Rashomon Overdose

Akira Kurosawa and Ron Howard both make movies. They both know more about film making in their little finger than I ever will--which is an accomplishment because most people don't store knowledge in pinkies.

In 1950 Akira Kurosawa made a movie called Rashomon about a crime and the court testimony about that crime. The crime is horrific--a rape and murder--and it is recounted from four perspectives. This was groundbreaking in 1950, because the story differs significantly depending upon who's telling it. It marks the beginning of the popularization of this key insight of Postmodernism: "truth" is always mediated through the subject who perceives it, interprets it, and recounts it.

In the wake of Rashomon we've seen a change in the parameters of storytelling. It's now cool and commonplace to show the same events multiple times through different eyes. And that's the big deal with the new season of Arrested Development. Each episode follows one character or another and tells a story showing the same events with the camera focused on that character. In early episodes, there are clues that something funny or even mystical is going on. In later episodes, the reader can infer what was going on by examining the same event from another character's point of view.

This is catnip for fan boys who can stop. rewind a bit, then examine each frame at a time. After I watched the last episode I felt like going back and watching the earlier episodes again knowing what I now know to pick up the things I missed the first time around.

It's like watching A Beautiful Mind, finding out that the girl is a fig-newton of Nash's imagination, then going back to confirm that she does not disturb the birds in the yard where she's running around them.

Aside: One of the ways to tell whether a photo has been faked is to look for people's reactions to the odd thing that's been added. When a honking huge flight of Soviet jets go roaring over Red Square, someone in the crowd is going to look up. Keep that in mind when you see something remarkable on the Internet.

The fact that the entire season of Arrested Development consists of a few events that are told and retold leads me to think that Arrested Development is suffering from a Rashomon overdose. I think it works because the series has a cult-like following, and here is something that the cultists can chew on.

I also think that it does not work so well for non-cultists. You have to care about the characters before you want to see the same events rerun several times from their several perspectives. The focus on the minutiae of each character's foibles detracts from the larger scope of the story. Does it do it too much? Yes and no. I call this note "Rashomon Overdose" because I think there's a more than optimal amount of retelling from diverse perspectives. It makes some people queasy and others nauseous while others who have built up a tolerance just want more.

There is something else going on here: narrowcasting.

If you can identify a cult and write a story that its cultists will love, you can make serious money serving this niche market. Amanda Palmer broke records for Kickstarter fundraising by reaching just 35,000 enthusiasts.

Felicia Day puts the emphasis on being able to reach your audience and stories with cult-following should be easier to reach.

The Netflix-Arrested Development hook-up can be wildly successful while drawing numbers that would mean instant-cancellation on a broadcasting network like Fox. 

The key is to keep your overhead low enough that you don't spend more money than your cult can pony up.

Covetousness Is Evil

I was talking to Kemp, the fellow who did the trailer for Finding Time, and I mentioned Amanda Palmer's TED talk on "The art of asking."My daughter was within earshot and she asked in disbelief, "How do you know Amanda Palmer?" And I said, "She did the TED talk. How do you know Amanda Palmer?" And she named a band I'd never heard of that made "angsty" music.

The entire exchange had this weird vibe. Like she thought I ought not know who Amanda Palmer is, and that she thought I ought not know that my daughter knows who Amanda Palmer is. So, maybe there was something more than generational going on here.

My daughter knows my music tastes run more toward Southern Guitar Rock and away from angsty oughts alternative/punk/folk. Ms. Palmer says her music is not for everybody after all. So, I'm comfortable being part of that not-everybody.

After I saw the TED talk, I got to remembering that I'd heard about the "Kickstarter Scandal" of last fall. The TED talk was the perfect response. Someone says something nasty and snarky about what you're doing and you can articulate a response in a TED talk that more people will see than read The Newyorker.

I suspect that the Kickstarter Scandal was a faux flap caused by jealous people who didn't get a piece of the action. Or that was intentional obtuseness by people who prefer the current model of record companies, record promoters, etc. and would like to ape Microsoft's FUD strategy for fighting Linux. If you have a healthy income that comes from the status quo, any innovation that threatens to disintermediate you is a scary, scary thing. I think we saw that last year with the campaign of hate against Linda Chorney.

(The Microsoft FUD campaign against Linux was to hire the now-defunct SCO to bring a nuisance copyright-suit against various Linux vendors in hopes of scaring potential Linux customers to use Microsoft instead.)

I think Ms. Palmer's Kickstarter scandal has something to say about humanity as a species and the USA in particular. In response to the flap, Ms. Palmer issued an apology. Not the "I'm sorry" kind of apology you normally associate with the word, but the "Socrates" kind of apology that consists of a reasoned explanation of one's actions. (I certainly hope she is not about to be force-fed hemlock.)

It seems that when you run a Kickstarter campaign that grosses almost 1.2 megabucks people think you convert it into gold coins and dive into it like Scrooge McDuck. Or that somehow having that kind of responsibility turns you into Mr. Monopoly with an affinity for wearing striped pants. The Occupy Movement is somehow involved and the entire question of "the rich" paying their "fair share" comes to mind.

The Scarlet Letter that many want to sew onto Ms. Palmer's breast stands for "avarice." And they think she's earned this letter because she invites local artists on-stage to play with her. Doing so means that she is not paying union scale, nor FICA taxes, either. In her defense she said those exploited artists "like" doing it.

In her defense, I say, nobody holds a gun to anybody's head. Except the taxman.

When I was a child, evil, godless Commies had nukes aimed at us. We feared they would corrupt our precious bodily fluids. Happily, now I drink fluoridated water, those nukes are rusting in their silos, and the hammer and sickle flies over Pennsylvania avenue.

The godless aspect of Communism stems from an inherent contradiction between the Judeo-Christian ethic and Communism. When you hear people talk about redistributive economic justice, you are witnessing a violation of the 10th Commandment. Moses came down from the Mount carrying two tablets of the law and the second finished with, "Thou Shalt Not Covet."

The advocate for redistributive economic justice covets the stuff of the 1%. S/he/it need not covet it for himself/herself/itself--as much as to buy goodies for the downtrodden. This helps buy the votes of the downtrodden, so everybody wins except the 1% who are moving to Singapore. The covetousness of the Socialist is insatiable as Monty Python observed decades ago with lupins.

The 10th Commandment is why Christianity and Socialism are contradictory. Try to remember this next time you're voting for Santa Claus.

And when Moses came down from that Mount the other tablet said, "Thou Shalt Not Steal." Stealing used to be easy to understand. You take one of Moses' stone tablets and he doesn't have it any more. He'd have to laboriously carve words into a replacement. This is stealing.

But what if Moses had the law on two CDs, and you illegally copied one. He'd still be able to boot up Judaism. Would that be stealing? No, it is not stealing. It's a violation of US Copyright law. It's an amazing thing that corporations have managed to confuse the two notions.

Part of Ms. Palmer's $1.2M went into the production of CDs. If you take one of those CDs from her, she no longer possesses it. But if you make a copy from your friend, your friend still possesses the CD.

When you violate US Copyright law, you diminish a bit of scarcity from this world. Publishing companies would prefer that you fill the silence of your life with music, ebooks, and software that they sell. As these things are scarce & in demand, you are inclined to pay more. As they are not-scarce or not-in-demand, you are inclined to pay less. Therefore, your violation of US Copyright law takes bread from the mouths of publishing companies.

Just because I say this is not stealing, I don't want to give you the impression that US Copyright law is in any way illegitimate. Copyrights are mentioned in the Constitution. So some form of copyrights are legitimate intellectual property. In its current form, US Copyright law is the best law money can buy. Try to remember this next time you're voting Republican. Or Democrat.

Amanda Palmer has gone from being a musician with a record deal (from whom each violation of US Copyright law cost her money) to a musician with no record deal who encourages everyone to copy and share her tunes. But she asks her fans for help.

Only 25,000 people provided the money for Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter campaign. The people wanting to pin the scarlet letter on her chest are different people. I hold that unless you were one of the Kickstarter supporters, you have no standing to complain about how that money gets spent.

Ms. Palmer is comfortable with giving away value to her audience and asking for help. There's a sense in which she's like the waitress who quits the job where an 18% gratuity is added to every bill and taken another job where she earns tips on the basis of grace and not law.

I hopes she does well and I hope more people follow her example.

In Love With Felicia Day

Let's make something clear first off. No, I don't want to date her avatar. I'm happily married, thank you.

Nevertheless, I love what Felicia Day is doing and what she represents, because I believe she represents the future of world culture--I hope. I guess it started with her addiction to World of Warcraft. After she went through that she took her experiences and turned them into a series of video shorts called The Guild. These went up on YouTube and elsewhere and then they went viral. If you have not yet watched The Guild, you've missed a treat.

In particular, pay attention to Season Five where the guild members are being courted by celebrities who want to learn how this Internet thing works. This probably reflects Ms. Day's experience as she was simultaneously a gamer and a working actress.

This is important, because folks in the existing media business understand the "what" of a successful promotion even when they don't grok the "how" of Going Viral. I didn't make this connection when I watched the season five episodes. I was too distracted by the incongruity of the "cool kids" sucking up to the "geeks." (I identify more strongly with geeks than with cool kids.)

Happily, fate gave me a second chance to take delivery from the clue train. The Reddit guys conducted a video interview with Ms. Day wherein they presented a number of questions to her. You can see the interview here. The third question was what occasioned this post.

The questioner points out the success of low-budget projects like Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog and The Guild then asks what are the leading roadblocks are now that having big financial backing is no longer the defining factor. Ms. Day's answer won a place in my heart alongside Linda Chorney.

She said, "The biggest challenge now is, What do you do once you've made something?"

• What does Felicia Day do once she's made "The Guild?"
• What does Linda Chorney do once she's made "Emotional Jukebox?"
• What does Amanda Palmer do once she's made "Theatre Is Evil?"

(By the way, if you haven't had a chance to see Amanda Palmer's TED talk, take a look at it now. It is pertinent to the point I'm making. Go ahead. I'll wait.)

Each of these delightful people takes a slightly different path to the same destination: Going Viral. If you're thinking, "so what, I write books," please consider Felicia Day's question,

"What do you do once you've made your book?"

Your book might be a stinking pile of excrescent pornography. But hey, there's a market for that. You just have to make sure your work becomes known to your audience. And it is easier for the excrescent pornographers out there. You know who you are and you know others like you. All you have to do to sell to that market is to flash the appropriate trust cues and insinuate yourself into all the excrescent porn message boards.

Seriously, niche markets are good because you can readily identify members thereof. If you think that so-and-so's book is just Twilight fan-fic, then you'd better tell so-and-so to post on all the Twilight boards.

Humans sort ourselves into tribes. We choose things we're interested in and then we go looking for like-minded people. And when we find products that are tailored to our tribe, we're more inclined to buy it.

Here's an example. Consider Science Fiction. I love Science Fiction and have ever since I was a little boy in grade school reading the classics. The golden age of the 1950s produced the SF I love best. Yet, Science Fiction is a huge, huge market with millions of people following blue police call boxes and identifying their religion as Jedi. (Sith is cooler--it's just misunderstood.)

Because of my long-standing love affair with Science Fiction, I wrote some stories and had good luck selling them to Raygun Revival and other markets. Raygun Revival is a good fit because they are well suited to what I love most.

But I didn't learn from the fact that the SF category is far too broad to target.

I collected about a dozen of my best Science Fiction stories--time travel stories that form a coherent arc. The stories follow the career of a pair of time travelers named Sid & Nell. These stories went into an anthology called Finding Time. I put my current work in progress, Steamship To Kashmir on hold for about a year while I put a fine coat of polish on Finding Time. I hired Joanne Renaud to do art for each story and I hired Kemp Lyons to do a trailer for it. Then I put it out there with a big splash.

What did this accomplish? Modest sales and INCREASED sales of The Aristotelian. I had stopped mentioning The Aristotelian story once I brought out Finding Time. Yet, while sales of Finding Time have declined over the months, sales of The Aristotelian, have held steady!

What? How could this be?

Why is this? Because the market for mystery stories where the detective is Sherlock Holmes or Mycroft Holmes is much more easily targeted. I can find Holmesians more easily than I can find generic time-travel fans. (Maybe this is just a reflection on my abilities, not the shape of the market.)

Felicia Day speaks of the potential for finding an audience. She wonders, "Where is my audience?" And all day, every day, she works to get the word out there to that audience. For the Guild, she says 90% of the work is after the production is done. That's why she tries to target a specific audience, the narrower the more efficiently one can get the word out.

She tries to really think like an audience member, which is easy because she was a World of Warcraft addict. She tries to find out where is somebody who is going to enjoy her work. She asks, "Where are they on the Internet today?" "What kind of person are they?" If I were trying to find my ebook, how would I hear about it?

The key paradigm shift is to think from an audience point of view. She says "trying to force behavior on the Internet is like herding cats--if you are really intelligent about getting the word out then it will be much easier and it'll catch on and your audience will help you because they see what you are doing is grass roots and you don't have a big machine behind you."

That's what I've been missing. I have been needing my audience to help me and I've not done enough to ask for that help or encourage my readers to help. I may not know how to do this viral promotion thing, but I'll wager people who have bought The Aristotelian or Finding Time are a lot smarter than I am. My biggest challenge is just finding an audience.

Can you help me?