Writing is Hard: Putting the audience last, part 342

I've got some reviews coming (Doomsday and The Bank Job, at least), but I haven't been able to get to them yet. I've got a set of interviews coming for Newsarama that's been taking all the time I usually spend for reviewing.

So instead, I'm gonna talk about writing some more. I've added a Writing is Hard link to the sidebar under Writing Craft and Life. It's basically a collection of my posts on the craft of writing, but I don't mind recommending them because hardly any of them contain original ideas by me. Most of them are other people's ideas and me just sort of learning aloud as I share them. Anyway, good stuff in there.

One of the recurring themes in Writing is Hard has to do with the obligation (or more accurately, the lack thereof) that writers owe to their audiences. This seems like a hard idea for readers and fans to swallow, but the more I listen to writers talk about it, the more I believe that you have to write (or draw or paint or whatever) first for yourself and then hope that people dig what you're doing.

This comes up again because of a recent(ish) post by Cheryl Lynn on the whitewashing of non-white characters. I mention this with some fear and trembing partly because I absolutely love Cheryl Lynn and I think she's right pretty much all of the time. And as far as her main point goes, she's absolutely right this time too.

But I'm mostly nervous about saying what I'm going to say because I'm not going to address her main point other than to agree with it. Instead, I'm going to nitpick her suggested solution to the problem:

[There] are those artists who have wonderful artistic skills but simply think that white women are the most beautiful women on earth. Scratch that. The only beautiful women on earth. And because they believe that all heroines should be beautiful, the result is that they depict non-white heroines with stereotypically white features. They give a character like Storm the features they think a beautiful woman should have instead of the features a beautiful woman from Kenya would likely have.

And that's a problem. How do you resolve it? Well I certainly wouldn't want anyone to change what he or she finds to be beautiful. Hell, that's impossible to do anyway. But those artists will have to work against their brains a bit. Those artists may think that giving a character a wider nose or eyes without lid creases will make that character unattractive. What needs to be realized is that the audience has a much broader definition of what is attractive. Have you ever given someone a gift that you didn't like but you knew the other person would love? You put the other person first. Those artists need to put the audience first.

The bold text is my emphasis, because that's where I disagree with her. I would much rather see Vixen (and Jubilee and any number of other whitewashed characters) drawn accurately, but I don't think my wishes on the matter should affect how any particular artist chooses to draw. There's a lot I don't like about Ed Benes' art, but I don't think he needs to change it to suit me. Not if that's the way he really, truly wants to express himself artistically. He should absolutely be able to draw however the hell he wants. I don't have to like it though and I don't have to buy his stuff.

Now please don't get me wrong and think I'm saying that Cheryl Lynn or anyone else doesn't have the right to complain about this. They so do. But the complaint needs to be married with a strong, economic message that those who are concerned about this aren't going to keep spending money on it. The solution isn't for Benes to suddenly change his art style because someone wants him to. The solution is for DC to hire another artist because no one's buying Ed Benes anymore. Then, if Benes isn't getting work and decides to rethink how he's expressing himself, that's something he's going to have to wrestle with. But it's not going to happen - nor should it happen - just because we're crying out, "Think of the fans!" while continuing to buy whatever he's putting out.

Thinking of the fans, after all, is what got us Venom in Spider-Man 3. It's what got us Nikki and Paulo in Lost. It's why most fantasy novels suck and why there are three billion new vampire-romance novels published every week. Thinking of the fans makes creators less creative. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Benes draws the way he does precisely because he is thinking of the fans. Just not ones like me.