Evidence in favor of my elitism
So New Moon, sequel adaptation of the Twilight book series, has reportedly broken the record for opening day receipts last set by Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight.
And having ambitions of a professional writing career, I'm forced to pause and make sense of that - because whenever a movie or book that is to me obviously, horrifically (har?) bad succeeds so well with the public at large, I can't help but wonder if that little dream of mine is doomed. Maybe, the thought comes, the reading and movie-going public are firmly at odds with me as to what exactly qualifies as good entertainment. In which case, they're certainly not going to be buying anything you put out, now are they?
Suddenly my longtime-favorite newspaper The Economist, as if sensing its #1 fan in distress, comes to the rescue. In the middle of a new and highly-insightful article entitled "A World of Hits", which analyzes why we're seeing bigger blockbusters than ever in times when entertainment is becoming ever more specialized, the author takes time out to ask why it is that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is currently rated at 4/5 Stars on Netflix.
Perhaps the best explanation of why this might be so was offered in 1963. In “Formal Theories of Mass Behaviour”, William McPhee noted that a disproportionate share of the audience for a hit was made up of people who consumed few products of that type. (Many other studies have since reached the same conclusion.) A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.
It won't put any more money in my wallet when my own books are just sitting on the shelf, but at least I'll have the consolation of knowing that it'll be through no fault of mine.
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