What world politics wonks can take away from Comic-Con

Your humble blogger will be winging his way back to the East Coast after a few days at Comic-Con.  Now, one of the purposes of this blog is to act as a networked node between the worlds of popular culture and international relations.  So while I could prattle on about what’s hip (Wonder Woman) and what’s not (surprisingly little Battlestar Galactica cosplay) or all of the ways that Joss Whedon is God — well, a god —  that would be wrong and uninteresting to readers. 

Instead, here’s another angle.  We know that: 

A)  Comic-Con is the convention of America’s cultural overlords; and

B)  America remains the world’s cultural hegemon; so…

C)  What we learn about Comic-Con attendees will tell us much about the future of global culture.

So, what did I learn:

1)  America was better in the past.  Comic-Con has grown by leaps and bounds in term of attendees in the past few years, and the old-timers are a bit cranky about this fact.  And by "old-timers," I mean people who were here five years ago.  Still, I was told that the lines used to be shorter, the exhibition hall used to have more open space, and "it used to be about the comics, man."  Or, as one person put it, "all these people used to tease me in high school for liking this s**t."  Nostalgia for yhe past, it would seem, is hardly limited to political elites. 

2)  The cultural elite is a hell of a lot more diverse than other elites.  A common lament is the maleness and whiteness of the top one percent of anything.  Well, rest assured this is not the case at Comic-Con.  Based on my own observation, I’d say that while men outnumbered women, it’s getting awfully close to gender balance.  Similarly, minority representation was quite robust as well.  Indeed, one group in particular with a powerful presence at Comic-Con is the disabled.  If you ammassed the number of people in wheelchairs at this convention, you’d have a formidable mobile infantry.

3)  Americans are cool with bureaucracy and surveillance — so long as it’s about something they want more than something they need.  The lines for some of the sessions were staggering.  Seriously, Disneyworld employees would have looked at these lines and said, "dude, this is out of control."  I don’t want to say that people were thrilled about the lines — but compared to the DMV or even boarding an airplane, there was a minimum of fussing and feuding.  Why were people cool with having 10,000 individuals in front of them to see a Walking Dead panel but ten people in front of them at the Starbucks caused complaint?  I think it’s about want vs. need, but I’ll take alternative explanations in the coments.

As for surveillance, it was impossible to walk five feet without passing an interview or a photograph.  A third of the attendees at any large panel were recording everything on their cameras. 

4)  There are tiny pockets of innovation everywhere.  The Blog Son and I went to the panel for a forthcoming video game, The Last of Us (here’s a trailer).  I’m not a gamer, but I get the sense the game is easerly anticipated.  What impressed about the panel was the care and craft that the creators had invested into the scenario, the acting, the gameplay, and so forth.  Politicians might pooh-pooh the intended effect of all of this energy, but the innovative talent on display was impressive. 

Now, this was a big panel, but all around the exhibition hall there were pockets of just brilliant stuff littered around the place.  True, there was also a lot of schlock, but even a lot of the schlock was demented and brilliant. 

5)  Zombies still rule.  I mean, c’mon — they were everywhere at Comic-Con.  Everywhere.