I watched an interview with a screen actor once, talking about playing a stage villain and the vibe of negativity that can be felt coming from an audience. they related a story of another actor playing Iago in Othello in a production in Texas, when this guy stood up in the audience, pulled out a gun, and shot them.

the wound was not life threatening and the shooter was clearly disturbed, but the actor who was shot admitted later that it was the most flattering personal review of his talent that he ever received.

I remember the director’s commentary on The Wire mentioning that some of the local actors they’d hired got shit in the local scene for things their characters did, so that’s another example of it.

The Skyler White thing is just completely based on misogyny, the whole time Skyler was trying to save her husband from being an absolute piece of shit and killing himself and possibly even his whole family in the process. Men see past all that and go “aaah woman annoying, probably on her period the whole time ”

If you’ve ever played D&D you know that being unable to separate the actions of a character from the person portraying that character is a disease afflicting the brains of, like, most Americans at least

People (often bourgeois people in this case) want an escape from the troubles of the real world, so they lose themselves in art. When that art reminds them of the real world, they get pissed off.

It happened to me at the beginning of covid. I got really into Babylon Berlin. Then, spoiler, one of the main characters died. I had developed a parasocial relationship with this character, so I was shocked and devastated. I didn’t realize how attached I was until it happened. Then, one or two episodes later, they managed to bring the character back to life.

This might explain why blatantly communist art isn’t that popular and why g*mers have meltdowns over pronouns, women, and the existence of Black people. Bourgeois people want an escape from the teeming masses who are defeating them everywhere. So they lose themselves in art (and are often the only ones with the time and money to enjoy it). They don’t want a reminder in that art of how their time is running out.

Nah, this is absolutely not anything new at all. I’ve heard of this phenomenon happening to every actor who has ever played a cartoonishly evil antagonist in Brazilian novelas for as long as I’ve been alive. A lot of people simply don’t have much media literacy and cannot establish this layer of separation between actor and character. I suppose what’s different today is that people feel more comfortably being vocal about their shitty opinions and harassing innocent people online.

There are many, many videos of people trying out VR for the first time and having very visceral reactions to scary scenarios like zombies or walking on a plank 30 stories up in the air. They know it’s not real when they put on the headset, but there is a technical threshold upon which the brain unconsciously registers incoming visual information as “real”. This is called Presence and it’s what makes VR so interesting, and potentially powerful. Over time, other areas of your brain override the physical behavior one might exhibit reflexively in those scenarios, but your heart rate, pupil dilation, and galvanic skin response will still betray the fact that your body is unconsciously responding to a scenario you consciously know is not real.

When you watch a movie/show and are having emotional responses to images on a screen, your unconscious is still doing the same thing. Despite television not reaching the threshold necessary for Presence that VR accomplishes, in many ways it still is working on your unconscious mind as if you’re looking through a window. The temperance you exhibit in controlling these behavior is not an automatic indicator of “Free Will”, but years of learned behavior internally competing with your reflexive behaviors.

We can keep working this concept backwards from video, to audio, to books, to still images, and statues. The entire concept of fandom, cosplay, etc, is merely a socially accepted compromise for people working through their internalization of art that has had an involuntary emotional impact on them.

As we become encouraged more and more by society to be more selfish, more reactive is it any wonder then that there are people in this world who lose that battle of temperance and attack the focus of their emotional responses?

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

People watch House of the Dragon?

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I think they also harassed Steve Blum for some of his performances. Lena Heady too for her portrayal of Cersei, and Jack Gleeson for his portrayal of Joffrey.

Billy D Williams had to justify Lando’s actions to fans for the longest time

“My best guess is that people with very little emotional intelligence have emotions over the media they consume and need to let it out on someone as an outlet? Combined with just, poor education leading to poor media literacy?”

This and a literal million other things. These shows are seen by millions of people. It would be interesting to do a study (google prolly knows) on the reason people felt compelled to engage in that behavior.

I think it depends. In the case of this Game of Thrones example - those people commenting strike me as having an awareness that it’s a character. One person even addresses his character rather than him. Though he might be taking it to be harassing, I think it’s an expression of what you’d call ‘heat’ in pro-wrestling. It’s good for business. They’re recognising his character work (and the writing of the show). I don’t think any of those people mean what they say harmfully. I think it’s all quite tongue in cheek.

I think your other examples are just willful ignorance in the pursuit of personal catharsis. G*mers are savvy enough to know that Rose is acting for Rian Johnson, who is directing for Kathleen Kennedy, who is owned by Disney. They just want a place to displace their anger (and like you say feel powerful in relative anonymity behind a screen). They’re weird nerds looking to vent misogyny in defense of their obsession with either star wars or the culture wars in general. It’s pure anger and hatred. It’s especially prevalent in a world where the peoples power has been reduced, and where most interactions for a lot of people happen online.

This is like Linda Blair being harassed for her role in the Exorcist. People really be that dumb.

It’s psychotic that people are seriously harassing real life people for things their characters are doing. Legitimately speaking, would they prefer if scripts tiptoed around such characters and simply made them act irrationally and in support of say for example Walter White? Perhaps they’d rather the character talk to a blank spot and everyone pretend there’s someone there, except these same losers would probably then start trying to email the ether.