Chicks on Anime
Page 3
by B. Dong, C. Brienza, R. Sevakis,
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Robin: I think that is definitely part of it, and it's a lot of the younger people and they get so caught up in the fantasy. |
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Casey: It comes back to what we were talking about earlier with someone else, that this is play for them, and there are no boundaries because it's a playground .Well, I was at the Manga Expo last year and people were smoking in their non-smoking rooms and set off the fire alarms throughout the hotel in the middle of the night. There were still late-night con-goers milling around the convention hall, mixed with people in their pajamas and looking majorly pissed off. |
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Robin: I guess I can see how people would get very enthusiastic and caught up in fantasy. I'm sure I was like that too, but maybe it was just the way I was raised, but I was never so excited that I was completely disrespectful. You hear stories about the way people inappropriately touch people or yell at people they don't know. I've heard stories from friends about Mikuru (from Haruhi Suzumiya) cosplayers getting sexually harassed. It's like, dude, she's not the character. And the character was kind of set up for that in the series. But I've heard some stories of people trying to take her clothes off, or grab her. That's actually sexual assault. But you're not in an anime. It's not funny. |
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Bamboo: It's also because anime conventions have become this quasi safe haven for freaks. What I mean by this is you see people walking around with bondage gear on. And it's okay there, because nobody will question them. So I wonder if people have just decided that it's their playground. You see people walking around in a thong and a bra top and wings, and it's not okay. You are still in public. |
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Natalie: It's like quasi safe, but it's not safe. I'm thinking about some of the science fiction conventions where they are smaller and are being run by the same people for years and years, and the same people go to it for years and years. They have the identity of the people who go to this con, and you see these people every year. And you get a lot of drop-ins at anime cons who come there, but don't feel like part of that network. In a way, at science fiction cons, you have the sense that everyone is looking out for everyone else. That sentiment has changed in recent years. I went to a recent con up in Massachusetts and there was a theft out of the art show and that never happened at that con. People defaced artwork, and it was younger people. It was horrible. It was such a violation for everybody because it had never happened at this con. You know, it's been like family. But it's people coming in who aren't part of that family. I think with anime cons, people want to treat it like their family, but it's not really that kind of family. It's too scattered and too disparate. |
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Casey: I honestly think it's mostly just scale. I said some of the corporate sponsors and corporate ownership can change things, like sleeping in the halls. For example, you can't do that here because a Javits security guard will scrape you up. I guess you could say that legitimacy has, in some ways, made people less concerned, I guess, about their fellow con-goers because they assume that the system is already in place. |
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Natalie: I wonder if this matches a general isolating tendency. When you think about it, you are downloading stuff off the internet. It's just you and your room. Comic cons like this… it's just you with your friends and random people dressed as characters that you like. What kind of connections are there? How is it different when you're with a group of people who've all been watching the same things together and have the shared experience and have shared lives outside of it? And when you're suddenly flung in this giant place where the whole world is a bunch of crazy people dressed as various things, you can do whatever you want, and it's just the very large container of corporate framework around you, and that's it. |
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Casey: I have a friend who will remain nameless who always tells me that anime conventions are 10,000 socially stunted people put into an exhibition hall. *laughs* |
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Robin: I feel like it was easier to talk to people before. There's just this presence of so many people. You don't just go up to someone and say, “What kind of shows do you like?” I feel like you can't do that anymore, whereas you could before and now people say, “Who are you? Why are you talking to me? I don't know you.” |
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Natalie: There is also the question, too, of people behaving inappropriately. Who's going to go up to them and say, “This isn't appropriate. Please don't do this.” There's not a group consensus that says, “this is not appropriate,” but I'm not sure we want the Appropriate Police going around. |
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Bamboo: I think they should have rules, though, because there are kids around. There are some serious skanks running around. |
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Robin: You know, I think the family friendly thing can go both ways, because while there are very skimpy outfits and stuff, someone younger might not get that someone is dressed inappropriately, so it's all okay. But also I found back in the day that when you had the older group of fans, there was more of the underground-comic-book-nerd, male-dominated basement thing going on. Not everyone was like that, of course, but that was much bigger back then. So there was a ton of porn. The comic cons I went to always had some random porn stars there signing stuff. There was porn everywhere, so I don't know if it was always family friendly. |
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Natalie: When I first started, when anime was first being released commercially in the US, there was a little local comic book store in town. That was the only place that carried anime. You had comic books, then you had anime, pro wrestling, and porn. And that was their entire stock. |
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Bamboo: Well shit, all you need is Nascar. |
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Natalie: I watched godawful things when they came out. I watched anything. I'd watch the most awful porn, just because it was anime. Then I realized that no, I don't have to watch this just because it's anime. But it's had that kind of porn attachment for a long time. A lot of people say, “Oh, anime is just porn and tentacles” And now it's not family friendly enough? Was it ever particularly? |
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Casey: I actually do think from what I've seen, that cons have gotten more family friendly over the years, and lot of that has to do with corporate influence. I'm used to seeing now, in the aisle of Barnes and Noble, kids' manga and kids' graphic novel sections. |
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Robin: Yeah, it's being separated. |
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Casey: I think you are going to see that change with conventions in the future. You know, I haven't been to enough conventions but the only difference I see is scale. The ones I go to are way bigger and way more corporate-fied then the ones I went to over a decade ago, and that's really the only difference. |
Bamboo: Maybe in another five years, we can re-convene and ask ourselves the same question again. Who knows what anime conventions will be like then. Definitely food for thought.
Transcribed by Keith LaPointe
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