April 2010

The fourth day of my trip to the PCA/ACA conference proved to be as intellectually stimulating as the last, and it began with a fun discussion of cannibals! Here’s the recap, followed by more additions to the reading list: –The panel on cannibals in horror literature and film was somewhat disturbing. One of the panelists spent a considerable amount of time talking about rather controversial films about cannibals from the 60s and so on. Disturbing? Yes. Interesting? Very. There was also some discussion of the evolution of vampires in popular cultural consciousness and other fun things like that. –One of the panels I attended actually involved the discussion of three novels I read for the same science fiction course back when I was an undergrad (Black No More by George Schuyler, Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler). All the papers presented had a lot to say, but I think the most interesting was the one on Butler’s novel, which talked about the different representations of community in Butler’s post-apocalyptic Earth. –The most shocking experience was having someone discuss a paper on Pokemon in such a manner that I can honestly say I was completely mind-effed. Think of it this way. Take the Master/Slave dialectic and apply it to Pokemon. Exactly. I recall groaning out loud when I saw that that paper was on a panel I wanted to go to, but looking back I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised! Reading/Watching List:–Vampire in Brooklyn–The Historian–Der Vampir–The Giaour–The Vampyre–The Mysterious Stranger–Cannibal Holocaust–I Am Legend–Let the Right One In (book)–Otherness by David Brin–Black Empire by George Schuyler–Phillip Wegner on writing the Republic–“The Other Question” by Homi K. Bhabha–Buffy (series) There you have it!

Day three started in the publisher’s room, which is not unlike a dealer’s room at an Anime or science fiction convention, only there are academic books and journals for sale (or for free), rather than toys and movies (though sometimes there are movies up for grabs). I managed to snatch up a few fascinating titles, which I’ll mention at the end of this post. For now, here is a brief recap of the panels I attended, followed by additions to the reading list I started here and a list of the things I purchased (for cheap, I might add): –The first panel I attended was on the work of Stephen King. I’m not much of a Stephen King fan, but I am a huge fan of the movie It. One of the presenters was talking about that book/movie in particular; she made the curious point that monsters in horror often act as a way for us to indulge in anti-social behavior and to release emotions through channels that don’t threaten our subjectivity or social lives. I tend to agree, though I hope to get the opportunity to read the full paper soon. –I had ulterior motives for attending so many horror panels at the PCA/ACA conference. I’m not a horror scholar, but, well, we’ll just leave it at that. The second horror panel of the third day turned out to be equally as fascinating, dealing extensively with Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, along with some other issues. There was some talk of adaptations of King’s work into things like picture books and artwork, but the most interesting paper dealt with the nature of faces in Pet Sematary (he was dealing particularly with Deleuze and Guattari’s discussions of faciality in A Thousand Plateaus). It was a fascinating panel. –Probably the most useful panel for me was the publishing panel for the Journal of Popular Culture and the Journal of American Culture. I learned quite a bit about what they are looking for and so on. I’ll be submitting something to the popular culture journal for sure. –There was another panel I attended, but it was by far overshadowed by the showing of Killer Klowns From Outer Space in the late evening. I’ve never seen it before, and if you haven’t, you should. It’s the most ridiculous and hilarious horror farce I have seen in a long time. It does it’s humor in a way that horror spoofs don’t today. It was a blast being in a room of thirty people, and the fine folks at the hotel provided popcorn for the viewing. Plus, I won a copy of The Bride of Chucky! Good times! Reading/Watching List:–It by Stephen King–Babcock on the trickster figure–Duma Key by Stephen King–The Dark Tower series by Stephen King–George Beam/Beme’s book on visual representations of Stephen King’s work–Lesley Fielder on the fall of innocence–Joseph Campbell on the epic hero–The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (popup book) by Stephen King–Linda Hutcheons on adaptation–Ursula K. Le Guin on the carriage bag theory–Pet Sematary–Deleuze and Guattari on faciality (A Thousand Plateaus)–Slavov Zizek on Pet Sematary–Jean Francis Lyotard on the inhuman–Three Extremes (film)–The Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Old Boy, and Lady Vengeance (films)–Fight Club (film)–The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes–House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski–The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes–The Transitionist by Iain M. Banks–Dark Matter by Various–Patricia Briggs’ novels–Stanley Fish on the authorial community Books I Bought:–History, the Human, and the World Between by R. Radhakrishnan–Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction by Various (edited by Mark Bould and China Mieville)–FemSpec Volume 3, Issue 2 (2002)–Conversations With Ursula K. Le Guin edited by Carl Freedman–Conversations With Octavia Butler edited by Conseula Francis–Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall–Cyberculture, Cyborgs, and Science Fiction: Consciousness and the Posthuman by William S. Haney II–Conversations With Samuel R. Delany edited by Carl Freedman And there you have it. More to come!

The first day of the actual Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conference proved to be one of the best of the entire event, not least because of my presentation at 2:30 PM. But we’ll get to that in a minute. The day began innocently enough. Luckily for me, I roomed with a particularly interesting fellow named Randall, who is actually a neuroscientist. The sad thing about being an English major is that you don’t get much opportunity to chill with folks outside of your department. Some part of this is because people in other departments look down on us English folks; the other part is because English people are generally terrified of scientists due to the fact that they have giant ninja stars that shoot out of their hands and hit random passersby. Okay, so that’s a load of crap. I have no idea why English types don’t hang out with science types. You’ll have to figure that out on your own. First things first, I presented a paper on a panel about Battlestar Galactica. Specifically, the panel was concerned with posthuman identity and revolution within the BSG, which fit my paper (“Otherism: The Dissection of Humanity and the Negation of the Human in Battlestar Galactica”) quite well. The most interesting thing about this panel was how each of my fellow presenters had a paper that interacted with the others, including my own. Each of us had something interesting to say about hybridity, the Other, reactionary politics, and so on, and this made for a very connected and, I think, powerful panel. If you’ve ever attended an academic conference (three total for me now), you’ll know that panels which end up with a hodgepodge of ideas tend to end up with equally as hodgepodged questions from the audience–sometimes presenters get no questions at all. This wasn’t a problem for my panel. I presented last (and was the only one to use PowerPoint), and when all was done, the questions came flying in. Quite a few were directed at me, and some were directed to all of us, since we all were dealing with similar issues. Of all the conferences I have attended and presented at, this is by far the best response I have ever received. Some panels end up with rather lackluster discussion, but we actually had a rather robust discussion amongst ourselves and the audience. When all was said and done, the panel went astonishingly well. I even had someone comment at the end that I looked comfortable up at the podium (I was terrified, but it’s nice to know that I look pretty good up there and that self-deprecating humor still works among academics). I was extraordinarily pleased and I hope that I will end up in a similar situation in the future. Now enough about me. A brief recap of everything else I managed to see and do, followed by a quick reading list: –I attended an interesting panel that was, unfortunately, mislabeled as “Celebrating Diversity in Science Fiction.” Yes, it was clear that the papers represented the interesting diversity of ideas within science fiction, but none of them were explicitly about diversity, so much as interesting analyses of shows like the original Twilight Zone, and other work like John Ringo’s controversial military science fiction, Pratchett’s Discworld series, and a fellow named Bixby who wrote some children’s novels some time ago. The Discworld paper was the most interesting; it discussed the nature of belief within Pratchett’s world and absolutely made me want to read his work (the presenter of that paper ended up being one of my conference buddies, of which everyone needs at least one). –Zombies were a big hit this year (as compared to all the other years that I didn’t attend…). I saw a rather informative panel that gave some historical perspective on zombies. You don’t hear much about the origins of zombie myths and literature in modern culture these days; it’s a welcome reprieve from what has since become the popular conception of the zombie. Reading/Watching list:–The Night Trials by Joan Crawford–John Ringo’s Posleen War series–Startup Nation–The Vanishing Village by Hazel Townson (?)–Twilight Zone–“It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby–The Plan (Battlestar Galactica)–How We Became Posthuman by Katherine Hayles–Homi Bhabha on subjectivity–Foucault on subjectivity–Judith Butler on the psyche as a remainder–Bruce Clark on cybernetic humans–Brian Willems’ discussion of Heidegger’s theories about death There you have it!

(A little overdue, but so be it.) Day one of my trip to the Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conference in St. Louis, Missouri proved to be rather informative. First, I learned a few things about air travel: No matter what airport you go to, you will not get on the plane if you show up anything less than 35 minutes before your flight takes off. It doesn’t matter if your airport is the smallest airport in the whole United States, or if there are only a handful of people there, or whatever. You won’t get on the plane. If you are a self-professed liberal or atheist, you will get searched on your way out of any conservative city. They’ll be nice about it and tell you that it’s random, but when it happens every single time, you start to wonder. (I don’t know if this one is actually true; it probably isn’t, but it’s entertaining nonetheless.) The people who make subway systems want you to get lost. Instead of putting a lovely map up there that flat out tells you which train to get on and where to get off, in the most simple and easiest way to understand, they have confusing maps that tourists might find rather daunting. And that’s what I learned. Now for the first day: The trip began in, you guessed it, Gainesville, FL, where I was uncharacteristically late by 10 minutes (meaning that I still had 25 minutes to board the plane). There was nobody in line, nobody in the security line, and one fellow at the counter who had nothing else to do. It was still my fault, but I found it rather irksome that I had to pay $50 to change flights (one that was 2 hours later and yet still got me to St. Louis at a decent hour). Why did I miss the flight? I wanted a hard copy of my final paper in my hands for the big day, just in case one of those journal editor types showed up and wanted me to submit it. It’s smart business is all. Anyway. After changing flights and paying the ridiculous one-way checked-baggage charge (don’t get me started again), I went and sat around for two hours, staring at my bag on the mat in front of the TSA scanner gizmo. Why was I standing there? Because, like a good citizen, I didn’t want to leave the blasted bag there and have the whole bloody airport in an uproar all because the TSA guy who was supposed to scan the bag didn’t want to be out and about doing his job. After my bag was checked and everything was in order, I got something to eat, waited for an hour and a half, had the distinct pleasure of hearing a baby scream bloody murder for fifteen minutes, and then went through airport security, where I was summarily executed…I mean searched. The cool part about being searched is that you start to learn about all the cool technology we have. Did you know they have a little machine that can check if there are traces of explosives or the contents that make them on your person in a matter of seconds? All the guy has to do is wipe your hand with a dry baby wipe and put it in the machine and that’s it! Cool? I think so! An hour later I was in Atlanta, one of the two cities you can go to if you’re in Gainesville. The other is Charlotte, but I’ve only ever been there once, I think, and I distinctly remember it being unmemorable. After another two hours, I landed in St. Louis. There I discovered that not only is it easy to get confused on the train system (the Metro Link, as they call it), but that trains at night are bloody scary. There’s a story here, I promise. So, I got a ticket and got on the train and decided to sit right under the little map for the two routes in St. Louis. It wasn’t until the train had already set off to lands unknown that I discovered that my chosen seat was three rows away from a slightly mental man. This man proceeded to have a full on conversation with himself in the manner that you might expect of someone on drugs–this was not a the normal crazy person kind. The odd thing is, I kept looking back at him and seeing one of my friends from school, who used to smoke pot and had the exact same look on his face. Some moments later, a rather rowdy bunch of youngsters (boy am I getting old) hopped on and started making weird remarks and giggling to themselves. I don’t know if they were laughing at me (probably the only person of my kind to ride the train that late at night), at their friends, or at the crazy guy, but I spent a good deal of the time avoiding eye contact. If you’ve dealt with young people before, you know that looking them in the eye is like asking for death. They have a way of eating into your soul like a parasite and sucking the life right out of you. That’s why parents age. Look it up. It’s in the Bible. At some point on this trip the conductor decided to phone it in on the announcements. Her voice went from being clear and concise to muffled and incomprehensible. And that’s where the confusion began. About eight stops in, I got confused. I’ve never been to St. Louis, and so having your one lifeline (i.e. the conductor) turn into a mumbling stranger is a great way to have your brain get lost in all the flashy lights and passenger nonsense. I ended up getting off the train, thinking I had missed my stop, and then realized I was on the right train all along, and headed the correct direction again…only