Post by Phalon on Feb 14, 2021 10:48:35 GMT -6
I saw earlier this week a post on Kym's Facebook with a link to a podcast episode discussing Whoosh.org. I listened to the podcast, and found a few things interesting.
One, it's amazing and kind of cool that newer fans of the series are still turning to Whoosh! episode guides 25 years after the episodes first aired!
Secondly, all my life, even before Whoosh! was created, I've been saying the word incorrectly, pronouncing it as rhyming with "push" instead of the vowel sound as in "loose".
Probably the most interesting thing to me - or at least something I haven't thought about - is how much the fandom has changed from when we (those who viewed the show during it's run, and had to wait a week - and sometimes an entire summer! - for the next new episode to air) to the fans nowadays, who can binge watch hour after hour.
The hosts of Xena Warrior Podcast, three film school graduates, touched on this - laughing in sort of a mild mocking and condescending way, about what we back then thought about the episodes and the emotions the general fandom felt.
While I was listening to the podcast, I tried to think of a comparison between how Xena fans watched the show and what they felt 25 years ago to how newer fans view the show now. I'm not quite sure how my mind made this giant leap, but the most adequate comparison I came up with is "The Blair Witch Project".
I've seen the movie twice - the most recent being this past Halloween when LX, The Boyfriend, and I were having our scary movie marathon. Anyone who watches the movie for the first time now like LX and the Boyfriend - 20 years after its release - is not going to have the same reaction I did seeing it shortly after it hit theaters. Now it's just a low budget horror flick (and not even a very good one). But back then! You had this feeling of total uneasiness when the movie ended, wondering "What the hell just happened? Is it a fictional movie? Is it a documentary? WTF did I just watch?!" No one knew. If such a list exists, "The Blair Witch Project" has got to be near the top of "The All-Time Greatest Marketing Gimmicks, Tricks, and Hoaxes Ever Played on Audiences". Turning to the Internet for answers was no help - the movie's website provided no clue - just a timeline of events from how the legend of the witch started centuries ago, to some random crazy guy's killing of a bunch of kids in the 40s, a few other sightings throughout the decades, the disappearance of the film's characters, the massive search for them, and ending at the discovery of their film canisters a year later. A few newspaper articles, photos of the found canisters and of the three missing students before they disappeared are the only other things on the website (which still exists; I showed it to LX and The Boyfriend to explain why the movie was so disturbing when it came out). Even if you happened upon IMDb's page back then for "The Blair Witch Project", the "actor" bios all said "missing, presumed dead".
Original fans of Xena: Warrior Princess, like first viewers in 1999 of "The Blair Witch Project" had more of an emotional reaction - or maybe a different reaction is more accurate - to each episode than fans do now. Back then, we knew nothing of what was to come, how it would end, or even if it would end. There was no analysis of the series as a whole, and certainly no idea that what we were watching would still be talked about and viewed a quarter of a century later.
And though it's viewed differently, I think it's very cool it's gathering new fans, and being discussed in different ways all these years later.
xenawarriorpodcast.libsyn.com/minisode-30-whooshorg?fbclid=IwAR0MkVUNjzW7j1rDPgwiT4lcYY3S3p0k2GttgzqizbXNmao1RnSqQJfCKBU
One, it's amazing and kind of cool that newer fans of the series are still turning to Whoosh! episode guides 25 years after the episodes first aired!
Secondly, all my life, even before Whoosh! was created, I've been saying the word incorrectly, pronouncing it as rhyming with "push" instead of the vowel sound as in "loose".
Probably the most interesting thing to me - or at least something I haven't thought about - is how much the fandom has changed from when we (those who viewed the show during it's run, and had to wait a week - and sometimes an entire summer! - for the next new episode to air) to the fans nowadays, who can binge watch hour after hour.
The hosts of Xena Warrior Podcast, three film school graduates, touched on this - laughing in sort of a mild mocking and condescending way, about what we back then thought about the episodes and the emotions the general fandom felt.
While I was listening to the podcast, I tried to think of a comparison between how Xena fans watched the show and what they felt 25 years ago to how newer fans view the show now. I'm not quite sure how my mind made this giant leap, but the most adequate comparison I came up with is "The Blair Witch Project".
I've seen the movie twice - the most recent being this past Halloween when LX, The Boyfriend, and I were having our scary movie marathon. Anyone who watches the movie for the first time now like LX and the Boyfriend - 20 years after its release - is not going to have the same reaction I did seeing it shortly after it hit theaters. Now it's just a low budget horror flick (and not even a very good one). But back then! You had this feeling of total uneasiness when the movie ended, wondering "What the hell just happened? Is it a fictional movie? Is it a documentary? WTF did I just watch?!" No one knew. If such a list exists, "The Blair Witch Project" has got to be near the top of "The All-Time Greatest Marketing Gimmicks, Tricks, and Hoaxes Ever Played on Audiences". Turning to the Internet for answers was no help - the movie's website provided no clue - just a timeline of events from how the legend of the witch started centuries ago, to some random crazy guy's killing of a bunch of kids in the 40s, a few other sightings throughout the decades, the disappearance of the film's characters, the massive search for them, and ending at the discovery of their film canisters a year later. A few newspaper articles, photos of the found canisters and of the three missing students before they disappeared are the only other things on the website (which still exists; I showed it to LX and The Boyfriend to explain why the movie was so disturbing when it came out). Even if you happened upon IMDb's page back then for "The Blair Witch Project", the "actor" bios all said "missing, presumed dead".
Original fans of Xena: Warrior Princess, like first viewers in 1999 of "The Blair Witch Project" had more of an emotional reaction - or maybe a different reaction is more accurate - to each episode than fans do now. Back then, we knew nothing of what was to come, how it would end, or even if it would end. There was no analysis of the series as a whole, and certainly no idea that what we were watching would still be talked about and viewed a quarter of a century later.
And though it's viewed differently, I think it's very cool it's gathering new fans, and being discussed in different ways all these years later.
xenawarriorpodcast.libsyn.com/minisode-30-whooshorg?fbclid=IwAR0MkVUNjzW7j1rDPgwiT4lcYY3S3p0k2GttgzqizbXNmao1RnSqQJfCKBU
