As you'll recall, a group that claims to be promoting "family values" has been trying to get folks riled up over the fact that the recent Motor City Con had a few ladies on the premises who'd posed undraped for magazines, and also had some dealers who sold such magazines. Here's an e-mail from Janet Harriett, who was actually there…
I really enjoyed your blog comments on porn at cons, and I got a kick out of reading the con report you linked to. That organization seems to be among the many that exist for the sole purpose of being offended.
Last weekend, we attended the Motor City Con in Novi, Michigan, which also had an auction to benefit Make-a-Wish, former Playmates (who, incidentally, do not look half as interesting fully clothed and in person), and several vendors selling Playboy and a few more explicit magazines and videos in close proximity to non-adult material. As a rule, the adult material is well marked in separate boxes, which vigilant parents can easily keep their children from viewing. Many parents do not have a problem with their children and teenagers being exposed to seminude images, and those who do can certainly engage in a bit of parenting to keep their children out of those boxes or away from the booths that sell them. After all, there is no rule saying one must look through the wares of every vendor.
And as far as the presence of Playmates goes, every con we have attended that had Playmates advertised that fact heavily in all its promotional material, and it is rather difficult to purchase tickets without knowing if one or more might be there. It is not as if parents get their wristbands and suddenly find out that there are women there that make their living by selling photographs of themselves in various stages of undress.
Those who are not actively trying to be offended can get through cons by choosing to not spend time at the vendor and guest booths with adult material. Those who are might do better to choose not to attend at all and leave us our weekend of fun.
Agreed — especially with the line about organizations that exist to be offended. I think we sometimes don't pay attention to how much of our national dialogue is driven by sheer opportunism. A lot of us have a tendency to take viewpoints at face value and to debate them on that basis. One of the reasons I stopped listening to Talk Radio is that I heard one too many hysterical people of whom I thought, "That person would not care about that issue — or at least, not care that much — if they weren't on the radio with a need to keep it interesting." I don't mean they're always lying. I mean, I'm sure a lot of the authors of Clinton-hating books really do hate the Clintons. I just think they wouldn't hate them so much, or find so many reasons to, if Clinton-hating had not brought them fame and fortune. Mr. Bush seems to slowly be developing a parallel industry of folks whose incomes seem to hinge on being outraged.
The folks going "Shame, shame" towards comic conventions are trying to drum up a controversy, at least in part because that's their business. The cry that someone is forcing smut on our children is almost too easy for the crusaders to resist. Certainly, a lot of the Werthamesque persecutions of the fifties, as well as the occasional busting of comic shops these days, was/is based on the Easy Target principle. At the same time, I think the stores and convention owners need to recognize that to the extent these campaigns work at all, they work because they tap into a real concern out there. Some parents are flustered by how often sexual imagery is unavoidable; how their children see it and ask about it — or perhaps worse, see it and don't ask about it. Either way, it's an issue, and one that can be successfully exploited by those with a reason to do so.
A couple of folks wrote to me to say, "Playboy Playmates have no place at a comic convention. They have nothing to do with comics." I think that's also an unrealistic way to view the situation. The day of the pure comic convention is pretty much behind us. As anyone who's been to a Comic-Con International in San Diego can attest, the word "comics" has come to represent a certain energized concept of art and storytelling in an array of media — film, television, animation, gaming, etc. It no longer has to be printed on newsprint to be "comics" — a concept, by the way, that Jack Kirby was predicting in 1970. TV stars are flocking to comic conventions to sell autographed photos. Movie studios are engaging publicists who'll specialize in promoting their wares at comic conventions. The Playmates and porn stars can make money at them so they've become a part of comic conventions. That is the new reality, and convention organizers are going to have to deal with the zoning problems it creates. It may mean carving up the exhibitor space politely but firmly, designating certain portions as okay for the tots. It may mean going further to educate the public that a "comic book convention" just might have adult film stars lurking about. I agree with Janet that parents have to be pretty dumb to not know that kind of thing may be there, but dumb people do a lot to keep these so-called "pro-family" groups solvent. If convention owners and book store proprietors would be a little more attentive to this issue, they might not seem like such Easy Targets.