davemerrill

In the comments of the last post Daryl Surat wisely opined:

Anime cons broaden to include tangentially-related interests so they can get more attendees, so the con can happen another year in perhaps a bigger venue which costs more, so they broaden to include tangentially-related interests, so they can get more attendees etc.

If you ever express dismay about this spiraling cycle of events, you're accused of being like those curmudgeons at the literary SF conventions who are fine and dandy with everything dying out for the sake of fandom purity or whatever those people are about. But surely there must be a reasonable midpoint. Unless you're trying to get rich by the power of running fan conventions (note: this is ill-advised) such that the main goal of running your event is to get ANYONE to buy a ticket, I think that it's more worthwhile to take measures to increase fan interest in your core fan activity [x] by promoting said activity instead of resigning oneself to the notion that "well, all the [x] fans are already here! May as well bring in the polyamorism/zombie apocalypse/Klingon vampire set, since some of them sorta like [x] too!"

This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I was hesitant to devote a LJ post to it; I go to so few anime cons these days that I don't have a good enough representational sample to go by. But Surat - Surat goes to a lot of anime cons. And to be fair, last year I went to the one in Detroit. And what I saw there, and what I hear from other shows, is that anime conventions are moving away from anime. Expo still has a big anime presence, Otakon continues to get good anime guests and have good anime programming. But a lot of the conventions out there... not so much. Look at A-Kon's guest list for 2009 and the anime guests are thin on the ground. Look at their programming. Look at the programming at most anime cons. How much of it is based on Japanese cartoons, and how much of it is con-culture rituals?

When I say 'con culture'... what I mean is the culture that comes from fan conventions. Events that only exist at conventions, for conventions, by conventions. The marginal stuff that started off as something you do in between actual topical events that involve what the convention's actually supposed to be about. Dances. Masquerades. Game shows. Photo shoots. Comedy improv. Harry Potter-themed puppet shows. Bands. All these things are well and good, but they are TANGENTIAL to what your anime convention is SUPPOSED to be about, which is ANIME.

So what's wrong with con culture? It's incestuous, self-perpetuating, and leads to fandom becoming a big in-jokey circle jerk of insiders. It means hotels full of the same 1000 people who go to every convention on "the circuit" and fill up the lobby couches with their con-suite-fed bulk, spinning endless yarns about conventions they went to previously. Conventions for the sake of conventions so you can throw room parties to promote other conventions the main activity at which is promoting other conventions. It's guests who are guests because they've been guests at conventions, and 'fan guests of honor" who have that status because they've been to a lot of conventions. It's giving the stink-eye to "mundanes" (people who walk in off the street who might possibly want to learn more about these Japanese cartoons). It's panels about how to run panels at conventions. It, in short, has its collective head up its collective ass.

Con culture is a closed-system loop that accomplishes nothing, educates nobody, and exists for its own sake. It's why literary and SF conventions are dying. It is fandom's anti-life equation.

Because if I wanted an esoteric secret society closed to outsiders I'd join the Masons (and don't think I haven't been asked). I believe Japanese cartoons are appealing to EVERYBODY. I think these things should be aimed squarely at people outside the Fan Lifestyle - at the kid who never knew there were other people obsessed with anime, the woman who wrote fanfic or drew fan art thinking she was the only one, the guy who lives way out in the middle of nowhere and only has one weekend a year to enjoy the things in the company of fellow fans. I meet those people every year, and it's always a reminder of why we do it.

The con-culture lifers who have been to hundreds of cons and are 'bored' with anime - I'll let you in on a little secret. THEY'RE GONNA COME TO YOUR CONVENTION ANYWAY, no matter what you do. So you don't have to bend over backwards to please them.

Maybe I'm just being pedantic about this, but it irritates me to spend years building up a convention devoted to Japanese cartoons and have our "brand" diluted by bandwagon-jumpers hoping to catch a ride. To waste time and space and effort on events that should be the "dessert", while the "main course" is underfunded or ignored.

Anime cons were started by anime fans who spent their blood and sweat and cash on Japanese cartoons. It's that love for anime that keeps people on staff. How do you think these people feel when it starts to look like Japanese cartoons are taking a back seat? They don't feel good.

So. Being firm about having anime programming at anime cons; I don't see that as being curmudgeonly. I see it as sticking to our mission plan. I see it as placing emphasis on what got us into fandom in the first place, and sharing it with others. It's being inclusive of people who might like anime but don't know anything about con culture.

When we started AWA there were lots of media SF conventions that were attended by the same people, had more or less the same events, and had built up their little con culture of toastmasters and party battles. Those conventions are all gone now because they mutated into con-culture-centric gatherings that had no appeal to non-lifers. On the other hand, AWA started with a specific purpose and a goal to be accessible to all, to keep anime from becoming just another Star Trek for people to build a private fiefdom around, to keep it from being just another fandom convention with the same Rocky Horror screenings and Klingon death ceremonies.

But there is pressure from within and without to add the non-anime programming and to get AWA more "in line" with other conventions. The pressure has always been there and will probably always be there and I hope that AWA always resists it.

Because what happens if, for example, if AWA mutates into "Generic Fantasy Convention With The Word Anime In Its Name" - you get a lot of con-culture attendees who drive away the anime fans and the newcomers. Eventually the con-culture fans move on with their lives and quit attending. The staff wakes up one morning and their attendance is a half or a quarter of what it used to be. The convention winds up being staffed by people who are only working the convention because it's a convention and you gotta work conventions! And they look at each other and ask why they're wasting their time on this nonsense.

I saw it happen to the Atlanta Fantasy Fair; it lost its focus and wasted time, money, the efforts of staff, and the goodwill of the Atlanta community, and when it went away nobody shed a tear. Losing focus is bad for just about any fan convention, but for AWA it's particularly troubling, for two reasons: Dragoncon and Sci-Fi Summer. Dragoncon is a all-embracing fan convention that bends over backwards to provide programming for any and all fandoms. Competing with it is foolish and counterproductive. Sci-Fi Summer is a much smaller show that is all about the con culture, and if they could ever get off their can and advertise their convention they might actually start to get some traction as a relaxing niche event. Both of those shows are and should be the destinations for Atlanta's con-culture lifestylers- for the party patrols, for the swingers in elf ears, for the costumers who costume just to costume, for the people who wish the RenFaire would never end.

AWA - or any convention that purports to be an "anime con" - should be the destination for people interested in enjoying and celebrating Japanese animation, and everything else can take care of itself.

I've had this discussion before with others, and the response I sometimes get is that anime conventions should follow the wishes of the attendees - if they want more J-Rock or more Cosplay Chess or Twilight readings or 24-hour raves or more video games, then the anime con should just say "yes SIR!" and get with the con-culture program. This is of course nonsense. If we had "listened to the attendees" we never would have started anime conventions to begin with. In the early days anime was about as unfashionable as you could possibly get in the fandom world. There would not be any anime conventions if we'd followed the herd. In fact I would venture to say that if you follow the herd, the view never changes.

What SHOULD anime cons do? They should be ANIME CONS. They should screen Japanese cartoons and have panel discussions about anime and have guests who work in the anime industry. Dealers should be selling anime stuff. Costume contests should be for anime character costumes. It should be all about the Japanese cartoons. People who are interested in things unrelated to Japanese cartoons should start their own conventions or their own clubs or their own meetups or whatever.

It's not rocket science; it's just sticking to what you know and what you like. It's refusing to be pushed around by people too lazy to start their own thing. It's cartoons, people.

EDITED TO ADD: Forgot to add this link:
http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/cbg182.html

In case you think it's only anime cons that suffer from lack of focus, check out what Chuck Rozanski has to say about how San Diego Comic Con treats its comics dealers. It ain't pretty.