If you’re online and in fandom, you’ve probably heard of Goncharov, the faked/lost Scorese film from 1973 that folks on Tumblr dreamed up a few days ago. Gizmodo’s Linda Codega calls it “the greatest mafia movie never made”, describing the Goncharov “phenomenon” as “an exquisite corpse of collective unreality, all kicked off by a fake movie poster made by Tumblr user Beelzeebub, based on a photo of a knockoff merchandising boot.”
The idea of the collective unreality and fandom coming together to imagine parts of the same thing in a unit is pretty cool and it isn’t new. Fandom has always made things. We had all of the different “hot” versions of the little pyramid thing from Gravity Falls. We had “the solar system as hot people”. We have a uniform characterization of Eames from Inception that is solid despite being barely supported by anything in the film.
Fandom is all about creating something out of nothing – or very limited materials – and dreaming up new things at the same time. It speaks to how creative fans are when they choose to be… which is pretty darn creative most of the time. In some directions.
The issue, for me, is how that creativity works. How the collective (un) conscious of fandom cannot dream bigger, darlings. How fandom cannot ever stretch their imaginative muscles in ways that incorporate Black/brown people as the leads, the blorbos. The center. Who is capable of being imagined.
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