ARG Net has an update about lonelygirl15 (Previously on Technoccult).
The letter from “the creators” is incredibly lame. To quote New York Times blogger Virginia Heffernan:
I don’t know what to add, except UGH at the “it’s not lies or a coherent mystery; it’s all a fascinating artistic jeu d’esprit” idea. I think Jayson Blair might even have tried that one.
In fact, I’d rather that The Creators were more serious–more mysterious–more even, hm, Thelemic about it all. I mean that, whatever their ideology or frame of mind, I wish they showed more heart for the actual stuff of the videos; I don’t quite see, for example, how sloughing off Bree as the “magical faerie spirit in all of us” (or whatever that was) is going to win them any allegiance over here, where Bree–the character AND the live being playing her–were what originally excited us.
In other words, I didn’t set out to see a big art experiment. I set out to get to know Bree. And it’s not fair to make it sound as if that’s an infantile motivation for looking at the vids, or as if higher minds would understand that the lofty call of filmmaking qua filmmaking supersedes the draw of a fictional character.
Dickens was careful not to tell his crazed, besotted fans: “Little Nell’s not important! She’s just everygirl! It’s me! I’m a WRITER! And the novel is a NEW FORM!”
September 9, 2006 at 3:08 pm
lonelygirl15 was on the 11 o’clock news last night.
http://www.wusatv9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=51970
September 10, 2006 at 3:24 pm
This is bad marketing. It was obvious that Bree & co. were faking it–the actorly expressions, the careful edits, the way the “webcam” caught everything–but at least there was a degree of mystery. With or without a product to push, however, as an observer I would have been interested to see where they went with the whole ECG/Themelite thing, but now I’m not that motivated because they’ve ruined the story.
Second, it’s bad storytelling–they just suspended everyone’s “suspension of disbelief.” I can only care about “Bree” if I’m allowed to think, at some level, that she’s real; when the storytellers themselves remind me she’s not, it terminates the program.