19 #Releasethesnydercut: Fan activism and the Power of Twitter
Peter Fazari
Brock University
#Releasethesnydercut: Fan activism and the Power of Twitter
Peter Fazari (6930309)
COMM 3P18
TA: Suze Tkachuk
Prof. Derek Foster
December 5th, 2023.
Fan activism has been an important part of every fandom. Bringing together individuals who are passionate and devoted to specific fandoms can lead to political and emotional movements. Fan activism has been an important concept in showing how passionate fans who have been affected by something on a deeper level will join in order to demand change. The dedication and passion of the Zack Snyder fandom has dominated the online film fan landscape. Although Snyder fans are not the only vocal minority in the pop culture world, their story and dedication showed how relevant fan activism still is and how the use of Twitter helped their voices become heard and their efforts become successful.
Background
Zack Snyder is a popular film director that has directed major hit films such as, 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009), Man of Steel (2013), Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and of course, Justice league (2017). Snyder is known for his distinct dark style and over use of slow motion when it comes to his blockbusters. His popularity really kicked off when he was given the chance to set the stage for a DC superheroes cinematic universe, a concept similar to what Marvel had been doing. Starting with the success of, Man of Steel, Snyder moved on to his next project Batman v Superman. Before the film was even released Snyder had already been hired to direct a follow up film, Justice League. Batman v Superman was deemed a mess by critics and most fans were in agreement. A small group of fans emerged from twitter to show their love for Snyder’s vision of the characters. After Batman v Superman was deemed as a flop by the studio, (Warner Brothers), a course correction was put into place to make sure that their Justice League movie fixed the complaints of the critics and fans. After filming ninety-five percent of the film Zack Snyder dropped out of the director’s chair after the tragic suicide of his daughter Autumn Snyder. The film would undergo extensive reshoots to fix the film to be more widely accepted, (or more like Marvel). Famous writer, director and producer Joss Weadon was hired to complete the filming. The film came out in November of 2017 and had lukewarm reviews from critics and was maligned by fans. It became a gigantic flop. The complaints of Snyder’s style being too much in the last film was reversed for this movie, with many fans upset with no clear style of one director and the visual duct-tape of the re-edited and reshot scenes. After reports of Snyder actually being fired from the project came out, a reaction or a spark was ignited on Twitter, a hashtag called, Release the Snyder Cut. Initially a large minority of fans disliked Snyder and his style and were against supporting his vision, until the news came out about him being fired. A lot of individuals started to feel empathy for him. Putting previous critiques about him behind them and joining the hashtag. In June of 2020, the Snyder cut of the film was officially announced to be released in 2021 on the streaming service HBO Max. This was a way for Warner brothers to get more people signed up for their streaming service.
This paper looks at the events from 2017-2021 on Twitter with the birth of the hashtag, “release the snydercut” and to the eventual release of, Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021). This paper uses major concepts such as, textual poaching, reactionary fandom, transmedia audiences, signifying and affecting communities which are all interlinked with fan activism to show a modern example of fan activism through the use of Twitter and show the power and devotion of a fandom. The final part of the paper will show how even in 2023, the fandom is still active and trying to repeat their activism movements again to get more from Warner Brothers. The examples gathered are a combination of reported Tweets from articles and a few Tweets themselves. The purpose of this paper is to prove how powerful fan activism is when utilizing modern and technologically advanced practices.
Fan activism
Fan activism refers to a collective of fans breaking from their social groups and intervening with the public to promote changes in society. This is a specific shift in audiences becoming active audiences involved and participating in a cause rather than just casually being passive audiences and not doing anything about the issue. There have been many famous examples of fan activism against major studios, most are with fans trying to save their favorite television shows from being canceled, such as the infamous case mentioned in Jenkins’ textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture, where the example of the Star Trek fandom started a campaign to convince the studio to save their show. This example showed how strong fan activism could be pre internet. The Zack Snyder fandom represents the modern version of fan activism by utilizing social media and demonstrating it’s significant power in getting their message across and releasing a film that had been “canceled”. Jenifer Earl and Katrina Kimport explain in their paper, Movement Societies and Digital protest: Fan Activism and Other Non Political protest online, (2009), that, “the Internet, as a new media, is positioned to accelerate the diffusion of protest practices” (Earl and Kimport. Pg. 220. 2009). Although this paper was written 14 years ago, it’s clear that the prediction of the internet would take over as the predominant way for individuals to get their messages across and voices heard. Utilizing these original protest practices in a new and more relevant way. The Zack Snyder fans had one goal, to make Warner Brothers studios release Zack Snyder’s version of the film. They have become activists in order to get change made to satisfy them and the film media landscape, by promoting single vision artist driven films compared to studio interfered messes. Breaking away from these small groups and starting with the simple hashtag. With the birth of the hashtag came the first strike of activism from the community, harassing on Twitter. Every single post that Warner Brothers had posted on Twitter had been attacked by the fandom. The hashtag being used over and over again by dedicated fans was a digital example of them protesting and wanting Warner Brothers to pay attention to them. Alex Xanthoudakis, explains in her paper, mobilizing minions, that celebrities have, “efficiently and effectively been able to mobilize their fan bases for various causes and goals,” (Xanthoudakis. Pg. 1. 2020). Xanthoudakis’ paper is referencing the actor Misha Collins using his fandom on Twitter to get his fans to become actively involved in charities and other actions and promoting a hashtag related to his show. I wanted to provide this to demonstrate how Zack Snyder had no part in creating this hashtag or controlling their movement for any personal gain towards him. This fandom is entirely built by the fans. A director in a similar situation as Snyder is David Ayer who directed the film, Suicide Squad (2016), and has started his own hashtag of release the Ayer cut. In this case he is asking his fans to support him and get his film made. He used the Twitter platform and his followers to share his experience of making a film for Warner Brothers and wanted to get his version of his film released in the same way Zack Snyder did.
Textual Poaching
Another example of how the fandom relates to Jenkins’ work is the term textual poaching. This term refers to “the way that many fans approach media texts, mining them for elements that are personally pleasurable or useful and then reconstructing new texts from those poached materials”, (Jenkins. Pg 21. 2012), this represents how before the information came to light about the whole incident of Zack Snyder and his firing, the fans gathered the current film and what they had seen, realized most of Snyder’s work was gone and created this term, the Snydercut. This fandom approached the initial release of the film as a fake film and that somewhere out there was Zack Snyder’s version of the film and started the hashtag around it. The term Snydercut is a play on the infamous re-release of director Richard Donner’s “Donner Cut ” of Superman 2 (1980). Where famously he filmed the original Superman movies back to back and was let go by Warner brothers. His cut was later re-edited and polished for release 35 years later. Fans immediately saw a resemblance and sourced out of the fake version that they saw in theaters and used it as an example of how it was not Zack Snyder’s intended film. The fandom really created this idea of Zack Snyder’s cut of the film being out, before there was ever public knowledge of this. The fans manufactured an initially fake film that turned out to be real. Another way they used textual poaching was the multiple fan edits located on YouTube prior to the release of the film. Fans came to the conclusion based on early trailer footage of what was Snyder’s work and what was the reshot film. There are many examples editing down the initial film and even more comparison videos of each cut.
Signifying a Community
The hashtag release the Snyder cut was one of the most popular examples of the concept, signifying a community. Hashtags are important in creating niches when it comes to specific areas or specific fandoms to become a part of. The hashtag itself has created an important group where fans can come together and share their thoughts and feelings about a shared passion. Anabel Quan-Haase brings up the concept of relevant social groups and is relevant to signifying a community. Relevant social groups, “are important because of their influence on the meaning attributed with the artifact. Meaning is obtained through interacting with like minded social groups, who share a similar opinion about a given artifact and its uses”, (Quan- Haase. Pg 53. 2016). Having the hashtag really signifies a relevant social group. Fandoms are easier to find and have become more accessible due to social media. The hashtag of release the snydercut is a relevant example of finding a social group movement. The individuals associated with the social group are activists seeking change and this hashtag signifies their fandom and what they stand for. The hashtag has had a slight rebrand that will be mentioned later. Jenkins has a similar term that he uses as the hashtag represents a networked society. “Fan activism of the kinds we’ve known about for years models many effective approaches for using social media to create awareness and mobilize supporters—tactics now being adopted by even traditional charities and activist organizations as they adapt to a networked society.” (Jenkins & Shresthova. Pg 1. Section,1.8. 2012). The Snyder fandom started off as this hashtag that signified where to find this group and has ballooned into taking social media to a whole new level by creating a new level of awareness. Another term that would help understand the fandom is hashtag publics. This idea comes from, Hashtag publics, networked framing and the July 2016 coup in Turkey, (2023), by Semra Demirdis, Stefania Vicari, and Paul Reilly. They define hashtag publics as, “Emerging on Twitter in response to political events and crises…information flows through hashtags. Bloggers and activists were more likely to retweet content (key information routers), and news on Twitter was co-constructed by bloggers and activists alongside journalists,” (Demirdis, Vicari, and Reilly. 2023). To add on hashtag publics are communities discussing issues. The Snyder fans using the hashtag in their posts not only signifies their community, but it allows for this public community to interact and connect with one another and discuss their shared frustrations.
Transmedia Audiences
The Snyder fandom did not only use twitter and other popular social media websites to protest Warner Brothers. They used the ability of being transmedia audiences and lept from social media and folded their activism into the real world. Gaizka Equzkitza-Mestrautia explains the importance of transmedia strategies with relation to younger audiences. Equzkitza-Mestrautia describes transmedia features as, “fiction that bypasses the linearity of the story and encourages active consumption by the audience, so that multiple extensions emerge,” (Equzkitza-Mestratuia, G. Pg 3. 2023). The Snyder fandom bypassed just the storytelling of film and created these new extensions in order to bring their activism into the public. Members from the activist group purchased a billboard space in Times Square to announce their hashtag. More extensions emerged from their efforts such as online petitions. A physical way they showed their passion and devotion to the Snyder phenomenon is DVD and Blu-ray sales. Physical media is a dying medium and streaming, digital rentals and purchases has become the predominant way that people consume media. Sales for DVDs and Blu-rays have nose dived and major sellers like Best Buy have stopped selling them in order to prioritize more financially rewarding investments. Zack Snyder’s Justice League was announced to be released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4k months after its initial release. After a week of being on shelves, “Blu-ray Disc formats accounted for 75% of Zack Snyder’s Justice League first-week unit sales, with 38% of its total tally coming specifically from 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (meaning 37% was regular Blu-ray and 25% was DVD),” (Latchem. 2021). This boom of sales was to not only support Zack Snyder, but to grab the attention of the studio to show that the fandom was willing to support more.
Reactionary Fandom
The Snydercut movement is all based on reaction. Each concept mentioned before are all associated with direct reactions to the Zack Snyder controversy. Fan activism is based on reactions and opposing views and is created to make change. Textual poaching was a direct reaction to the fans having to dig up Snyders work and create the fake, (at the time), film of the Snyder cut. The community that was affected on a deeper level clearly cared and reacted negatively to a creator that they enjoyed being mistreated. The fandom creating the hashtag was also a direct reaction as they wanted their community to be seen and understood. Fan activism is built around reactionary fandom. All fan activists are created from being a reaction to something that they disagree with. The term reactionary fandom represents how marginalized the Snydercut fandom felt when they realized that the film was not Zack Snyder’s original vision. One of the largest ways the Snyder fanbase were trying to make changes was by review bombing. Review bombing refers to when individuals write fake negative reviews on films in order to make the film look bad or have a lower score. Each film that Warner brothers released after 2017’s Justice League was review bombed and contained the hashtag in it. This was fans taking action in order to get justice. The film Godzilla vs Kong (2021) was one of the largest examples of this, “fans are now campaigning for WB to #RestoreTheSnyderVerse and some have begun targeting Godzilla vs. Kong‘s release. The film’s IMDb page (via CBR) has a 7.5 user rating already, but a small number of Snyder fans are attempting to drop its rating by posting 1-star reviews”, (Hood, 2021). Popular websites like Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB (Internet Movie Database), and Twitter saw the large wave of fan activism striking. The fandom using digital protest methods such as review bombing and harassing Warner Brothers twitter page was bad and toxic practices by the fandom and really put a negative label associated with the group, but their reasons to them were justified, because the goal was for good ends. Their efforts, negative or positive, in the end got the studio to give the fandom their film. The film was released in March of 2021 and Snyder was able to re-edit and add more scenes to fully complete his film. A recent example of a reactionary response from the fandom was the claim that all of the members associated with the hashtag were just bots. Members from the fandom reacted to this news and were offended. They created more posts to clarify how they were real people trying to get change made and not just simply bots. Gary McGill tweeted, “I am not a bot. I actually took time during my work shift to call Kevin Tsujhara’s office line to ask for #releasethesnydercut”, (McGhill. 2023). These claims against the fandom united them in another way of showing their solidarity and legitimacy to the cause by proving that they are real human beings apart of this fandom.
Affecting a Community
The Snyder fandom has clearly been affected on a deeper level. Fan activism truly brings out the most passionate fans and shows the lengths one fandom is willing to go because of how much they care about something. The Zack Snyder fandom care about Snyder, his films and specifically his version of the famous DC comics characters. The fandom has built an effective relationship with Snyder, creating a new level of intimacy and showing their solidarity with him. As mentioned earlier, the reaction to the whole issue deeply affected fans which helped kick start the movement. Fandoms are built around the notion of fans being emotionally invested in them. A lot of the affect and sympathy towards Snyder came from the death of his daughter. Because of how deeply connected they had felt about getting his film released, came a new connection to Snyder and his family. The previous paragraph mentioned the negative and toxic practices the fans were willing to do in order for good ends. They also did a positive thing regardless of the outcome. “The #ReleasetheSnyderCut Movement, a global network of fans of the DC Comics and film director Zack Snyder, recently reached the incredible milestone of having raised $500k for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Funds raised will support AFSP’s mission through our suicide prevention education, research, advocacy, and loss support efforts,” (Robert Gebbia, CEO of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. 2021). This statement was from 2021, since then over 1.1 million dollars has been raised by the fandom. SuperC_9, (a fan from the fandom), recently posted this tweet, “Why we did it #releasethesnydercut. Why we do it. #restorethesnyderverse”, (SuperC_9. 2023), with photos relating to the current number of fundraising that the community has done. Great things can come out of fan activism. Regardless of the negative approach taken earlier, all this money was raised for a great cause and an artist’s vision was displayed and appreciated by a community.
The Current Snyder Fandom
Since the release of the film in 2021, a new movement has emerged from the fanbase. This new movement is called, #restorethesnyderverse. This movement is now to build off of the success of Zack Snyder’s Justice League film being released and continue the franchise with sequels to the film. The fans got what they wanted with the film being released and now they want to repeat their efforts and get more. “a bizarre new campaign has begun on social media: #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix”, (Wilding. 2023). This movement is a direct response to Warner Brothers announcing that they will be rebooting the entire DC films universe with a fresh start. Scrapping all previous mentions and connections to the universe that Zack Snyder had created. The fans of the snyderverse are continuing their efforts in order to repeat themselves again with their passion and devotion. The idea to sell the snyderverse to Netflix is their way of compromising with a major film studio, in order for them to back off and let them continue rebooting the universe as well as giving the Snyder fans what they want. As mentioned earlier this new hashtag is the new signifier of the Zack Snyder fandom. The fandom continues to be active on Twitter. Each time Snyder does an interview or posts anything on social media, the hashtag is used. The most recent example was Zack Snyder coming out in an interview to announce that this idea of continuing the Snyderverse was dead. “A Snyderverse fan shared a tweet stating that Snyder confirmed the end of his DC films, asking the director, “What do u mean by this?” Snyder then responded, saying, “That’s true.” Snyderverse fans had been campaigning for DC to sell the universe to Netflix, which is not happening. Snyder’s three movies in the DCEU will be all for the Snyderverse,” (Rangel. 2023). Although the Snyderverse has come to an end, the fandom is still active and passionate about getting more films made. The community also continues to support Zack Snyder and every film he makes. His most recent films still contain reviews with the hashtag restore the Snydervese.
Conclusion
The power of fan activism truly shows how devoted and passionate fans can become when an issue arises that they are opposed to. The Snyder fandom has demonstrated a modern example of fan activism utilizing modern practices such as hashtags to signify their community and spread awareness of their issue as well as becoming a transmedia audience and utilizing their strengths in other mediums to show their support. Fan activism is built off of reaction to an issue that has deeply affected a community. The Snyder fandom ‘s reaction of being displeased with the circumstances showed their drive to create the hashtag to demonstrate what they wanted to see. The purpose of this paper was to show what a modern fan activism movement could accomplish with modern resources and getting a film released. This fandom stuck to their demands and their passion and determination helped them achieve and satisfy their goals of getting the film released, while also helping other communities and charities in the process.
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