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: 2011-02-02 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.
no subject
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...)