Abstract
Abstract In 2018, James Gunn and Chuck Wendig both lost lucrative jobs as storytellers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Star Wars, respectively, as a result of their aggressively political social media communications. This paper argues that these events can be understood in part by Gunn and Wendig’s social media profiles being blurred with their role as custodians for their respective franchises, and their interactions being out of sync with the aspirational themes associated with the MCU and Star Wars storyworlds. Compounding this issue is the significant structural evolution that modern, popular and commercial stories are undergoing, towards a collective journey model. Collective journey stories are an evolved version of traditional hero’s journey tales, and showcase the importance of listening and negotiating to drive systemic, collective action. Such stories have increased capacity to improve the civic imagination and provide symbols that individuals can draw from to manifest meaningful change. The appearance of these stories in popular commercial entertainment is a reflection of our increasingly digital lives and heightened connectivity, as well as a by-product of our increasing tendency to transmedially tell stories. The professional troubles Gunn and Wendig encountered are a result of them contrasting this storytelling modality, and can be understood in the context of a semiotic cultural shift, as we collectively come to better understand the impact of the Internet and our participatory digital culture.
Highlights
Our story begins a short time ago... on a social media platform not too far away... in the year 2018 and on Twitter to be exact. It was during this time that two prominent storytellers, from the two largest commercial entertainment franchises in Western culture, lost their jobs in separate, but similar incidents: James Gunn, the writer and director behind Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy films, and Chuck Wendig, the author behind a number of Star Wars novels and comics produced shortly after Disney took control of the franchise
Modern audiences look to popular commercial stories for guidance on managing power and responsibility, in the same way that previous generations looked to biblical narratives and great morality tales (Jenkins, Ito, & boyd 2016). Stories, such as those contained in Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) offer signs and symbols that individuals can use as a means to discuss and navigate real-world issues
Gomez points to television shows such as Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black and The Walking Dead as examples of this emergent storytelling model. We can see these traits appearing in the Star Wars and MCU franchises when we look at all of their transmedia elements as a whole
Summary
In 2018, James Gunn and Chuck Wendig both lost lucrative jobs as storytellers for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and Star Wars, respectively, as a result of their aggressively political social media communications. This paper argues that these events can be understood in part by Gunn and Wendig’s social media profiles being blurred with their role as custodians for their respective franchises, and their interactions being out of sync with the aspirational themes associated with the MCU and Star Wars storyworlds Compounding this issue is the significant structural evolution that modern, popular and commercial stories are undergoing, towards a collective journey model. Collective journey stories are an evolved version of traditional hero’s journey tales, and showcase the importance of listening and negotiating to drive systemic, collective action Such stories have increased capacity to improve the civic imagination and provide symbols that individuals can draw from to manifest meaningful change. The professional troubles Gunn and Wendig encountered are a result of them contrasting this storytelling modality, and can be understood in the context of a semiotic cultural shift, as we collectively come to better understand the impact of the Internet and our participatory digital culture
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