Geek Prom. That’s what we used to call Comic-Con in the late 90s –– self-mockingly, because we (or, at least, I) weren’t actually cool enough to go to real prom. That was before there was an actual Geek Prom every year in Duluth, and before Comic-Con itself became less a comic convention than an 100 hour press conference, where Hollywood studios are (for the most part) able to bypass the pesky press and sell next year’s product line directly to their most desired demographic.
As you’re reading this, I’m en route to San Diego for my fourth Comic-Con, my first in a couple of years. Kevin and Kevin will be joining me, and starting with tomorrow night’s preview, we’ll be live blogging all the major panels, and some of the not-so-major panels (Lloyd Kaufman, I love you), so plan to refresh the page roughly every 30 seconds from Wednesday night through late Sunday.
But whilst spoilers on the dreaded Wolfman remake are one thing, I’m also interested in how the Con has changed in the ten years since I comfortably fit within its target demo, especially for the fans and kids who––I assume––still make pilgrimages to attend. I have all these half-baked theories about how nerd culture has essentially become the new frat culture; if you’ve ever been bullied on a fanboy blog comment thread, maybe you’ll agree, or maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. Regardless: with the former totems of high school rejects long since transformed into the bread and butter of the mainstream culture industry, will there be any real geeks left at the old Geek Prom?
Whether you’re a long-time Con attendee or if this will be your first time, let me know if you have any thoughts. And if you spot an old lady wandering around the Convention Center in granny glasses, fumbling for her arthritis medicine and her inhaler, come say hi!
Peter Bart now has a blog, but that’s no reason for him to play nice with the blogosphere. In a post from earlier this week, he did his best to discredit any opinion about this impending Hulk movie that is not his own:
The dweebs may not like the effects. The star, Edward Norton, may not like the cut. And the blogosphere is steeped in bad buzz. So here’s what Universal decided to do about it Sunday night: Throw a party, invite 5,000 folks to a screening and celebrate The Incredible Hulk as an instant hit…The audience roundly applauded the set-pieces of CGI mayhem, as if to tell Comic-Con-ish doubters, “Get a life.”
Because of course, it’s better to manufacture the illusion of “an instant hit” than to actually make an attempt to appeal to the “Comic-con-ish” built-in fans of the brand. I could go on and on about how to claim that the reaction of an invited audience (probably predominantly made up of people on the Marvel, Paramount or associated payrolls) is more valid that the worries of a film’s core ticket buyers is unforgivably solipsistic and probably not in line with Variety’s ostensible mission to couch all value judgments in assessments of commercial viability. But instead, I’ll just quote at length from one of Bart’s more articulate commenters,
…Read more
An exhibit called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy opens today at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and runs through the end of the summer. From the Met’s website:
Fashion not only shares the superhero’s metaphoric malleability, but actually embraces and responds to the particular metaphors that the superhero represents, notably that of the power of transformation. Fashion celebrates metamorphosis, providing unlimited opportunities to remake and reshape the flesh and the self. Through fashion and the superhero, we gain the freedom to fantasize, to escape the banal, the ordinary, and the quotidian. The fashionable body and the superhero body are sites upon which we can project our fantasies, offering a virtuosic transcendence beyond the moribund and utilitarian.
I complain a lot about how the rise of the comic book blockbuster (which I’m not knocking out of hand––obviously, when they’re good they’re really, really good), has made the typical connoisseur of comic book mythology less likely to be an introspective smarty and more likely to resemble your typical aggro frat boy; like just about everything, geek culture becomes duller and less potent as it becomes more mainstream. By tying it the body/identity politics (thus adding the complications of sex) and making it completely intellectually obtuse in the process, the Met’s show takes back comic book love and restores a bit of its lost nerdiness. Sign me up!
The Met’s site has a lot of small pictures from the show and much, much more information; the above photo is excerpted from the Jaman blog.
UPDATE: There are many, many more photos from inside the exhibit on Flickr.
The annual nerd bachanal that is Comic-con begins today in San Diego. Here’s a look at some of the chatter going into the comic/horror/sci-fi/fantasy fan’s biggest weekend of the year.
- David Poland got an email from a friend who has a friend who is a director who was told by someone at Comic-con that he won’t be allowed to show “adult” material at his Con presentation this year. Poland’s friend confirms that this was the main reason for Fox’s last minute pull-out. And Poland says they’re actually going to be there anyway–in lieu of the big panel presentation, there will be something involving Wolverine director Gavin Hood, as well as a breakfast screening of footage from Death Sentence.
- If you, like me, are not making it down to San Diego yourself but don’t want to miss a beat, you can follow Alex Billington’s updates on Twitter. Meanwhile, San Diego Dreaming is compiling a Fest Mob-esque ticker tape of Con updates. If you are on the ground and want to participate, the info’s at the link. Both of those tidbits come to us courtesy of The Beat.
- John Campea has posted his schedule at The Movie Blog, in case anyone wants to “take a minute and say ‘hi’.”
- Patton Oswalt won’t be in San Diego, but he’s posted a scavenger hunt for anyone who is. One of the ten items he implores you to find: “Two of the following 7 “variations” on a Star Wars stormtrooper: Elvis, slutty, NASCAR, steampunk, KISS Army, pimp, western.” And yes, I found the above picture by doing a Google Image search for “stormtrooper NASCAR.”
