Fan Service

Fan service is a common concept when it comes to media. In most Japanese anime there's usually that one female character that is only made to please the fanbase, "servicing" the fans. While characters such as Yoko from Gurren Lagann and Nami from One Piece are considered to have fan service-y characteristics (usually in the form of over-sized body parts) they contribute heavily to the plot and add something to the narrative, something extra.

While fan service is a common concept in Eastern media, how often do we see it in our Western industry? If you take it at face value, then the answer is obviously yes. Every day, we use sex to sell products with models on our televisions advertising how good their beer tastes or ads on our phones showing us how many people from the opposite sex their perfume attracts. The marketing world is a money-making machine built on showing people what they want, exploiting their material and immaterial goals. But fan service is more than that, it isn't simply using attractive bodies to catch people's eyes, it's about taking a story and adding onto it, giving viewers unrelated content to the narrative on screen.

In film and TV we do the exact same thing. Hiring actors and actresses to portray the funny friend in that sitcom or the lead in a spy movie doesn't just come from their acting ability, but also their looks. By giving the audience more enticing visuals you are subconsciously attracting people to sit down and watch your show or film. You can see this in the Transformers franchise, every James Bond movie, and essentially any popcorn action movie in existence but it doesn't just end there. Actors are constantly chosen for their sex appeal as it gives people more reasons to watch a movie, the same way actors can be chosen for certain productions simply due to their stardom, because names always attract ticket sales.

So putting beautiful people in movies just because of their looks is considered to be fan service, but could it mean more than that? As I said before, the whole concept is including "stuff" into your stories that doesn't need to be there only to fill the seats or boost your numbers, but the general consensus is that "stuff" ends with abs and chests. You could expand and take the idea to another level, broadening its meaning. Maybe too many special effects are added, overloading the viewer; or a certain artist is used in the soundtrack, when their style might contradict the overall tone.

Bohemian Rhapsody has been nominated for 5 Oscars including Best Picture, which I find odd as I feel that as whole Bohemian Rhapsody is one big fan service. The movie is definitely entertaining and beautiful to look at but script-wise, it is quite bland and fast-paced. The characters are 2 dimensional and don't have much depth and while the movie takes you on a journey, it is a very linear one that shows a lot of moments that could have been cut to focus on the better aspects of their story as a band. It felt like a lot of these moments were included just to please the audience, covering up a cliché and simple narrative with popular Queen songs.

The movie is an artistic approach to Queen's history sometimes taking liberties which do not affect the quality of the movie, but the reason these liberties were taken were just to make the story more digestible. While this isn't new to the movie world (Sully fabricates most of the plot points to create a better narrative), it felt that these changes were made to appease an audience that wanted nothing more than a Queen's Greatest Hits: The Movie. Rami Malek's acting was phenomenal and deserves his nomination for Best Actor but the character he portrayed was 2 dimensional, the Freddie Mercury we wanted to see. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I don't view it as Best Picture material, but just as another popcorn movie.