Heffernan calls it like she sees it

Late, I know, but still worth the pop. In last Sunday's 'The Medium', Virginia Heffernan, wrote a killer column entitled "Art in the Age of Franchising".

I'll quote briefly:

"An author’s work can no longer exist in a vacuum, independent of hardy online extensions...Artists must now embrace the cultural theorists’ beloved model of the rhizome and think of their work as a horizontal stem for numberless roots and shoots — as many entry and exit points as fans can devise.

This is an enormous social shift that coincides with the changeover from analog to digital modes of communication, the rise of the Internet and the new raucousness of fans. It’s a mistake to see this imperative to branch out as a simple coarsening of culture. In fact, rhizome art is both lower-brow (“American Idol,” Derek Waters’s “Drunk History”) and more avant-garde (“Battlestar Galactica,” Ryan Trecartin’s “I-Be Area”) than linear, author-controlled narrative, which takes its cues from the middle-class form of the novel."

So you aren't just retrograde if you aren't thinking interactively when it comes to storytelling - you are bourgeoise. I'm not saying - I'm just saying.