Matt Belinkie and Mark Lee attended New York Comic-Con 2013 and had a lot of thoughts on the tension between the fan-driven and business-driven aspects of the event.
Matt
So Mark, I was a block away from the Javits Center when I passed an accordion player wearing a Boba Fett mask, playing Jonathan Coulton’s “Still Alive” from Portal.
On the one hand, this was awesome. But on the other hand, isn’t this guy just exploiting two major nerd touchstones to make some cash, playing his target demo like so many buttons on his accordion? Was it a celebration of fandom or cynical exploitation?
Mark
Well, can’t it be both? This guy could be an actual Star Wars/Portal fan, and he could also be here to leech money off the nerds. Likewise, I consider New York Comic Con to be both an earnest celebration of fandom and a cynical cash grab at the same time. I mean, if one accordion player can contain multitudes, a convention that’s comprised of competing business and fan interests certainly can too.
Matt
I find myself worrying about the Con becoming commercialized, even though that’s obviously silly. Comic Con only exists because a company makes money organizing it, and every single one of those booths on the floor is there to sell something. Nobody is signing autographs for free. The whole thing is a giant machine that converts love into money.
Mark
Yeah, that’s a totally fair point. Corporations have become frighteningly efficient at exploiting any opportunity to market themselves. And maybe it’s a little sad to see that at Comic Con, which has its roots as a simpler, fan-driven event that had far less money at stake. (Side note: San Diego Comic Con is operated by a non-profit entity; New York Comic Con is part of a for-profit enterprise.) The reality, though, is that our mythmaking, our storytelling, our proverbial campfire has been subsumed into massive corporate efforts to maximize their shareholders’ value, the Marvel-Disney-Star Wars juggernaut being the chief example of this.
Maybe the thing to do isn’t to be upset at this state of affairs but figure out how to work within it and how to find celebrations of culture that are less tainted by corporate greed.
Matt
Mark, you were recently at a Ren Faire, right? Am I correct to throw the “e” at the end of that?
Mark
‘Tis correct, m’lord.
Matt
Anyway, my impression of Ren Faires is that they aren’t about the money. Sure, people are selling crafts and axes, but HBO isn’t there promoting Game of Thrones, right? Comic Con is a little different. On one level, they are driven by the folks who spend months building that Megaman costume and can’t wait to show it off. But on another level, they are all about promoting TV shows and other “properties.” Maybe that’s only natural, since Comic Cons are all about pop culture. It’s one of the few places where advertising really is a symbiotic thing.
Mark
Actually, Big Chain Mail is juicing Ren Faires for billions of dollars in profit each year. I’m kidding, of course. I don’t know how big of a business Ren Faires are, but I know for sure that an HBO booth would be totally off limits and antithetical to a Ren Faire. Ren Faires have a whole thing with historical authenticity—or at least anachronism—that prevents the crassest forms of commercialism, which is a good thing, I think. So while a Comic Con and a Ren Faire may appear to be similar in that they’re a safe space for indulgence in fantasy, they are actually fundamentally quite different.
Matt
Okay, obviously Comic Con and commercialization go hand in hand. But maybe what I’m getting at is that there are different KINDS of commercialization. The parts of Comic Con I like the most are the booths where people are trying to sell a labor of love, like a comic book they spent years drawing or a battle axe they designed themselves. The parts of Comic Con I like the least are the giant booths for Chrysler, Intel, etc. They’re trying to sell something, but it’s not something the spokesperson running the booth loves or even cares about. They’re just ads.
Mark
You mean like the things that appear above and beside this article, the things that, in part, pay for this site? Aren’t Overthinking It and Comic Con just two points at different ends of the same spectrum? In a way, we’re both celebrations of pop culture that have to pay the piper to enable our respective fan communities. (In a way.)
I guess at the end of the day, I’m more willing to excuse the blatant commercialism of Comic Con than you are. It’s probably impossible to execute something at this scale in a purer way, and I’m willing to accept that as an acceptable cost for allowing, well, this to happen:
