https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8vUXKIQsB0
Among bad genre movies that have started social phenomena, The Room (2003) unmistakably remains quintessential among them. For those unfamiliar, The Room is a movie written, produced, and directed by Tommy Wiseau, who also played the main character, Johnny. It was a film so bad it was initially a financial disaster, having only grossed at $1,800 during its two-week run after being financed by Wiseau with a budget of a whopping $6 million (1). However, a small segment of people, baffled by how incomprehensibly bad the film was, began demanding more exhibitions until there were Mystery Science Theater 3000-esque screenings all over the country. And its virality never died down. It spawned dozens of YouTube compilation videos, such as the one linked above, that are still referenced today and awards season prestige picture, The Disaster Artist (2017). Most importantly, it has one of the largest cult followings in film history.
It is worth noting though that The Room is unlike any other cult film in that its ‘badness’ is celebrated. Most cult films are better known for their morbid desire to defy boundaries mostly through shock value. Meanwhile, The Room’s cult status was founded upon its ‘badness,’ which gave birth to a social phenomenon that is the apotheosis of participatory culture’s potent role in the spread of media. As shown in Jenkins’ book, “When material is produced according to a one-size-fits-all model, it imperfectly fits the needs of any given audience. Instead, audience members have to retrofit it to better serve their interests.” (2) This idea directly applies to this phenomenon.
This film did not succeed the way Wiseau intended. He wanted The Room to be a melodramatic, emotional story about betrayal. However, a more dominant or preferred interpretation of the movie – an aspect of the “dominant cultural order,” (3) as described by Hall – was adopted by the audience in a way that went against Wiseau’s vision. And that was the idea that The Room is a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ movie with no sort of nuance or depth to it. This dissonance between the encoded and decoded meanings of the film is the crux of this film’s spreadability. If the audience accepted the film just as it was instead of nitpicking at the non-sequitur dialogue or poor line delivery, people would’ve regarded this as just another predictable soap opera film, which isn’t as spreadable. But this is not how participatory culture works in this situation.
There’s a communal feel to sharing a bad film experience and wanting to discuss about it with people, especially with regard to what went wrong or how it turned out the way it did. On top of that, calling it a ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ film helps the audience justify their enjoyment of a ‘bad’ movie. It makes them feel like expert film critics who can recognize what makes a poorly made film. This is the epitome of the concept of spreadability in that these people shared the content for their own purposes and on their own terms (4). People were drawn to the film’s accidental surrealism and absurdism that Wiseau didn’t know he created, and they built upon that through jokes, quips, and memes that turned what was intended to be a melodrama into almost a black comedy. Moreover, it’s a palpable case of participatory culture having such a huge impact that not only dismissed but even morphed the agenda of the original piece of media.
Participatory culture was just so involved in the film’s success and spreadability that the film would have remained a ‘flop’ had it not taken place. It even reached a point where the audience subconsciously claimed ownership of the film by making the experience their own, contrary to the original intent. And as a result, Wiseau can no longer reclaim ownership of his work. With that being said, we can conclude that at times the effects of participatory culture can be so potent that it dominates the original work and what it intended to achieve.
Works Cited
(1/4) Ritman, Alex. “How ‘The Room’ Went From Disastrous Flop to Cult Phenomenon.” The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Sept 2017, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-room-went-disastrous-flop-cult-phenomenon-1035206. Accessed 30 Sept 2018.
(2) Jenkins, Henry et al. “Spreadable Media: Creating Value And Meaning In A Networked Culture.” NYU Press, 2013.
(3) Hall, Stuart. “Ch. 6 Encoding, decoding (The Cultural Studies Reader).” Routledge, 1993.