and stuff.
DM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: This was a whole genre. It wasn’t just—and it was also, like, a particular children’s, like, people hating children’s figures.
DM: Yeah.
FK: I don’t understand.
ELM: Played by Black actors.
DM: To answer your question, your, what, self-identified as “cynical” follow-up question, [ELM laughs] Elizabeth, I have a kind of cynical answer.
ELM: All right, cool.
FK: You’re capable of being cynical? [ELM laughs]
DM: Yeah. Me, a saint! [FK & ELM laugh] I can be cynical, too. No no no. Not a saint. But my cynical response to that, or I should say, my fear-based response to that, is that I think what’s gonna happen is that so many people will come to be the victims of this shame machine.
ELM: Mmm.
DM: This machine of having so many people sharing quote-unquote “harmless” jokes, not realizing that those jokes amount to a weapon of mass destruction for one one individual person, and so many people will experience that and eventually will be like, “Wait a second. This is bad? [laughs] For all of us?” [FK & ELM laugh]
Because, you know, in 1999, when this happened, this was so rare. But as we know, the story of Jar Jar Binks was a canary in a coalmine for what we all—what we see happen over and over again today. The story is both hyper-relevant and also entirely not unique right now, because it’s like, there’s a new Jar Jar every single day online. In fact, I would say multiple, because we’re just talking about our enclave of capital-T capital-I “The Internet,” when I think there’s a new Jar Jar in so many enclaves. And that’s really scary. But then again, as I said that out now, and this is getting wow, so dark, [ELM laughs] but it’s like, just as I said, “Well, enough people will have to be victims of it, and then we realize.” It’s like, but then look at guns.
FK: Ohhh! [FK & ELM laugh]
DM: It’s like, it’s so devastating how so many people are—
FK: You can get dark and cynical!
DM: Yeah.
ELM: I feel like I brought you here. [laughs]
DM: Yeah, but we have to talk about it, because if we applied the same logic that I just tried to apply hypothetically for how this is going to stop, it’s like, well then, let’s look at guns. Guns have caused absolute devastation. Devastation. And, like, it is getting so that there are fewer and fewer people whose lives have not been touched by gun violence. Or they know of someone who knows of someone. And yet, that still is not making a massive change.
So I, not to rebut the very thing I just said, but it’s like, I think we need—it’s like, you know, we’re not even a week into Threads being out, and I both feel incredibly hopeful for a new social platform that people are flocking to, of like, “Yeah! Let’s start over.” But it’s like, the same impulses that turned those other platforms into what they became is going to follow us to threads. You know, it’s like, and that’s a little scary for me.
ELM: I mean, one might argue that Threads is exactly the same as those platforms, because it literally is.
FK: OK, but it’s also following you to Bluesky, and we know it followed people to Masto, like, I mean, I’m just saying, let’s not get on our, like, Bluesky is that much better.
ELM: I would never say it is, [FK laughs] because it’s not. That’s very strange, that you would think I would suggest that.
FK: I don’t know, I mean, like, I’ve been hearing a lot of, like, bashing on Threads from some people in that corner of the universe, and so I want to be clear that this podcast, and I think I speak for you, too, does not think that any social network is good. Except maybe Tumblr.
ELM: I think Tumblr’s great. [FK laughs]
DM: I—well, I think Tumblr also, you know, I’ve read a lot of the articles by the person who started “Your Fave Is Problematic,” you know?
ELM: Mmm hmmm. Mmm hmmm.
DM: And it’s like, I think that’s—
ELM: All those people left Tumblr years ago. [laughs]
DM: But I think that’s a great example of, like, that is the most noble cause, right? Identifying toxic toxicity, identifying toxic patterns of behavior, but like, we as a species are really bad on digital platforms policing all sorts of things, and I think, like, I don’t think social media platforms are the best way to enact justice, and certainly not restorative justice, which is the form of justice I believe in most, and if my work can be classified as anything, I think I am pushing for and trying to build along with other amazing people who are doing similar work of, like, for a digital restorative justice, where we find a way to, like, not make this the shame that one experiences online feel so impossible to come back from. And so I think Tumblr is also—regarding Tumblr as this utopia is falling prey to that drug of nostalgia again. [FK laughs] I think Tumblr really hurt some people, and, or—
ELM: Oh, not past Tumblr. I’m talking about Tumblr right now, which is a beautiful—
DM: OK, excuse me!
ELM: —beautiful cesspool. [all laugh] It’s just delightful.
DM: I love that!
ELM: Cesspool isn’t the right word. We had someone write an article about it and call it a terrarium, where people were just going slightly wild, and that feels right.
DM: Then I love that. I would still hazard to say that perhaps many people feel that about Tumblr now, but I’m sure someone has felt hurt today—
ELM: Oh yeah, sure. I’m sure. [FK laughs]
DM: —by something that happened on Tumblr. I don’t know, I believe we’re at this weird inflection point right now when the internet has given us so much good, and it has given a voice for people that the gatekeepers previously did not allow to have a voice, and that is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. But it’s also a Wild West that I think we need to have fully open eyes and clear eyes as we figure out how to build a society in our new digital sphere.
ELM: I guess by way of wrapping up, you know, this is a podcast, I think probably exclusively—not exclusively, 99% of our listeners are fans, right?
DM: Mmm.
FK: It’s not exclusive, I promise you, because there are some people I used to work with who listen to this podcast.
ELM: OK, maybe, all right. Some large percentage are fans, right? And I’m wondering if you, in your experience of making this and thinking through these, like—you’re such a thoughtful, multilayered thinker, holding these different ideas together at once. The really hard question at the center of this, right, you know, the Jar Jar Binks as a racist trope, right? And there is a Black man behind this, and how do you thread that line of saying, “This character is problematic,” right? You know? Or maybe the whole thing is thinking back to Every Single Word, right? You know, “This film is problematic, because the Black character gets four lines,” right? You know, even if the character matters a lot to viewers. How do you thread that without coming for the people making it, but also holding in your head maybe the idea that you want to critique them because they made it?
DM: Well, I’ll go back to something I kept saying while I was making Every Single Word, which was that I am not making these videos, I am not editing down movies like E.T. and Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies, I’m not editing these movies down to only the words spoken by people of color because they are bad movies. On the contrary, I’m doing this because they’re good movies. I love a lot of these movies, you know?
And I think there is a way where we can continue to hone our critiques and criticism to target the system and not the individuals who work within the system. That’s really hard, because a lot of times even when you’re critiquing the system, there is an individual or a group of individuals who are going to feel like you’re talking directly to them, you know? But I think it is important to raise critiques when they happen.
But I also think you have to be aware of, like, the space you’re entering with your critique. Has someone made this critique already? Had someone made this critique better and they said their piece and you can support what they said without jumping into the fray yourself? And I think that even in these quote-unquote “noble” pursuits, for example, “Your Fave Is Problematic,” it’s like, we have to ask ourselves, is that actually making the change you want to be making? Is that enacting the change you want to be making? Is it doing something the internet loves, which is finding one target to be absolutely bombarded with harassment for doing something that we can all agree is very, very bad, but we’re putting that all on one person, who should not be shouldering this responsibility?
And can we also levy these critiques with love? Like, with an awareness that a lot of times these things do just happen as, you know, as we touch on in the podcast, it’s like, sometimes these things slip in, which doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be called out. It just means that, like, there might be another way to regard the people who had a hand in making this show, rather than labeling them as villains for doing that.
And I also have to say, like, I feel so close to this story now that I don’t know that I’m maybe gonna give the clearest answer, because so much of it, of my research, was uncovering the production process and, you know, even though I worked quite hard to create a healthy journalistic distance between me and Ahmed, I also really care about Ahmed, and I really care about how he feels about all of this stuff. And while I think I see the story quite clearly and what happened quite clearly, I also am aware that this read of the character really hurt him, and I’m aware that I don’t know that it’s, you know…I think it’s a fine line, and as I openly said that it was a fine line as I walked it in the making of the show, and it’s still a fine line I’m walking now.
ELM: But I think it’s such a successful line that you walk. You know, it just made me wish that every other story like this got a six-podcast treatment, you know?
FK: Yeah.
DM: I know. And that’s, that does feel sad to me, because it’s just like, “God, there are so many other stories that kind of deserve this love.” I know, that feels a little gross that I just referred to what I did as “love,” but I’m coming from—
ELM: Yeah!
DM: I hope it is clear that I’m coming from a quite loving place for all involved, and that…yeah. I also wish that [DM & ELM laugh] these other stories got a six-episode podcast treatment.
ELM: Yeah. Yeah.
FK: Well, I’m just, I’m grateful that you did this one. And I’m also really, really grateful that you came, like, took the time and came here, because it was a total delight.
ELM: Yeah.
DM: I’m honored. I think you are both brilliant, and your questions connected dots for me, illuminated things for me, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate having a conversation about something I just spent so long in making with people who are one, so smart, and two, actually listened to the thing, [FK & ELM laugh] so I really can’t thank you enough for that. Yeah.
ELM: Oh, well, thank you. I sincerely hope that our listeners, you know, anyone—and I would say, as someone who, as longtime listeners know, is not into Star Wars, [DM laughs] and I found this absolutely, I mean, fascinating, you know?
DM: Yeah.
ELM: I was really riveted. And also, I mean, I live in the world, so I was aware of some of this, right? [FK laughs]
DM: Yeah.
ELM: But, you know, I think that anyone in fandom right now would benefit from listening to this, to kind of under—to see all those interweaving elements.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So that’s my really strong pitch.
DM: Thank you.
ELM: Hard sell. [laughs]
DM: Thank you. That means a lot to me.
FK: Well, it was so good to have you. [laughs]
DM: Thank you so much for having me! This was a pleasure.
[Interstitial music]
FK: Well, that was a total pleasure. I don’t know if I actually said this, but it’s always so delightful to me to encounter somebody who is not from fandom originally but who really [laughs] has great empathy and engagement and is so interested and, like, thinking in a really big-picture way about this stuff. He’s great. [laughs]
ELM: Absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s pretty rare that you encounter someone who’s not from fandom and wants to report on it and study it and is willing to be critical about it, but also still acknowledging the loving elements, right?
FK: Mmm hmmm.
ELM: You know, that kind of balance that people within fandom, at least our corners of fandom, have to manage, you know?
FK: Right.
ELM: Being like, “It’s this! It’s so good! It’s so—oh, but…” You know? And, like, I feel like it’s often hard for, you know, a lot of journalists to see, if they’re not from fandom but they’re trying to talk about it, to see that whole picture. And I feel like Dylan was very successful. I don’t think he considers himself a journalist, but there’s definitely a big journalistic element to this podcast, you know? He’s really reporting on what happened, essentially. Yeah, I think it’s the kind of project that I would expect from someone from within kind of critical media fandom, you know, where you could really capture that, which [FK laughs] is meant to be high praise.
FK: The highest! [laughs]
ELM: One of us! One of us! [laughs]
FK: [chanting] One of us! One of us! Ahhh…
ELM: So if you didn’t listen to it when we suggested at the beginning of the episode, maybe now that you’ve heard it, you’ll feel inspired...
FK: [laughs] Oh my God. You’re just, like, I feel like you’re just shoving it at people, at this point.
ELM: Yeah, I’m getting a cut from TED.
FK: Ha!
ELM: It’s a guy. I don’t know if you knew. It’s a guy, and he’s giving me checks.
FK: A guy named Ted.
ELM: Yeah, his name is Ted.
FK: Edward, [laughs] called Ted. Great. OK, well, we’re not actually getting check from TED, and—
ELM: No, I wish. [laughs]
FK: [laughs] The way that we get check, if we do— [both laugh]
ELM: I don’t think—
FK: No. The way that we make this podcast—
ELM: I don’t think we’ve ever received a check.
FK: No.
ELM: Oh, we’ve gotten a couple of checks, actually. We’ve gotten a few checks before.
FK: Yeah. [ELM laughs] All right, the way that we make this podcast, though, is through the support of listeners and readers like you. And you can support us by going to patreon.com/Fansplaining and signing up. And you can do that at any level, from, like, $1 a month up to however much you want. There’s a variety of delightful rewards, including special episodes, having your name read in the credits, which will happen for people momentarily. [ELM laughs] Getting a cute little enamel pin, and occasionally receiving a Tiny Zine from us.
ELM: Including, pretty soon we’ll be doing a new one.
FK: Yeah!
ELM: But if you do not want to or cannot afford to support us monetarily right now, of course you can spread the word about the podcast, you can share the transcripts. You can share the audio too, but we always suggest sharing the transcripts, because they’re easily shareable, and you can write in about this episode or any other topic at fansplaining at gmail.com. At fansplaining.com, our website, there is a form with an ask box. There is our Tumblr ask box. There is our phone number, 1-401-526-FANS. You can leave a voicemail. And we are still on Twitter, I guess. But we are now also on Bluesky, checking it out, if you happen to be on there, you can follow us. We’ll be posting everything there as well. Still on Instagram. We don’t really do much there. We just let you know there’s a new episode.
FK: Instagram! Which you have to mention, [ELM laughs] because you’re going to be posting from Comic-Con to Instagram, and you’re gonna learn how to use stories, because I won’t be there to do it for you this time.
ELM: OK. So for the first time ever, we are not going to Comic-Con together. Flourish has foolishly chosen not to come. Sorry, Flourish. Bye bye.
FK: Yeah… [both laugh] It’s that meme like, “I have broken up with you! I and Comic-Con are friends now.”
ELM: [laughing] New friendship.
FK: New friendship.
ELM: So I am going, and if you are listening to this on the day it came out, then it’s not too late for you to attend the Fansplaining-sponsored panel, which is on Thursday, July 20, 10:00 a.m. Marriott Marquis, Room 10 & 11. So the topic is called “Covering Fandom: How Fan-Journalists Strike the Right Balance.” And I’m sorry you’re not gonna get to see this panel—
FK: I am too, really!
ELM: —because it’s an interesting topic, you know?
FK: I was just gonna say, I really wish that I was gonna be there to see the panel. [both laugh] That’s the—
ELM: So—
FK: I genuinely regret not getting to see the panel that I would be on if I were there.
ELM: Well, hold—you wouldn’t be on it, you would be—
FK: But I wouldn’t! Because I wouldn’t be on for this topic. You’ve done something actually useful. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. This is definitely a topic that’s not for you.
FK: [laughing] It’s not for me.
ELM: So I put this together with friend of the podcast, Devon Maloney, who’s a journalist and an editor. She will be moderating. I’ll be on it. There are a bunch of other journalists and editors and everyone is, like, from fandom in some way and either covers fandom like I do, like, writes about fan culture, or writes about entertainment and pop culture and kind of has to navigate those lines of, you know, what if you’re covering something you love, or have to be critical of something and you’re in the fandom, or how to ethically report on fans, or whatever, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it’s gonna be a really good convo.
FK: I also think that. And I think people should go!
ELM: Yeah. You can get the full blurb and details on any of our social media channels, or if you just search “Fansplaining” on the Comic-Con…Sched [pronounced “sked”]? Sched [pronounced “shed”]? You know that website.
FK: Yeah I do.
ELM: Sked. Is that what we call it?
FK: Sked! Sure, sked.
ELM: Shed? Sked? Shhhh….
FK: Sked.
ELM: S-C-H-E-D. Sked.
FK: Sked.
ELM: OK, great. So yeah, excited about that. Not gonna have a Fansplaining meetup this year. It would be very weird to do that without Flourish, IMO. Uh… [laughs]
FK: Aww!
ELM: This is the first you’re hearing of this.
FK: Yeah, I didn’t realize you weren’t gonna do it! Well, it—
ELM: No, that would be weird without you. So but, you know, I’ll be around. So tweet at me. [both laugh] See where I am.
FK: All right.
ELM: I’ll be still probably at the Marriott Marquis pool bar.
FK: I was gonna say, why would anybody doubt where they will find you? They will find you at that pool bar.
ELM: Turns out the hotel that I’m actually staying at has a rooftop bar.
FK: They might find you at that bar.
ELM: I might be up there.
FK: Well, it’s a mystery. People will have to “Where’s Elizabeth?” You know? Like “Where’s Waldo?”
ELM: [laughs] Which hotel bar will you find me at in San Diego, California?
FK: Yeah. That’s right. All right! And with that, [laughs] I think that we are at the end of our episode. [laughs]
ELM: We are. Well, Flourish, I’m gonna miss you.
FK: I’m gonna miss you, too.
ELM: [laughs] No, sincerely. And our next episode—
FK: Yeah! I’m being sincere! [laughs]
ELM: No, for real, I’m not joking here. Our next episode, we’ll debrief. I’ll let you know what you missed. I’ll let you know how weird Comic-Con was with everyone on strike. [laughs]
FK: I am so looking forward to that. [laughs]
ELM: Get ready.
FK: All right, see ya then.
ELM: Bye, Flourish!
[Outro music]