Stingy corporate suits in skyscraper cubicles might control the content of mainstream television, but in cyberspace, it's the geeks who run the agenda. This weekend, their queen was officially crowned. Saturday marked the first celebration of The Streamy Awards, a ceremony honoring online video series of three episodes or more. While the online broadcast of the show started nearly two hours later than originally advertised, once the party got underway, it was a parade of subculture and the Web celebrities who Felicia Day, the most winning player of the night, categorized as formerly square pegs "trying to fit into the round hole of Hollywood."
The show was a liberating vision of a sect of entertainers who have successfully undermined the corporate machine of traditional television and created notable products of artistic innovation through their own mastery of social media. While the YouTube and Yahoo video awards have previously saluted individual video productions under categories carrying titles such as "Adorable" and "Inspirational," the framing of the various Streamys more closely mirrors the respect and formatting of the Golden Globes or the Emmys than the tongue-in-cheek and viewer-decided selection process of its predecessors.
The ingenuity and care that go into the creation of the astounding number of series honored Saturday night reflects the cunning of underground filmmaking, as well as the appeal to audience and viral approval that is so essential for the rapid spreading of online phenomena. Two series, however, "The Guild" and "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," dominated the evening over their expansive pool of competitors, taking home Best Comedy Web Series and Audience Choice, respectively. So much has been written about the Joss Whedon creation "Dr. Horrible" that I'll take the chance to discuss the equally honorable independent series created by "Horrible" co-star, Felicia Day.
"The Guild" follows a group, or as "World of Warcraft" players would recognize them, a "guild," in their socially awkward encounters as they come to terms with a world outside their computer screen. The first season of "The Guild" was funded almost entirely through PayPal donations by visitors to the show's Web site and was only the prelude to how devoted and powerful its fan base has become.
The show caters to a significant sector of society that has not previously been given a voice in the traditional mainstream media. The central characters are not only gamers that show they have more layers than originally assumed to by the rest of the world, but they are also both racially and physically diverse. "The Guild" set the standard that Web video series need not cater to the leading men and ladies of society, but rather to their more believably down-to-earth counterparts, in all their extraordinary ordinariness.
While "The Guild's" success at The Streamy Awards in the categories of Best Comedy Web Series, Best Ensemble and Best Actress in a Comedy Series for Felicia Day is a testament to its wit and resonance with gamers, several other series have capitalized upon the otherwise unrepresented market of online role playing game crowd, including "Project Lore," which took home a Streamy for Best Web Series Host. The show features a group of talented "World of Warcraft" playing men who humorously battle their way through some of the better-known dungeons in the online game. While I can appreciate the gamer-based humor in both of these series, the nature of the content often leads to overly raunchy and drawn out "male-based" humor.
It could be said that the most significant aspect of "The Guild" is not merely its revolutionary subject matter, but the fact that it is written by and stars a powerful female gamer/Web maven who has consistently striven to maintain complete creative control and rights over her work. Ultimately, however, even Day acknowledged in one of her many acceptance speeches for "The Guild" that "a little bit of it is owned by every single person who linked or clicked it to somebody." If the age of the channel flipper is nearing its apocalypse and the back button and Google search will dictate video entertainment, I can think of no more ingenious leaders than Day and her fellow artisans in attendance Saturday night to usher us into a new age of user-created-and-sponsored media.
You can reach this columnist at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
