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branchandroot) wrote2011-02-01 11:49 am
branchandroot) wrote2011-02-01 11:49 am
The adolescense of anime cons
Well, 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
I expect you're very right that the age of the staff has something significant to do with this.
no subject
(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.)