Fascinating stuff. I'm not really sure how I feel about it, I mean, other than to say yeah of course he's right. And as much as I value the convention experience, I don't think it's served to sell a single story for me. And don't get me mumbling about the workshop system. I'm a goddamn heretic.
I was doing well with it until this bit, apologies for the extensive quote:
The atmosphere of The Blob has changed in the twenty-five years I've been around. The scandal at the major award event the year before last when a much-honored famous writer on the podium grabbed the person of another famous much-honored writer was all about that. It was the dirty, guy-centered, commercial, legendary past on exhibition in front of an audience used to environments where sexual harassment brings about official reprimands and stints in compulsory re-education classes.
That viewpoint is one I share. But in my youth I internalized a narrative of the writer's life reminiscent of the one that grips the scary photographers, bare survivors of the Summer of Love and birth of punk, in Elizabeth Hand's novel Generation Loss.
These are the artists who came of age struggling to unlock a vision and found something that froze them, who touched glory and saw the truth out the corner of their eye once, maybe even twice, and maybe never again.
I do believe it is just possible to embrace this self-adoring narrative of the writer's life that includes the struggle to unlock etc. and the lust for glory and truth, but without wishing to have your body be public property. I am not really sure what is up with the transitions in these few paragraphs, how basic respect for women is at odds with vanished dirty glamour, or how the current generation's expectation of said respect ties into the whole convention-workshop-Blob business.
You wrote: "I am not really sure what is up with the transitions in these few paragraphs, how basic respect for women is at odds with vanished dirty glamour..."
Women and, lest we forget, men have an absolute right to have their bodies respected. What I was pointing out was how recent and how "dirty" was the glamour of the genre.
Well, I took "dirty" to have more aesthetic than ethical connotations, so I may have misunderstood your drift. The other thing is that when you said an audience used to environments where sexual harassment brings about official reprimands and stints in compulsory re-education classes --I think that it was more a case of one insult too many--it was the final straw for women (and men) who had been tolerating stuff like that all their lives, not the astonished horror of people who'd never seen or experienced anything like it (because really, who hasn't?)
But I was not there and got all my outrage second-hand from the internets, so I shouldn't argue the point too hard. Thanks for responding.
Hm, that's not really how I read the essay; nor do I hate cons, though as Rick is expressing there are some things going on at cons that I feel pretty disconnected from. I think what resonated for me was how going to a con is an intense social experience and, simultaneously, a sort of an anthropological survey; the function of being a gathering of (mostly) introverted people working in a solitary profession.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-01 09:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-02 03:29 am (UTC)The atmosphere of The Blob has changed in the twenty-five years I've been around. The scandal at the major award event the year before last when a much-honored famous writer on the podium grabbed the person of another famous much-honored writer was all about that. It was the dirty, guy-centered, commercial, legendary past on exhibition in front of an audience used to environments where sexual harassment brings about official reprimands and stints in compulsory re-education classes.
That viewpoint is one I share. But in my youth I internalized a narrative of the writer's life reminiscent of the one that grips the scary photographers, bare survivors of the Summer of Love and birth of punk, in Elizabeth Hand's novel Generation Loss.
These are the artists who came of age struggling to unlock a vision and found something that froze them, who touched glory and saw the truth out the corner of their eye once, maybe even twice, and maybe never again.
I do believe it is just possible to embrace this self-adoring narrative of the writer's life that includes the struggle to unlock etc. and the lust for glory and truth, but without wishing to have your body be public property. I am not really sure what is up with the transitions in these few paragraphs, how basic respect for women is at odds with vanished dirty glamour, or how the current generation's expectation of said respect ties into the whole convention-workshop-Blob business.
Respect
Date: 2008-02-02 04:37 am (UTC)Women and, lest we forget, men have an absolute right to have their bodies respected. What I was pointing out was how recent and how "dirty" was the glamour of the genre.
Rick Bowes
Re: Respect
Date: 2008-02-02 04:53 am (UTC)But I was not there and got all my outrage second-hand from the internets, so I shouldn't argue the point too hard. Thanks for responding.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-02 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-03 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-03 05:05 pm (UTC)