Otaku Outraged at Uber-Otaku

[Charles]

[floatl][/floatl]Up, Up and Away, Indeed

After politely sitting through academic presentations about Superman's ties to colonial expansion and 17th-century conceptions of idealism, the middle-aged man sitting in the front row of a room at Comic-Con International finally had enough.

"It seems like you guys are making this too complicated for a simple art form that's escapism for most of us," he declared to the panel of scholars from as far away as Australia.

The irony of a fan telling the panelists to get a life -- in the middle of the world's largest comics convention, of all places -- wasn't lost on some members of the audience. But skepticism from fans is an occupational hazard in the growing world of comic-book academia.

"For a lot of people, these things are religious -- we're treading on sacred ground," said Alex Boney, a literature graduate student at Ohio State University and one of 50 professors and amateur scholars who made presentations during an academic conference held during last weekend's Comic-Con in San Diego.
...more...

[kurohinge1]

[Charles]

I wholeheartedly endorse anything that will kill the fun for comic nerds.

[Kuang_Grade]

I wholeheartedly endorse anything that will kill the fun for comic nerds.

Hmmm......These academics are not being viewed as buzz kill by the comic nerds....they are likely being viewed by comic nerds as big losers, and lord knows that takes a great deal of effort to get in that spot. Nerds know this stuff is stupid, but they like it anyway, but someone who bases their professional career studying it, well, that's probably viewed as a bit foolish. Con go-ers are nerdin' out for a few days and then go back to their regular lives...Academics studying comic books presumably live that laughable life most of the time...The nerds probably view academics at the Con as something akin to Jawas....A pointless and overall fairly detestable life form.

[Charles]

Con go-ers are nerdin' out for a few days and then go back to their regular lives...

You are making an irrational assumption that these geeks have a life.

[Red Floyd]

Since it seems nobody else will stand up to Charles' unprovoked assholery towards geeks, it looks like it's up to me. In any area of pop-culture geekery, you'll get people who love to nit-pick and analyze things to death. Whether it's comics (Batman as a metaphor for homosexuality), TV (the last eppisode of The Prisoner), anime (Eva and all it's inifinite wisdom), or movies (The Matrix as religion, society, goverment, etc etc etc), it's a given that there will be people to analyze things to their extremes. But this does not mean we should condem all academic interpretations of pop culture. Takashi Murakami's book Little Boy: The Exploding Subculture of Japan is a good example of pop-analysis done right.
In the end though, what is so wrong with people analyzing pop-culture? Granted, a lot of people say a lot of stupid things, but I think it's great that people are looking for new and interesting ways to interpret pop-culture.

[Greji]

[floatl]

I don't know? I thought it looked like AO in his Aomori jinbei! Does that mean I have to be purged for having lived in the 20th century?

I do think they reach too far trying to find some form of physcosis in everything we do, or enjoy no matter how difficult or how simple our actions are.

If some one attempts to read, write or actually do anything, there will be someone else making a living (or commissioning a government study) to find attributable indications of this person being bonkers for doing this.

[Kuang_Grade]

You are making an irrational assumption that these geeks have a life.

Well, without getting into a stem cell like debate about the nature of life, geeks need to get back to their real world activities (which are highly likely to involve some form of productive effort-how would they earn money to buy their toys otherwise?), while academics just go back to think of new ways to weasel grants and gnash their teeth about how nobody understands how brilliant and truly important they are.

[kurohinge1]

. . . academics just go back to think of new ways to weasel grants and gnash their teeth about how nobody understands how brilliant and truly important they are.

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