The adolescense of anime cons
Feb. 1st, 2011 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootWell, the world hasn't ended in ice, but we have a thick enough sheet that the university is closed and I don't have to go in. So instead let me talk about cons.
Anime cons seem to be at an awkward stage of development. It's a hard one to get past. But eventually it really does become necessary to give panels that are more than "this source/activity for beginners/newcomers". Anime cons, in general, have not made this leap, and I am getting bored out of my mind.
Maybe I was spoiled by sf cons, which were already a fairly mature form by the time I encountered them. There are always "squee about this" panels, but there were also "how does X real technology/lifestyle/practice relate to the fiction versions" and "politics/sociology of X corner of fan life" and "X theme through the years/sources". There was an assumption that we are collectively engaged in a lot of different forms of activity, so there were workshops and panels on fic and filk and costuming and organizing and art and acting. There was a wide variety of stuff to buy, little of it theme or costume related but much of it interesting in its own right. The art auctions featured solid, professional work alongside the beginners.
Anime cons have almost none of this, at least the Midwest ones. If you're lucky, you might find three panels out of sixty that are taking even a mildly thoughtful look at what we're reading/watching/doing; everything else is unstructured intro-level information. What fic track there used to be has fallen badly by the wayside, vidding also. The only form of creativity that gets much time any more is costuming. There is a rising "cultural" track, but I don't generally consider that a credit because some white chick who maybe visited Japan once or twice and read the Liza Dalby book holding forth about the rules of how to wear a kimono properly skeeves me out just about as badly as seeing people wandering around in the polyester lingerie version of a kimono which are sold with the word "geisha" thrown gratuitously into the product description; it's all appropriation of iconic rituals out of context. There are certainly no panels on how to go about organizing, which quite likely explains a few things. The swag has gotten cheap, sleazy, or both, the art is just barely starting to move away from bad fanart and toward good original work, and the commercial industry's desperately heavy-handed (not to mention usurious) approach to fansubs has killed any possibility of the video track showing a taste of the hot new titles.
Most of all, though least tangibly, at sf cons I got a sense of "protecting our own". It's not a monolithic population by any means; there are abuses, there are predators, there are people who do think the fandom is monolithic and therefore stomp on other people's feet. But if a total stranger overhears, in the hall at an sf con, that my cat just died, she's more likely than not to ask if I need a hug, and to dispense a very comforting one, and possibly a handkerchief. At recent anime cons, on the other hand, I've gotten a sense of "high school", of competition and judgment and prickliness.
So I'm going back. Next year? I'm not doing Ohayocon or Youmacon. I'm doing ConFusion, which I knew from days of yore. Maybe anime cons will grow up a bit if we just give them another five years or so.
Anime cons seem to be at an awkward stage of development. It's a hard one to get past. But eventually it really does become necessary to give panels that are more than "this source/activity for beginners/newcomers". Anime cons, in general, have not made this leap, and I am getting bored out of my mind.
Maybe I was spoiled by sf cons, which were already a fairly mature form by the time I encountered them. There are always "squee about this" panels, but there were also "how does X real technology/lifestyle/practice relate to the fiction versions" and "politics/sociology of X corner of fan life" and "X theme through the years/sources". There was an assumption that we are collectively engaged in a lot of different forms of activity, so there were workshops and panels on fic and filk and costuming and organizing and art and acting. There was a wide variety of stuff to buy, little of it theme or costume related but much of it interesting in its own right. The art auctions featured solid, professional work alongside the beginners.
Anime cons have almost none of this, at least the Midwest ones. If you're lucky, you might find three panels out of sixty that are taking even a mildly thoughtful look at what we're reading/watching/doing; everything else is unstructured intro-level information. What fic track there used to be has fallen badly by the wayside, vidding also. The only form of creativity that gets much time any more is costuming. There is a rising "cultural" track, but I don't generally consider that a credit because some white chick who maybe visited Japan once or twice and read the Liza Dalby book holding forth about the rules of how to wear a kimono properly skeeves me out just about as badly as seeing people wandering around in the polyester lingerie version of a kimono which are sold with the word "geisha" thrown gratuitously into the product description; it's all appropriation of iconic rituals out of context. There are certainly no panels on how to go about organizing, which quite likely explains a few things. The swag has gotten cheap, sleazy, or both, the art is just barely starting to move away from bad fanart and toward good original work, and the commercial industry's desperately heavy-handed (not to mention usurious) approach to fansubs has killed any possibility of the video track showing a taste of the hot new titles.
Most of all, though least tangibly, at sf cons I got a sense of "protecting our own". It's not a monolithic population by any means; there are abuses, there are predators, there are people who do think the fandom is monolithic and therefore stomp on other people's feet. But if a total stranger overhears, in the hall at an sf con, that my cat just died, she's more likely than not to ask if I need a hug, and to dispense a very comforting one, and possibly a handkerchief. At recent anime cons, on the other hand, I've gotten a sense of "high school", of competition and judgment and prickliness.
So I'm going back. Next year? I'm not doing Ohayocon or Youmacon. I'm doing ConFusion, which I knew from days of yore. Maybe anime cons will grow up a bit if we just give them another five years or so.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 08:43 pm (UTC)I'm sure it makes arranging and scheduling the panels into absolute hell, to try and make them consecutive, but at the same time... it's worth it, as a con-goer. To first, know that not all panels are intro-only. Second, to be able to suss one's experience and skip the panels that are too low (or too high!) and third, to be able to attend a series of clearly-designated panels and come away by the end of the weekend with a helluva lot more experience than you had going in.
It's also possible that for some cons -- like the monster cons (Otakon and AX, really) -- there are simply too many panels in too many different directions for them to see reason to introduce such a system. As I understand it, Akon had this in place from the very beginning, so it's not a shift in Akon's culture.
But then again, Akon is also the only con I've ever attended where half the staff is within a decade of my age (and I'm not exactly falling off the turnip truck as we speak), and a good part of the rest of the staff are parents. And not all of them are parents of teenies, either -- we're talking parents getting up to my mother's age. (I asked one woman if she was a fan, and she said, "No, I volunteered to help when my son was in high school, and it was so much fun I've done it every summer since." I asked how long it'd been, and she just smiled and said, "well, I'm a grandmother now." Bwah.)
A'course, it may also be the presence of adult-staff (as in, true adults) that make Akon also such a pleasant experience, and one that emphasizes service like differentiated panels. At Akon, if you ask staff a question, if the person doesn't know, the response is: "Hold on, I can call someone and ask." And then they do! And then they give you an answer! I'd find my reaction hysterical, if it weren't for the fact that so many other cons taught me to expect no answer at all.
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Date: 2011-02-01 08:49 pm (UTC)I expect you're very right that the age of the staff has something significant to do with this.
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Date: 2011-02-01 09:23 pm (UTC)(Every year I attended, there were also panels like, "why cosplay? how does one cosplay? ... an introduction for anyone who wants to know why kids insist on leaving the house dressed like that" or something similar. The kinds of panel that isn't for a newcomer, but someone who just wants to understand the fascination; I saw panels like that on manga, cosplay, music videos, and even various genres of anime. I guess you could call them "outsider appreciation" panels. They're perfect for parents and friends of fans.)
The strange thing is... Akon is also the only all-hours cons I've attended. All other cons, the convention center or hotel shuts down, and the kids are left either hanging in the hotel lobby (and in Illinois, this meant smoking enough to make even the non-smoking rooms reek, and it's been years since I've been anywhere I couldn't see the ceiling for all the smoke, what the hell, over)... or they're out on the sidewalk, getting in the way. At Akon, the panels go on until midnight, and the convention center stays open ALL NIGHT LONG. The artists' area is outside of registration, so you don't even have to be registered to visit the artists, and the artists stay as long as they like. Some years, the artists I knew were still there at 2am.
In a way, it struck me as bizarre -- wouldn't you want the kids to go to sleep, now? But in another way, it's part of the sanity. Keep them in the main convention area where they can continue to cause a ruckus all they want, instead of throwing private parties in the hotel and keeping non-con guests awake -- or worse, creating situations of alcohol + bad decisions that could lead into shit like date rapes, which I have heard of happening, at other cons. The freedom to hang out in the convention center means you can continue to visit with friends rather than run all over the hotel.
In fact, it seems as though anyone of their mid-twenties or older goes back to the hotel rooms, maybe has a few drinks with friends, and then off to sleep. Nice and peaceful. You could even say Akon has a clear culture that noise stays in the convention center, and the hotel is for quiet. (I even recall one hotel staffer mentioning that he'd rousted one rare noisy hotel room, and told them to take everything over to the convention center -- at 4am! -- where they could make all the noise they wanted.)
The other thing about the convention center being open is that kids have no reason to go haring off elsewhere in the city, and while it's not an unsafe-unsafe part of Dallas, no big city is truly safe. Letting them have the run of the center means you have less to worry about kids finding something else to do.
(Plus, right nearby is a small shopping mall with an ice skating rink: as in, a block from the con. I cannot count how many times I've gone down there to grab lunch and seen at least six cosplayers making absolute fools of themselves on the ice... although the combined force of the 'awwww' the year one of the cosplayers on ice was a six-year-old Inuyasha? I think the sheer cuteness factor could've powered half the city.)
no subject
Date: 2011-07-21 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 10:25 pm (UTC)Actually the most grown up con I've been to was the HP Prophecy07 in Toronto - and that's slightly concerning, given the source material.
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Date: 2011-02-01 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 06:21 am (UTC)The most recent con I went to was a couple years back; that was WorldCon, and there was definitely a lot of analytical/thinky/discussion-type panels there! So many I couldn't even get to all the ones I wanted to sit in on. :D
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Date: 2011-02-02 04:47 pm (UTC)I swear there used to be a bit more diversity at anime cons, but then, for some reason, a lot of them got stuck in this nothing-but-intro rut.
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Date: 2011-02-02 07:32 am (UTC)I know that SMASH! here does have on the forums/websites ways to suggest cons and one of the things that they did was research on overseas/non-anime cons for new things to introduce to Australia [as opposed to doing whatever the competition did, which was not much /biased].
For art panels in particular I think SMASH! does particularly well, having imported artists from overseas to host panels etc 2008 for example, so if you wanted to see more art panels for a higher level, I think maybe you could point them that direction for ideas.
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Date: 2011-02-02 04:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 07:29 am (UTC)On the other hand it strikes me as profoundly dumb, because a person who's mastered beginner and wants to see further isn't necessarily going to be capable of hosting/teaching (other than beginner... but they are sick of beginner so...)
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Date: 2011-02-02 02:22 pm (UTC)One of my coworkers wants to chime in that Convergence, which is the general sci fi/anime con around the twin cities has a pretty good spread of levels of material.
Do you think it's something to do with the ages? I've noticed a very distinct cycling in anime cons, where suddenly a con will be full of very "young" people again, and older people cycle out or at least away from cons.
I don't see the lack of "protecting our own", but I'm also inured within the staff. Most of the people I interact with are staff or volunteers, and there is a VERY distinct culture there. I've shown up at other conventions and been accepted into their staff-culture, at least provisionally, because I am staff at my convention and we have mutual friends. Also probably because I'm generally offering to help.
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Date: 2011-02-02 04:57 pm (UTC)I do think age probably ties in, and I'm certainly seeing mostly high school and college age at the big cons. I don't know if the older fen have abandoned ship or just found somewhere else. *sighs*
*laughs* Convergence is a little far for us, but I'll keep it in mind if we're up that way.
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Date: 2011-02-02 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 05:12 pm (UTC)I figure I've got 11 months to come up with witty things to say at opening ceremonies, but I suspect I'll probably just end up standing there and picking on Pat Rothfuss :-)
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Date: 2011-02-02 05:16 pm (UTC)Yeah, I noticed that there's a Melting Pot just down the road, and figured, since Mariott are bums about giving people microwaves or fridges, that should be good for dinner at least one night--but only if we have enough people to eat everything!
(I'm /almost/ contemplating getting rooms at the Drury Inn instead, but being outside the hotel always makes things more awkward.)
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Date: 2011-02-03 06:45 pm (UTC)Momocon offers limited things in regards to what can be sold or worn there. (Basically, everything has to be PG-13 or lower) but it has dones of panels on industry related things, how to's (beyond the usual cosplay), and I think there may have been some outside type guides. I'd say they're still at an intro level but varied at least. It's a little too PG-13 for me though.
AWA definitely falls into being fail at panels. I can't even remember what panels were there the last time I was there. As for art, I believe they had a rule in the artist alley that a certain percent of an artist's work had to be original (I think it was 50%?), no matter what the medium. The con does have midnight activities, but they're for adults only, so there's still a bunch of kids just standing around doing nothing. The atmosphere there doesn't have that "protect our own" to me. It really does have that high school competition feel to it. After cosplaying once at one, I thought about never cosplaying to AWA again. Aside from people touching my costume without even asking me first (or even saying hello), there were people who'd ask me how much it cost for my costume and then saying "OMG you paid that much for that?!", and other people, cosplaying as character from the sane series, after asking me if I was a certain character who then say "you're not acting like this character enough. You're doing it wrong!" x-x I've seen a lot of stealing in the Dealer's Room too. And sellers screwing over people buying by switching out an item for a cheaper, similar item and rushing the customer off before they notice. I've seen a lot of that. Since there were a lot of kids, there were a lot of parents in shock at a lot of things and ranting about how "weird" everything is. I really wish there were some outsider type panels for parents.
I really wish there was a more mature attitude at cons here. I've considered saving up my money and just going to Dragon Con (sf con) instead.
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Date: 2011-02-03 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 09:01 pm (UTC)Cosplayers particularly seem to be AWFUL about the "high school" backbiting & competition (& body-hate & other creepy things...).
(Also, I feel like anime cons trend younger than sf/f cons in general, & as I get older I am less comfortable in crowds that average 10 years younger than me, alas.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 09:16 pm (UTC)