Editor’s note: Owed to the length of “In the Multiverse of Madness,” I divided the essay into two posts. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read Part 1 first, and please feel welcome to offer feedback on that post, this one, or both in the comments section of Part 2 below. Thank you.
Previously on “In the Multiverse of Madness,” we covered the three engagement strategies (and correlating tactics) transmedia mega-franchises deploy to keep us consuming each new offering in real time: by leveraging FOMO via “spoilers”; by encouraging “forensic fandom” with Easter eggs and puzzle-boxing; and by reversing “figure and ground.” Now let’s talk about why 1970s-born adults have been particularly susceptible to these narrative gimmicks—and what to do about it.
X Marks the Spot
Mega-franchises are dependent on a very particular demographic to invest in their elaborate and expanding multiverse continuities: one that has both a strong contextual foundation in the storied histories of the IPs—meaning, viewers who are intimately familiar with (and, ideally, passionately opinionated about) all the varied iterations of Batman and Spider-Man from the last thirty or so years—and is also equipped with disposable income, as is typically the case in middle age, hence the reason Gen X has been the corporate multimedia initiative’s most loyal fan base. Fortunately for them, we’d been groomed for this assignment from the time we learned to turn on the television.
Very quickly (if it isn’t already too late for that): From 1946 through 1983, the FCC enforced stringent regulations limiting the commercial advertisements that could be run during or incorporated into children’s programming. However:
Ronald W. Reagan did not much care for any regulations that unduly hindered business, and the selling of products to an entire nation of children was a big business indeed. When Reagan appointed Mark S. Fowler as commissioner of the FCC on May 18, 1981, children’s television would change dramatically. Fowler championed market forces as the determinant of broadcasting content, and thus oversaw the abolition of every advertising regulation that had served as a guide for broadcasters. In Fowler’s estimation, the question of whether children had the ability to discriminate between the ads and the entertainment was a moot point; the free market, and not organizations such as [Actions for Children’s Television] would decide the matter.
Martin Goodman, “Dr. Toon: When Reagan Met Optimus Prime,” Animation World Network, October 12, 2010
In the wake of Fowler’s appointment, a host of extremely popular animated series—beginning with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe but also notably including The Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, and M.A.S.K. for the boys, and Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Jem for young girls—flooded the syndicated market with 65-episode seasons that aired daily. All of these series had accompanying action figures, vehicles, and playsets—and many of them, in fact, were explicitly based on preexisting toylines; meaning, in a flagrant instance of figure-and-ground reversal, the manufacturers often dictated narrative content:
“These shows are not thought up by people trying to create characters or a story,” [Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children’s Television] explained, terming them “program-length advertisements.” “They are created to sell things,” she said. “Accessories in the toy line must be part of the program. It reverses the traditional creative process. The children are getting a manufacturer’s catalogue instead of real programming content.”
Glenn Collins, “Controversy about Toys, TV Violence,” New York Times, December 12, 1985
This was all happening at the same time Kenner was supplying an endless line of 3.75” action figures based on Star Wars, both the movies and cartoon spinoffs Droids and Ewoks. Even Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends, which predated Fowler’s tenure as FCC commissioner by nearly a decade, rebranded as The Super Powers Team, complete with its own line of toys (also courtesy of Kenner) and tie-in comics (published by DC), thereby creating a feedback loop in which each product in the franchise advertised for the other. Meanwhile, feature films like Ghostbusters and even the wantonly violent, R-rated Rambo and RoboCop movies were reverse-engineered into kid-friendly cartoons, each with—no surprise here—their own action-figure lines.
I grew up on all that stuff and obsessed over the toys; you’d be hard-pressed to find a late-stage Xer that didn’t. We devoured the cartoons, studied the comics, and envied classmates who were lucky enough to own the Voltron III Deluxe Lion Set or USS Flagg aircraft carrier. To our young minds, there was no differentiating between enjoying the storyworlds of those series and collecting all the ancillary products in the franchise. To watch those shows invariably meant to covet the toys. At our most impressionable, seventies-born members of Gen X learned to love being “hostage buyers.” Such is the reason I was still purchasing those goddamn Batman comics on the downslope to middle age.
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