special forks for eating our own

[cimorene]

My childhood prejudices, absorbed via my parents' attitudes and social identity within the con-going sf genre community, have caused conflicts with Wax over the years, with my former bias against media~ sf and thereby Buffy (because the people at cons knowing nothing of sf except Buffy or the X-files were even more annoying than the people with no interest beyond Star Trek) and more recently the bias against comics. Comics are like the other geek pastime, more or less the same feeling as anime inspires.

I guess the feeling I absorbed through the literary sf community, or maybe just through my Dad and Mom, I'm not sure, is that people interested in media but not literary sf, or anime but not sf, or comics but not sf, or even horror but not sf, are sf dilettantes. And at the other end of the dilettante spectrum, of course, are the people who feed on the results of genre culture and creativity, consume our media but reject our identity and our very ideals: "But why go to a con? Those people are weird," and that reaction to any sort of fannishness - that by its dedication and enthusiasm it's somehow worthy of scorn or deviant - is small-minded and insulting and completely misses the point, because genre culture embraces difference and "deviance", welcomes the couples walking around in BDSM gear and the SCAers and cosplayers who stay in character the whole time and ultimately, the fans of whatever part of sf who want to go there, as long as they've paid their $5 to $100-something bucks (depending on the size of the con) and want to share the enthusiasm.

That's what's great at a con. There are costumes and jewelry alongside rare book dealers and shops with nothing but Star Trek or Buffy memorabilia and whole roomsful of anime. There are toddlers and children running around in and out of costume and teenage goths and punks at night and old people and fat people and nutty weapons enthusiasts and anarchists and free beer and creeps who think that breasts are somehow "open source" and smelly weirdos sleeping on the floor, and in the end, what's the use of the Geek Hierarchy, of looking down on the other geeks? An X-files dilettante may be ignorant of the history of the genre and tropes informing their show, but they're just as hungry for a place to satisfy their fannishness, and just as "weird" to mundane eyes, as a dedicated literary sf geek. And you can always find someone else to look down on you, if you're looking for them, no matter how much you know. Sometimes I think we absorb external society's contempt for the "weird" and shunt it off onto other related subcultures in an attempt to hide our own feelings of internalised censure from ourselves. I find this explanation more charitable than the idea that so many are actually short-sighted enough to fail to see the similarities between their own fannishness and other people's.

Other times I wonder if it's defensiveness, like the within-genre contempt (from so many genres) for Literature, which I'm firmly convinced is almost entirely caused by the "literary" contempt for genre which attempts to claim the best of genre as its own (because it's too good to be genre!). I've never gotten over my idiotic 10th grade English teacher telling me that Fahrenheit 451 wasn't science fiction, it was just "a speculative futuristic social commentary". When I more politely enquired what, then, she thought science fiction was if not that, she said "aliens and spaceships". I pointed out that Bradbury was a lifelong con-going member of the genre community, and she was shocked and thanked me for enlightening her. -_____- At least she didn't refuse to believe me.

Comments

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think we absorb external society's contempt for the "weird" and shunt it off onto other related subcultures in an attempt to hide our own feelings of internalised censure from ourselves.

i think this is actually true to many of the things we tend to call "weird", regardless of subculture.

very eloquent post.