Dragon-Con-templation (or, What Happens When a Cultural & Intellectual Historian Immerses Himself in Fandom)

Having just returned from my second Dragon-Con experience, I wanted to share a few of the impressions and analyses that have been bubbling in my fevered fanboy brain since I went for the first time last year. As someone who studies and teaches about the cultural history of ideas, I find it difficult not to reflect upon the cultural and intellectual dimensions of what I see at Dragon-Con. Of course, I wouldn’t be at Dragon-Con in the first place if it were not for my deep interest in pop-culture phenomena such as Star Trek, Star Wars, and Silver Age (c. 1956-1970) comic books. Indeed, at Dragon-Con, I find my professional and personal passions both converging and coming full circle: as a child, I was introduced to traditional Chinese and Japanese thought through their appropriations in U.S. popular culture (Star Trek’s Mr. Spock as crypto-Asian, Star Wars’ Yoda as ersatz Taoist or Zen master, Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange being mentored by the quasi-Tibetan Ancient One), and as an adult, I find myself returning to those unlikely exponents of East Asian culture with a perspective altered by substantial study of their sources.

Born in 1972, my first media memories are dominated by syndicated TV. While I fondly remember conventional cop shows and Westerns, such as Adam-12, Bonanza, Emergency, and Gunsmoke, what stands out most is Star Trek. Looking back, I am struck by the ways in which this 1966-69 series – as well as the later Star Wars trilogy of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – articulated two important alternatives for a young boy growing up in the post-‘60s American South. On the one hand, characters such as Star Trek’s Dr. McCoy and Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi demonstrated that strong masculinity could coexist with deep empathy and compassion – qualities that (in the West) traditionally are gendered as feminine. On the other hand, the half-Vulcan science officer, Mr. Spock, and the indeterminate-species Jedi Master, Yoda, while opposite in some ways -- Spock the tortured rationalist, Yoda the serene mystic – each represented a portal out of the conservative, evangelical Protestant worldview that I inherited from my family and region and into strange new worlds of scientific skepticism and quasi-Asian spirituality, embodied as strangely humanoid, yet wholly other aliens. I learned to find wisdom in the alien at an early age.

Like most fanboys and many an academic, I always have felt like an alien myself. That alienation manifests itself in various ways, both in terms of what attracts me as well as in terms of what repels me. This may help explain why I see Dragon-Con primarily as a kind of Geek Pride celebration, analogous to Gay Pride celebrations, complete with parades, cross-dressing, insider jargon, and license to indulge publicly in other transgressive behaviors. The last weekend in June and the first weekend in September share in common a paradox: at those times, the cities of San Francisco and Atlanta, respectively, host a gathering of thousands who fuse their deepest passions with their most fundamental identities and concentrate the expression of such fused selves within a few days of glory. I’ve ventured this interpretation with a few fellow attenders: tellingly, gay/lesbian and female participants welcomed it, while straight men haven’t always been receptive. I suppose that big hairy guys dressed up in G.I. Joe gear don’t like being compared to big hairy guys dressed up in heels and wigs. I, however, fail to see much difference between them.

Another aspect of Dragon-Con, and perhaps fandom in general, that (in my view) mirrors queer culture is what I would like to call “the paradox of fandom.” Queer culture can be rather excessively self-regarding, even narcissistic, and fan culture often displays this characteristic, as well. Here is one aspect of the paradox of which I speak: many, if not most, fans are reserved, rather introverted folks who are uncomfortable with the “straight” (non-fan) world, not to mention other human beings in general. Yet, at Dragon-Con, such fans voluntarily confine themselves within relatively small spaces alongside some 30,000 of their fellow aficionados. To observe a dozen or more attenders trapped in an elevator making its painfully slow and incremental journey from the lobby to the 29th floor of the Marriott Marquis hotel is to watch the paradox of fandom in action. Many of these people don’t particularly enjoy engaging strangers in conversation, yet their passionate identities as fans drive them into situations such as this. Whereas the typical crowded elevator familiar in the everyday world is an adventure in awkward silences, the Dragon-Con elevator experience is like a roomful of people talking to themselves. Rather than cushion the inherent discomfort of close proximity to total strangers with silent shoe-gazing, many Dragon-Con participants cope by tossing out fanboy one-liners, impossibly arcane references, and devoutly reproduced bits of TV, film, and comics dialogue. As a conventionally silent elevator passenger, I found myself fascinated by the fusillade of pop-culture minutiae exploding all around me. No one really seemed to be listening to anyone else, yet there was a kind of rhythm being fashioned and respected: first, the guy dressed as a Klingon made a snarky reference to the high prices being charged for ticketed autograph sessions by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, then the woman costumed as some sort of ethereal winged being offered lines from some anime that depicted avaricious opportunists, followed by…. The whole experience was like some weird, spoken-word jazz.

The second aspect of the paradox in question has to do with the nature and purpose of the convention. Ostensibly, to be a fan is to be consumed by passion for the other: to find meaning and value as well as distraction and relief in the performance or productivity of other people (artists, actors, authors, etc.). At Dragon-Con, however – the costly speaker fees charged by sci-fi luminaries notwithstanding – one finds that the true stars, the real centers of attention, are the fans themselves. Many fans go to Dragon-Con in costume, and most of those appear to do so in order to usurp the limelight from the presumed objects of their fannish affection and step onto the stage themselves. The constant snapping of pictures and flashbulb illuminations pinpoint the location not of “authentic” celebrities, but of typical fans, rendered both anonymous and celebrated by their costumed attire. In some cases, the “real deal” (i.e., the actual actor who made a particular role famous, or the actual artist who originated a particular comic book character) is far less interesting than the passionate imitation (i.e., the zealous fan dressed up as that TV, film, or comics character); I have seen passerby request, and obtain, not only photos of such impersonators, but also their autographs. (Personally, I draw the line at photographing the devout imitators; I’m not interested in their signatures.) To paraphrase the cultural critic Donald Richie’s remarks on Japan, in the realm of fandom, nothing is more authentic than the inauthentic, nothing more original than the copy.

It may be apparent that I find Dragon-Con’s peculiar combination of asocial awkwardness and flamboyant narcissism a bit irritating. But for all that, I believe that Dragon-Con and those who participate in it perform a valuable service. To quote the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami at length:

“[W]hat disgusts me… are people who have no imagination…. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me…. [E]verything in life is metaphor…. [W]e accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings…. Symbols are important…. Symbols guide us to the roles we play.”

Fandom may be guilty of encouraging self-indulgence, escapism, and what Richie defines as kitsch (taking the trivial seriously and trivializing the serious). But it also should be credited with promoting self-development, liberation, and the questioning of what (as a graduate student) I once would called, without using scare quotes, “hegemonic” discourses. Fans are those who are not afraid to imagine themselves and their place in the universe in an alternative fashion. Queer culture and fan culture might both be described as “alternate identity movements.” Each imagines an alternative community to which one may belong, and for a few festive days out of the mundane year, imagination allows such communities to be incarnated in all of their earnest, overcrowded, and sometimes overpriced glory. While some Dragon-Con attenders may, in the heat of costumed reenactment, forget that this fannish realm really is “just” an imaginative construct, a shared dream, I think that most go the “straight” world one better by understanding that the normal realm also is an imaginative construct. One may imagine oneself as a married middle-class professional and parent, or one may imagine oneself as a master of the mystic arts, a half-Vulcan science officer, or a Jedi knight – or, acknowledging the plasticity of identity made possible by the human gift for self-imaginative narrative creativity, one may imagine oneself as any or all of these at once. We all are living through some kind of narrative, and such narratives are – if we permit it – neither purely imposed upon us nor entirely invented by us. The fan’s vision is to see, and model, how one might live in creative, contextual response to one’s contingent commitments.

To return to how all of this personal stuff relates to my professional identity, I suspect that I always am teaching some combination of Star Trek and Star Wars. That is, my teaching about East Asian religious traditions is a way of helping students to experience strange new worlds that offer new life and new civilizations to those for whom this old world may have seemed to be the only world, this way of life the only way, and this civilization the lone one. If I am at all successful, then my students and I learn to become, like Mr. Spock, reflective beings aware of their hybridity and contingency, yet confident in the power of rationality to resolve conflicts that spring from these, and like Yoda, bemused sages who see strength in their limitations and learn to savor spiritual surprises. Thus, in some sense, perhaps my classroom becomes (at its best) a miniature Dragon-Con: a safe space in which those who are alienated by their love of the alien may recover some common humanity and renew themselves for active engagement with the larger universe to which they inescapably but not uncreatively belong.

(September 8, 2009)

Star Trekkin', stardate 2009.05.08

I endured a tornado watch, a power outage, and the abrupt shutdown of a projector to watch the new Star Trek film 1 1/2 times tonight. It was worth it.

(Do not read any further if you wish to avoid spoilers.)

The strengths of the new film are many and include the following:

-- Strong performances by all cast members

-- Tight, snappy writing

-- Well-paced, action-heavy (but plot-driven) narrative

-- Unimpeachable special effects

-- Consistent homage and fidelity to the original TV series and subsequent films (especially _The Wrath of Khan_ and _The Undiscovered Country_)

I think that this film is best understood as a combination of the best elements of an original series episode, "Mirror, Mirror" (in which Kirk and co. encounter a parallel universe, which includes alternate versions of the Enterprise, the Federation, and their shipmates), and the last of the Next Generation-based films, _Nemesis_.

Like "Mirror, Mirror," the film's events take place almost entirely in an alternate reality. But whereas the alternate reality of "Mirror, Mirror" was the Manichean opposite of the familiar, good-guys-in-charge conventional Trek universe, the alternate reality depicted in the film isn't an evil world-turned-upside-down, but rather simply an alternative to the usual Trek world. Things have turned out differently: Kirk's father dies shortly after Kirk's birth, leading to a troubled childhood and rebellious, aimless youth that produce an reckless if gifted young Cadet Kirk rather than the assured, disciplined Captain Kirk familiar from previous series. Spock is less rigidly committed to erasing his human heritage than his conventional counterpart, which allows him to express his passions -- both aggressive and erotic -- in ways that would have appalled the familiar Spock of TV. The parallel universe plot device works in two different, if complementary directions. On the one hand, it emphasizes the contingency of events, such that one minor deviation from the known pattern generates myriad deviations, some quite major. On the other hand, it makes reference to "destiny" at times, and underscores deterministic themes by suggesting that, no matter how different their beginnings in this parallel world, Kirk and Spock eventually will grow into the characters familiar to us from past Trek outings.

Like _Nemesis_, this film features what Spock calls "a particularly troubled Romulan" as a villain. Like Shinzon in _Nemesis_, the film's Nero simultaneously functions as rogue, victim, and oppressor. Ahab-like (or perhaps Khan-like) in his obsession with vengeance, Nero is no cardboard baddie but rather is presented as a good man gone wrong. Nero and his fellow Romulans are phylogenetically indistinguishable from their predecessors, but for some reason, all of them have shaved heads and Maori-style facial tattoos. Perhaps this is some sort of fashion among piratical Romulans? What makes Nero most interesting as a villain is his lack of interest in the mere destruction of his enemies. Rather than his foes' deaths, what he seeks is to subject them to the same unimaginable psychological pain and loss that he believes they have inflicted upon him. Nero understands that there are some things far worse than death, and the object of his vendetta is to impose such things on those whom he deems to be his oppressors. Nero's justice, although twisted, is poetic in this sense.

The film is not without its imperfections. Some of these are:

-- Emulation bordering on caricature in a few cases (McCoy, Chekov)

-- A too-glib Cadet Kirk during his cheater's version of the "Kobayashi Maru" test (this scene would have been much more effective had he played it cool, deceiving his teachers and fellow students to the very end)

-- The rather improbably meteoric rise of bad-boy Kirk through the Starfleet ranks (from loser to cadet to nearly-expelled cadet to first officer to marooned mutineer to captain within the arc of the film)

-- The lack of context for the Spock-Uhura relationship (implicitly explained in terms of the alternate reality scenario, but unlike other jarringly divergent elements in the story, never explicitly explained in such terms)

In my view, there is one other flaw in this film, but it is one that it shares with a great many other 21st century films, and that is the overly crisp, sterile visual quality of digital cinema. The high-definition format renders all details equally clear, distinct, and compelling, unlike analog film, which mimics the natural eye by virtue of concentrating clarity and attention more selectively. Most scenes shot in the digital medium take on the appearance of a sunny day on acid: bright, shimmery, incisively clear. It wears one out. Perhaps, eventually, directors will follow the lead of some music producers and deliberately re-introduce elements of analog sound into their digital productions.

In any case, this quality of the film helps to reinforce the paradox of recent Trek productions (both the final TV series, _Enterprise_, which was set prior to the original series, and the newly-remastered and special-effects-enhanced original series DVDs), which is that the past of the future is looking newer and newer all the time. The new Enterprise bridge looks like a Steve Jobs production; imagine an iMac with a captain's chair, a turbolift, and science, tactical, and communications stations. At least it doesn't look like the lobby of a Hyatt hotel, as was the case with the Next Generation bridge. I can't help feeling nostalgic, however, for the plywood floors, bottlecap pushbuttons, and backlit transparencies of the first Enterprise that I ever saw, and which I still love best. My hope is that the revived Trek franchise retains the polish, cerebral complexity, humor, and gutsy action of this film, but manages to rediscover the heart and human feeling that made the original series watchable and lovable despite its many technical limitations. Live long, and prosper.

(May 8, 2009)

On watching WATCHMEN

I'm still sorting through my responses to seeing the film adaptation of Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' WATCHMEN yesterday. At the moment, those responses, like the film itself, are less a structured, sequenced narrative and more a series of imagistic impressions:

-- The film's depiction of an alternate 1980s reinforces my experience of the actual 1980s, insofar as the decade of "99 Luftbalons," Reaganomics, and Rambo struck and strikes me as the graveyard of the 1960s. Elegiac qualities suffuse the film: cemeteries, funereal color schemes, tomb-like architecture, ceaseless, grim rain.

-- At the level of presentation, the film seems more like a Japanese Nō play than a conventional Western drama. That is to say, in the film as in Nō, actions and images are deeply symbolic, accomplishing (or attempting to accomplish, in the case of the film) a great deal with a minimum of effort, gesture, and stage/screen time. Consequently, the film's characters, like those depicted by masked Nō actors, are not so much individuals as they are stock, seemingly timeless character-types: crone, mentor, warrior, demon.

-- In other ways, however, the film seems deeply Western, a quality that is reinforced by its Nō-like presentation. While it grapples with the moral limitations of traditional comic book narratives (which tended, up until the grim 1980s, to revolve around Manichean conflict between clearly-defined good and bad guys, with the ultimate struggle between good and evil taking place within the hero himself), in the end it does not discover a satisfying way out of that storytelling straitjacket. One of the most compelling characters is perhaps the least complex: the tireless vigilante Rorschach, with his starkly dualistic morality that rejects all casuistical compromises. Like King Oedipus, he faces up to his own limited power over his life by seizing as much control as possible, up the point of ordering his own death. (Whoops! Belated spoiler alert.)

-- However, some of the moral complexity of Nō characters appears in the film. The Comedian is both victim and victimizer; his erstwhile lover/victim, the original Silk Spectre, seems to suffer from Stockholm syndrome, as does her daughter and successor, Silk Spectre II, to some extent; and the Batman-esque Nite Owl seems to both recoil from and exult in the raw thrills that he derives from brutalizing his opponents.

-- Having known the original graphic novel since the 1980s, I already had some attachments to the story and its characters, particularly the sole super-powered protagonist, Dr. Manhattan. The film's depiction of Dr. Manhattan suffers somewhat from its terse, Nō-like qualities; my sense is that the graphic novel more fully engages the reader in his biography, personal conflicts, and inner life. Nonetheless, the film does play entertainingly and satisfyingly with the theme of superhero-as-god, using Dr. Manhattan as exhibit A. He is described by other characters as a god, but says: "I don't think that there is a God. And if there is, I'm nothing like him." Now, what does that mean, exactly?

-- One way to interpret that bit of theological discourse, especially in light of subsequent plot developments, is to conclude that Dr. Manhattan is nothing like the Christian god: he is only superficially anthropomorphic or incarnate, viewing human beings and the Earth with morally neutral detachment and zero personal interest. On the other hand, after hearing the entreaties of his former lover, Silk Spectre II, and bonding with her in a kind of Vulcan mind-meld so that he can experience her perspective (characterized by deep emotional responses to events) while she experiences his (characterized by a seamless blend of past, present, and future), Dr. Manhattan discovers a sense of the miraculous (he uses precisely that language) in the apparently random events of the universe. His worldview seems to revolve around a sense of contingent, but relentless, causality: one thing happens, then another thing, then another, until it becomes impossible to separate one event from the endless chain of prior events that precedes it, making things seem fated or predestined, even though there appears to be no guiding hand behind the process.

-- It is at this point that Dr. Manhattan may begin to function less as a analogue or alternative to the Christian god and more as a kind of window into the gaps between what that god's worshipers think and feel about him and what that god himself might think and feel. Ordinary human beings see Dr. Manhattan and feel moved to terror, reverence, and the ascription of moral goodness to his awesome power. Dr. Manhattan sees ordinary human beings and feels less and less over time before gradually acquiring a sense of wonder that such life even exists in the universe. By the film's end, he announces his intention to create some life of his own. Yet I detected no hint that his view of life, whether human or his own creation, entails any moral stake in its existence. One might see his intervention at the film's end as evidence of such a stake, but what then does one do with his complicity in Ozymandias' subterfuge? Dr. Manhattan seems most comfortable dealing with humanity in terms of abstract generalities, and such a perspective accords well with the kind of utilitarian moral logic of Ozymandias. As one character puts it, for Dr. Manhattan, human beings are like ants: interesting in their diversity and behaviors, but not necessarily morally compelling in the sense of Matthew 10:29-31:

"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."

I can offer no conclusive views of the film at this point, but only a few final-for-now comments. One way to view the film is to see it as a story about a world of sparrows who cry out for a Father to save them even as they fall in droves. The most likely candidate for that kind of Father turns out to be one who numbers the hairs on sparrow's heads (to mix metaphors dreadfully) while feeling no pangs of remorse as the sparrow body count escalates. We are left with two alternatives for viewing the human condition: as a tragic battle of good against evil, in which only dignity, not victory, can be certain, provided that we do not allow our rigid moral compasses to be compromised (Rorschach), or as a statistically improbable phenomenon that evokes our scientific interest, even to the point of sustaining experimental observation by prolonging the life of its subjects, but entails no commitment to ultimate values or concerns beyond sheer experience and the wonder thereof (Dr. Manhattan). We can worship a Manichean god of absolute good versus absolute evil, or we can become a Deist god characterized by relativity in all things except power. Surely the universe is a richer place than either of these options would suggest -- and perhaps the film is richer than my brief, preliminary analysis of it would indicate.

(March 7, 2009)