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One of the problems, for there are many, with the internet in general and with FB in particular, is the temptation to post hard and fast pronouncements on things that are neither hard nor fast.
You scroll through and read a quote from some cutting-edge artist about creative freedom and how creators have a positive duty to be offensive if that's where their creative genius leads them, and an article about how stupid and selfish it is of entitled fans to object to anything in a created work and expect it to be changed to suit them. And cases will be cited, and it will be clear that the article is right. Fans should just shut up and take what they're given (or sold) with becoming gratitude, and if it offends them then that's good because it's making them think about things.
And then you read about the HydraCap controversy, and it's equally clear that in this case the fans *are* entitled to object, and right to be offended. Nobody at Marvel, to the best of my knowledge, has yet put forward the argument that if people are offended by this they should be glad because it's making them think about the state of America today, and what lurks beneath the surface of patriotism and nationl pride, and how little it would take to set that great nation on the wrong path, and maybe they won't dare (because it would be rubbish: America today is nothing like Germany in the 1930s, for one thing), but it remains a possibility that they might, and in the abstract it could be a telling argument.
There's no hard and fast case for absolute creative freedom, nor for fans' absolute right to influence the creations of which they are fans. Sometimes one side is right, sometimes the other. People can be dead right on one thing, dead wrong on another, whether they are creators or fans (that whole "not perfect quite yet" thing again) and absolutism on either side of this issue is misplaced.
And yet we keep doing it. And I get metaphorical whiplash.
You scroll through and read a quote from some cutting-edge artist about creative freedom and how creators have a positive duty to be offensive if that's where their creative genius leads them, and an article about how stupid and selfish it is of entitled fans to object to anything in a created work and expect it to be changed to suit them. And cases will be cited, and it will be clear that the article is right. Fans should just shut up and take what they're given (or sold) with becoming gratitude, and if it offends them then that's good because it's making them think about things.
And then you read about the HydraCap controversy, and it's equally clear that in this case the fans *are* entitled to object, and right to be offended. Nobody at Marvel, to the best of my knowledge, has yet put forward the argument that if people are offended by this they should be glad because it's making them think about the state of America today, and what lurks beneath the surface of patriotism and nationl pride, and how little it would take to set that great nation on the wrong path, and maybe they won't dare (because it would be rubbish: America today is nothing like Germany in the 1930s, for one thing), but it remains a possibility that they might, and in the abstract it could be a telling argument.
There's no hard and fast case for absolute creative freedom, nor for fans' absolute right to influence the creations of which they are fans. Sometimes one side is right, sometimes the other. People can be dead right on one thing, dead wrong on another, whether they are creators or fans (that whole "not perfect quite yet" thing again) and absolutism on either side of this issue is misplaced.
And yet we keep doing it. And I get metaphorical whiplash.