Confessions of a dangerous mind

[gwyn]

I’ve been thinking about the reactions to the Escapade vid show, and promised a bit of blathering a long time ago, though it’s turned out to be hard to write reasonably about it. Because I get all foamy-at-the-mouthy when I think too long and hard about it -- the way the small, but vocally negative crowd gets about the vid show is emblematic of some of my larger issues in fandom. And there have been some thoughtful, good comments on the issues from morgandawn, killabeez, and astolat, not to mention others who had difficulties with this year’s show but didn’t make accusations and insults a way to deal with it, and wrote thoughtfully about it instead in their LJs.

It’s hard for me to separate my creative vidder self from the self that’s been involved with the show for seven years now. I mean, I *do* take things personally, especially when they’re, you know, personal, so it’s easy to get flinchy. And as a vidder, it’s easy to get flinchy and pissed off at accusations that we’re elitist art Wehrmacht who are using the Escapade vid show audience as prison-cell guinea pigs for our arty-farty vid pimpage. I have to go sit in the corner with my cup of tea and be quiet for a moment to get past that. ;-)

A lot of what was said this year isn’t new -- the nastiest insults have been hurled before, so we’re getting more adept at holding up the witchblade arm and deflecting them. This year had a new wrinkle, and a fairly valid one in that we now have a higher standard to compare against -- the Vividcon premier show. A couple people made the perfectly valid comment that in some ways, this year’s Escapade show felt like the VVC show -- and while I can understand that they might feel that’s a bad thing, I personally kind of liked that. The Escapade show has, for many years, been a gold standard in con vid shows, reflecting not just that old west coast slash vidder esthetic (for you online pups: in ye olden dayes, there were a number of what people took to calling vid esthetics, which reflected who you learned to vid from and the kinds of cons you took vids to, to show or trade/sell), only now there’s another gold standard, and so there are necessary shifts in how we look at shows.

Also, the online world is making a huge difference in how the zeitgeist of vid shows has changed, both in the fact that there are hundreds more vidders out there than there used to be even just four years ago, and there are new attendees at Escapade who don’t understand the history of the show, the esthetic that was often represented there, and the openness of it as a “slash con” where that wasn’t the only thing we felt defined by. I didn’t recognize over half the names on the attendee list this year, and it reminds me that the Escapade I knew is long gone except for pockets of my friends who share the same mindset I do -- and those newbies are coming in with often very different expectations that are going to clash seriously with those of us who feel this is “our” con.

So when I think about this, I come up with three major complaints, two of which are very old and tiresome and annoying, and one which is a little more recent, but also annoying.

1. Help, help, I’m being repressed! Or, the never-ending complaint of “where’s the slash?”

Every year for at least the past five, we’ve had to listen to variations on this that range from mild, like “some of the vids didn’t have any slash content” to “this is a slash con, don’t show your fucking het/gen/icky show that I don’t like and don’t know anything about vids to me.” There are a couple of problems with this one, most significantly that Escapade, while a slash con and a place for slash fans to congregate, has never excluded het or gen content, never ghettoized het or gen fans and their product, and never limited the discussions or creative endeavors to slash only. But there’s no convincing the slash Nazis about this. A little history can help here: one important thing about a slash con like Escapade is that it was a place where slashers could feel comfy and could talk about slash openly, without being relegated to having everything under the table and hush-hush (olden dayes meant that you had to get your fic in zines, and these were most often unavailable at gen cons, or sold under the table and you had to know who to ask, and how).

An even more momentous event occurred at Media West (the largest fan-run media con in the US) many, many years ago when some fuckwit brought a vid or two to the vid show that used gay porn insert shots. Since there were kids present at this con, this resulted in having “slash vids” relegated to after-midnight showings even though most slash vids have no more innocuous content than simply two guys in the same shot together on a line like “I’ll love you forever.” The damage was done, and that ghettoizing meant creating places where slash fans could congegrate without fear of being called names or treated like freaks became much more important. Unfortunately, like any fundamentalists, the newly converted often take things to extremes, and in the past few years, as more and more people have found slash fandoms and come to Escapade, this kind of restricted viewpoint is coming back at some of us whose horizons have expanded a little. What we’re getting is a reverse discrimination from what MW imposed on slash fans for a long time. A few years ago it was even suggested that if we wanted to bring a vid that had gen or het content, we could show them after midnight or in a separate show -- and there was apparently no irony attached to this suggestion. A friend of mine responded on the Vidder list by pointing out that many of the offending members who’d brought vids with het or gen content had been vidding longer than most of the reactionists had been in fandom, and the idea of shuffling them off into some late-night ghetto was offensive to her, and others responded in kind, so that was dropped. Only to resurface in various formats since then.

Limiting content to slashiness has a lot of problems, not least of which is the question of Who Decides? Will it be the most hard-core of slashers, the most reactionary folks, the Slash Fascisti, who decide whether a vid’s content is slashy enough to be in the show? Will it be the mellow old-timers, whose worlds have expanded to include het fandoms or wider interests in vid themes than just two guys being cute together set to hit songs? Or will it be a committee that ostensibly includes all stripes of Escapade fandom, hand-picked by the con com? I’m sure there are people who would actually love to be the group that decides content restrictions, but those people scare me. They’re inevitably the most hard-line slash fans, folks who take everything personally and overreact to anything not slash. Folks who want to discriminate against some of us the way MW discriminated against slashers all those years. I’ve seen this a lot in Buffy fandom in a way I don’t like, where some slashers attack the non-slashers (especially us S/B folks, who are quite evil and terrible, you know) for the slightest comment they deem problematic. The Slash Fascisti scare me, I’ll be honest. And they scare a lot of other vidders who’ve been making slash vids since before some of these folks had ever heard of fandom. What I think will happen, if they keep up this stream of invective after every con of “where’s the slash?” is that many of us who are slash fans with room to grow will not only stop coming to the con, but stop sending vids -- even if we make slash vids.

Because usually, the insults don’t stop at just “where’s the slash?” The mindset for this small but very loud segment of fans means that even what you think of as a slash vid isn’t slashy enough for them, especially because they’re not into your fandom or pairing. Just as an example, a couple years ago, my frequent viding collaborator, Jo, and I brought a Magnificent 7 vid to the con that we were really proud of, a slash vid about two cowboys in love. That’s all it was -- not that hard to understand, just pretty shots of the boys being happy together to Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ Soul for Every Cowboy. A couple fans I know who love the show loved the vid; we got attacked in the comment sheets and face to face, though, for bringing a vid that wasn’t deemed slashy enough in a fandom and theme most people scorn. So, again, the question comes up of Who Decides? If the slash Nazis have their way, only the most popular accepted fandoms will be allowed in the show, and there would have to be some kind of yardstick developed to determine the appropriate content value. Power ballads would be the rule of the day, I fear. I tremble in terror.

This is a huge issue for those of us who’ve been coming to this con for a long time. Where we used to have a nice place to play that accommodated this peculiar interest of ours, away from the overwhelmingly het world at large, instead we’d have a place that dictated your range of beliefs. Where before the con and the vid show would have been a place to share creativity with people who had a shared interest and friendship, we would have a place that restricted sharing of any art not within the guidelines established by a few people. To me, this sounds weirdly like the Soviet Union or China -- I don’t really want my participation to be restricted by a politburo of slash fans who will tell me whether I have enough slash street cred; if I don’t, they’ll be happy to send me and my vids to the het gulag till I fix it. While I’m being facetious here, I do actually fear this happening, despite the con com’s open-mindedness. Anything restrictive freaks me out, and I think it freaks out a lot of really good vidders, too -- and if more and more of those folks fall away because they got tired of the complaints of the few, the proud, the slash Fascisti, then what have we gained? I’m not sure -- we have a vidder’s con that’s open to all types, but for those of us who’ve valued Escapade as a place to show our art and share, the only real thing we’re left with is VVC and the online world.

As more and more vids are only online, the shows probably need to remain open, at least, I think so, in order to remain viable. There’s no compelling reason to wait and premiere a vid at a show if the vidder feels pressured by content restrictions. Of course slash fans *want* more slahy vids, there’s no surprise there and no reason they shouldn’t, but since the show has never been in danger of going all het and gen, pushing back hostilely means vidders are not inclined to risk the wrath of the Nazis to bring *any*thing. They can just, most of them (not me) anyway, stick them up online. So then quality deteriorates, the show becomes irrelevant all the way around, and I feel like we all lose. Personally, I adore vid shows. I find them exciting even when they’re full of bad vids, and I haven’t worked my ass off on the Escapade show for seven years because I’m indifferent to vid shows. And I think, frankly, that most people do, too -- there’s a reason those folks line up to come in, and sit there or two hours plus, and wait all weekend for the show. Those people are large in number, and it pains me to see the small group of loud and angry, unhappy people accusing the vidders of nefarious intent, accusing the vid com of evil intentions, and insulting individuals because they didn’t get exactly what they wanted. The truth is, none of us *can* get exactly what we want -- I didn’t this year, but I still loved the vid show to death. I had a great time, even though no one shares my fandom interests and I have to make what I want to see, if I have any hope of getting what I want. The funny thing is, I don’t adjust my black shirt and practice my sieg heil in order to make others suffer for my not getting what I want. Because who would decide that?

2. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Or, the vid show wasn’t fannish enough.

This is the other most common complaint after not slashy enough, and I confess it’s one that baffles me, since I pretty much never (these days, at least) get to see what I like fannishly on screen at the show. There were tons of vids this year to things I like -- Jeremiah, Hornblower, Angel, LA Confidential, Master and Commander, Professionals, LotR, and so on. But none of them were in things I’m consumed with right now, in pairings I want to see, to music I want to hear. So what?

I’ve always thought the purpose of art was that the artist creates according to their vision, and the audience interprets according to what they see in the art. So for me, part of the process is in the viewing and thinking. And I recognize that people don’t necessarily want to think at a vid show, they just want to feel and be happy or see their pairing on screen with cool music. Which is okay, but I think, also, a bit unrealistic to expect. It seems as if most of the folks going to the vid show know that not everyone will create art exactly to the tastes of 200 individual viewers -- yet that doesn’t stop the loudmouth cranks. It would be just as hard to establish and police fannish content levels as it would slash content levels, I’d think. Would only the most popular pairings be allowed at the show ? (I actually worry on this, because next year I’d like to bring a Hornblower vid, but it would feature a lot of Pellew, so it would violate most of the accepted pairing standards in HH fandom). Would only the most popular fandoms be allowed, because obscure fandoms aren’t fannish enough? Would only the most accessible songs be let in, because so many fans seem lyric-impaired? Again, I’m not sure Who Decides.

In olden dayes, we had far fewer vidders than we do now, and were working with far fewer shows. Most vid shows focused on a few core fandoms -- Professionals, Blake’s 7, Wiseguy, some leftover Starksy and Hutch, and Star Trek. Few people could afford the editing decks needed for vids (and I won’t even go back as far as the days of stopwatch vidding), so few people made them, and there was little source to go around. (We got what we got, and we were grateful! If we had to print our zines with potatoes, we did it! And we recorded our shows with parrots! And we walked uphill to the con, in the snow, both ways!) So when more fandoms started cropping up with potential for vids of any kind -- not to mention slash potential -- the vidders started expanding their horizons, as well. Within a few years, though, a lot of that source was exhausted, especially when the content wasn’t large enough to accommodate so many vids. Only a few years ago at Escapade we heard people grousing about the same fandoms owning the vid shows, and those fandoms had extremely limited resources, much of the time -- there was very little Duncan/Methos footage to work from, as well as Mulder/Krycek So those vidders tired of the same old clips, and started branching out into character studies and such. Often, that included het stuff.

And all that did was result in complaints about nonfannish shows or not slashy content, what have you. A few years ago when I tried to point out that artists often want to expand their horizons and stretch, so it’s not unusual that this would happen, I got attacked for it by someone who didn’t believe that you had to expand away from the core fandoms. The thing is, artists do like to test themselves. They need to stretch, and working with the same material all the time often doesn’t allow that. So the problem becomes the audience wanting what they’re into at the time, wanting something fairly narrowly defined and rigidly controlled; however, it’s the nature of the artist to chafe against that. It’s not surprising that some folks would see this show as too like Vividcon, because many of the vids were stunning artistically, really risky and creative and unusual. But if that’s not what you’re looking for -- if for you a fannish vid is made up of your guys being goofy and warm and just being a couple, or something like that, a risky vid in a fandom you don’t share can be pretty tough to handle, let alone a whole show like that. Now, for me, the show being like a VVC show is a good thing, but for some folks, it’s a tougher sell. And that’s totally okay -- but I think it’s important for the angry hostile people to realize that if you have a certain set expectation and you knowingly go into a show where there are 20-30 different artists creating in a variety of fandoms, you’re unlikely to have a homogeneous, narrowly defined show that meets your fannish criteria.

To me, this is the most important part of this issue -- people are being pretty ugly about something they went into willingly, and then later complained that they were held hostage by the vidders’ contempt for their audience and the vidders’ desire to push the creative envelopes at the expense of the fans who just want fannish entertainment, and also imprisoned by the cruel vid committee who could have apparently warned the audience they were getting into unfannish territory beforehand. Most of the folks I saw going into the show were excited and happy, and afterwards seemed really excited and happy. There will always be unhappy people, but no one coerces those folks into going -- or staying. This is part of the fannish process of cons -- you go into a panel or a show or an art exhibit without knowing what exactly you will see ahead of time, but it’s part of the process of discovery. I think hurling accusations at people and being mean, small, and petty is a backlash thing, and I confess I don’t get it. Apparently the person who violently objected to my lack of effectiveness in trying to pimp Keen Eddie to the poor unsuspecting audience also went after Killa and Luminosity, among many others, for the same pimping thing, and what bothers me about this mean, small, petty, pathetic person is that she sat through the whole show just so she could bitch and insult people about how she wasn’t interested in our fandoms. What does this contribute to, besides hurt feelings?

I have this weird need to make things make sense, and I don’t get why people who are this disappointed actually go to shows knowing full well that the vidders can’t possibly meet such a narrow set of expectations. And while I love to gripe as much as the next person, I always want to know: why don’t you make more of what you want to see, and contribute to the volunteer con effort so you can? Even if you’re not a vidder yourself, you can certainly hook up with and offer help to the folks who might make what you want to see. I think it’s always better to take action than to attack people for not being fannish enough by your standards. Because, again, Who Decides?

3. Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Or, the show wasn’t connish enough, and we're disregarding the audience.

Out of all the complaints, this one is the weirdest to me. In a way, I kinda get it, but mostly, I don’t. Partly because this division of living room vid and con vid has never ever been something I buy into and seems simplistic and silly to me, and partly because I find something that disturbs me or challenges me or makes me think to be thrilling and exciting, rather than tiring and annoying. So it may never been something I can adequately understand enough to have a dialog with the people who feel that way.

It’s also another Who Decides challenge, in that I think there are just as many people like me as there are like the hostile folks who want con vids they think are appropriate to the audience. But what happens when the folks who think a con vid is lightweight or fun or with a super familiar, clear song or to an accepted fandom (no pimping allowed) make the rules -- will the vidders who wanted to challenge themselves (see #2) stop showing and coming to the con? Will all the challenging or disturbing or weird vids go online only, or maybe to VVC, and never to any other cons because they’re not connish enough? This makes me a little fearful, because it’s those non-connish vids that speak to me the most. And, I’m also rarely in the accepted, popular fandoms and pairings, so if making a pimping vid successfully meets the other two criteria but not this one, I’d still have to be out of the show -- a show I’ve participated in for a really long time (this was my 10th or 11th Escapade).

I don’t think that quiet, thoughtful vids are only living room vids (a distinction I think grows even more useless as more and more vids go online first), to be digested only when you can sit and think, and that con vids are light and frothy and slashy, to be consumed quickly in a large group on a Saturday night. So I’m starting from an anti place right there -- I fall outside the belief system of a most of my long-time con show peers. No, we can’t always know our exact reactions at the show, and it’s always good to have time to really consider a serious vid with a strong narrative, but does that actually mean it doesn’t belong in a con show? I don’t believe so, myself.

But the problem is lately that the angry hostile folks are hurling accusations that the vidders are abusing the audience by making these serious, non-connish vids without thought for their audience (apparently an intellectually impaired lot by Sat. night), and that we’re misusing the trust the audience places in us for an evening of entertainment. One statement I saw accused vidders of vidding for each other, to try to impress each other, without thought for the audience. On an emotional level, I abreact to that, on a more thoughtful level, I can see why people would lash out if they felt their interests were being ignored.

But, here’s the thing: I think that vidders vidding for each other is an okay thing! I do! I see nothing wrong with artists challenging themselves against any kind of benchmark, and if that includes other vidders, well, cool. As I keep saying, artists need to stretch. If we’re restricted in this art form to simply using the approved fandoms with the approved content and fannish levels, we’ll mostly wither and die, and get a little hostile ourselves. Pretty soon, you’ll find that the only folks showing at the con are the newbie fundamentalists, and they’re all showing vids that fall under party guidelines and are state approved. (Okay, I know I’m being a smartass, but I have to, it’s in my genes.) Which, you know, ew. I won’t want to be at that show, and most of the other really stupendous vidders I know won’t either. For a lot of us, the vid show is *fun* and we love everything -- challenging vids, lightweight, whatever. It’s just fun and enjoying art. The audience seems to be with us kind of dressing to impress each other -- to me, and to them, it feels like a win-win situation.

I can’t think of any higher compliment to my skills than another vidder telling me I did something they liked. Especially an admired vidder -- *any* compliment is great, but if it’s someone whom you worship, too, then it’s a double compliment. So what’s wrong with using each other to raise the bar? It seems like all we’ll really get is good vids, ones where the artist is striving to create great art. If the great art isn’t necessarily what you want, then yeah, that would be a likely area to get your crank on, I agree; but to automatically tag it as bad... I can’t quite go there, I guess. I have a feeling this is an area I won’t be able to understand, sadly.

I’ve been trying really hard to just shrug off a lot of this negativity and harshness as just being the work of pinheads, but I guess in some ways I just have too much invested in this particular show to give up. I don’t want Escapade to become like a lot of other vid shows, which are filled with crappy vids by people who haven’t got an esthetic bone in their bodies. I want challenge and beauty and risk and art and creativity and freedom, and I don’t feel like any of these things are mutually exclusive with fun and enjoyment. And I got the distinct impression from the silent majority this year that they’re in my boat -- the problem is not letting those folks who are trying to sink our boat make us feel miserable about having it. I have a bad feeling it’s only going to get worse as more and more new folks come to Escapade who have no experience with the history of the con and the issues that have come before, and that scares me a little.