thinking about docs on fandom

is weekend as a little break from hard work on final projects, I took a break and watched King of Kong:  A Fist Full of Quarters.  This documentary follows Steve Wiebe as he breaks the world record score for Donkey Kong and his attempt to get that score legitimized by Twin Galaxies, the official score keeper of classic video games.  The drama of this documentary is that the officials at Twin Galaxies all seem to be groupies of the existing world record score player, Billy Mitchell.



While I enjoyed this documentary on many levels, I always have mixed feelings watching these kinds of fan documentaries.  I understand that these docs cannot begin to explain the complex dynamics of these communities, but that the filmmakers can get at least a glimpse of a world we might not be apart of.   Additionally the skills or cultural capital of this group is made clear, which can help to illustrate how value is flexible according to the properties of specific communities.  However, there is always the major risk of bringing a community to outsiders attention, and exploiting that, and belittling the members of a community.

With King of Kong, this line between sharing a community and belittling its members seemed especially thin.  While the complicated process of validating scores and the politics of who gets recognition within the community seemed even more complex than I could have imagined, the lack of context for quotes especially from the non-major players in the documentary seemed to fall directly into the main kinds of video game player stereo-types (socially incompetent, nerdy, male, adolescent, intellectual in the wrong areas).   Even the protagonist Steve, seems set up from the start to be kind of abnormal--a desire to break a world record in order to fill his unemployment time.  Of course Steve's refusal to stop playing Donkey Kong to help his son in order to reach his top scoring goal is made insignificant when compared to Billy Mitchell's schemes in order to stay number one.  As the film progresses Steve's non-game playing activities are highlighted, in order for the audience to connect and sympathize with him and away from Billy.  While this is an effective filmmaking technique, it leaves me wondering how playing up "nerdiness" or "obsession" undermines the individuals while simultaneously enhancing the narrative of the film.  This happens so often in these types of docs, but is it ok?