Fan Funded. Commercialization or “Authentic” Culture?

When multibillion dollar movie studios create a movie, they measure its success through the number of ticket sales in theaters. Often, they hedge their bets on safe investments like popular book series which were in turn passed through the gate keeping process of the publishing industry and evaluated for profitability.

Adorno describes the movie and radio industries as simply pretending to be art since mass culture acts as a monopoly (Adorno 1) When the show production process plays out in reverse, with fans fully funding a show prior to its creation, it complicates the line between the cultural industry and authenticity.

When the popular YouTube series “Critical Role” tried to pitch their Dungeons and Dragons gameplay to be made into an animated series, no studios were willing to take them on. This reinforces how the people “right at the top” (PowerPoint Slide 5) are the ones who initially decide what is allowed to be even considered for mass consumption for the masses. In turn, CR decided to get their series fan funded, setting a Kickstarter goal of $750,000. They proceeded to fund it within a few hours, closing in at $11,385,449 by the campaign's conclusion.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/critical-role-the-legend-of-vox-machina-animated-s

Unlike corporate movie studios that can be interpreted as one of the pillars of the “culture industry” because they solely seek to “search for profits”, Critical Role’s show is funded by fans acting as investors with the goal not being astronomical profit, but the sake of the art (Storey 5).

With the newsworthy popularity of their 2019 Kickstarter campaign, this was no doubt fuel for film studios to push forward a cinema release of a 2023 Dungeons and Dragon movie. For reference the previous DnD theater release was around twenty-three years ago. Hall describes cultural change as when a cultural form or practice is "actively pushed aside" for something else (Hall 6). DnD was initially a part of the culture that was pushed aside, but now it has experienced a revival.

With Critical Role going from having a niche YouTube presence to having a show presented on Amazon Prime, Marcuse might argue that it has lost its authenticity by joining “the established order” through its “reproduction and display on a massive scale” (Marcuse, 1968)

Do you think that fan funded media products can be regarded as “authentic” art? What if they sign an exclusive contract with a streaming service that in turn makes fan backers pay an additional fee to view the product they helped fund?