Why Must Twilight-Obsessed Women Ruin Comic-Con for Avatar-Obsessed Men?
We have gone through the geek looking glass, people! For years, Comic-Con has been a judgment-free zone where thousands of white men who love facial hair and Boba Fett in equal measure can get together and feel as one. Now, though, there is a disturbance in the force: women!
Of course, it's not as though women have never been to Comic-Con before, but the Twilight fans are a different breed: a young, gender-unequal demographic that's intensely vocal and passionate about the property in question. Oh hey, sort of like every other audience at Comic-Con, but with lady parts!
However, this refracted fandom does not please the male geeks who built Comic-Con, dammit. Slashfilm's Peter Sciretta notes the massive clusterfuck brewing in a post entitled "Will Twilight Ruin This Year's Comic-Con?" Oooh, a narrative! "Probably the most anticipated film at Comic-Con this year is James Cameron's Avatar...but only second to Tron 2," notes Sciretta. Totally true, except that Sciretta then pretty much admits that actually the most anticipated film is the Twilight sequel New Moon, which doesn't count because girls.
Still, the real confrontation is set to happen not on message boards but in Hall H, where all three films are booked one after the other:
Summit Entertainment's panel takes place 15 minutes after the close of the Avatar presentation. Anyone who attended last year's Comic-Con can attest to how much of a cluster-fuck was caused by Twilight's presentation in Hall H. Hundreds of tweens and Twilight Moms/Dads camped overnight to be the first ones into Hall H. By the time the "normal people" began to line up hours before doors were set to open, thousands of Twilighters were already in line.
"Normal people"! Excellent, we have ourselves a geek caste system.
Hall H fits 6,000-6,500 people , yet many people were shut out of the opening 20th Century Fox panel, and when the Summit panel began you couldn't even hear yourself think as four or five thousand Twilight fans screamed in unison. It was a bit sad seeing a 50-year-old Twilight Mom asking a 22-year old Robert Pattinson if he wears boxers or briefs, but I'm not writing today to talk about that.
Except kind of! Uncomfortably objectifying the celebrities at panels has no place at Comic-Con, unless they have breasts. We know this.
By placing the Summit panel (AKA The Twilight Saga: New Moon panel) as the third panel of the day, they are forcing thousands of movie fanatics out of Hall H. Unless you're willing to brave the crowds and show up 4-5 hours before HALL-H opens, the seats will be taken by Twilight fans.
And those people are not movie fanatics, except that they kind of must be, on account of being fanatics for this movie?
Anyway, this will be fun! Tony Scott, can you mediate?
· Will Twilight Ruin This Year's Comic-Con? [Slashfilm]
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Since the fanboys are awkward old virgins and the Twilight tweens are yearning underage virgins, maybe there's a way for everyone to engage in some light over-the-clothes petting and go home happy.
None happier than Chris Hansen, I'm sure.
re: "And those people are not movie fanatics, except that they kind of must be, on account of being fanatics for this movie?" Touché and Great post! Also the Pattinson part -- these fans are no more or less horny/inappropriate than any drooling straight boy Xena/SevenOfNine/Six/ fan...
The Comic-Conners have achieved what they always wanted -- total massive mainstreaming of geek culture. Now they realize that's not what they wanted after all.... ironic, eh?
Of course the fact that it is 2 women who did it (Rowling and Meyer) is interesting too. This generation of 12 year olds may actually be the first majority girl-geek generation. And the fact these girls love boy-on-boy slashfic bodes well for the gay-nerd contingent too.
Older bitchy male nerds whining about not being one of the first to see footage or to watch people talk about a movie that they'll be panning weeks later in order to look cool is something that should skip a cycle anyways. Leave that handiwork the tween pros of the world.
Plus, Robert Pattinson can only fit in that time slot in between avoiding the sun and bathing in sparkles.
Uh, meet you guys at Pokez for lunch, ok?
Of course there's a geek hierarchy. As you are dealing with hard-core nerds, it has been turned into a handy [url=http://www.brunching.com/images/geekchartbig.gif]chart[/url].
I get the anti reverse discrimination trend of this thread, but if you take conventions away from geeks, what do they have left? LAN parties? Let them have their little slice of the world!
In a way, I can understand Peter's bitching. If the way that Comic-Con schedules the events is causing one group of obsessed fans to be inconvenienced by the other, that's just bad form. People travel from all over just to go there and no one should have to be disappointed.
However, the way Peter went about saying this was just laughable and showed him to be a frustrated geek with his hands balled into fists while muttering "t-those dang GURLS! They don't understand how blue aliens are serious f'n business!"
But that's pretty much par the course for Slashfilm. OH SNAP
Uh, Brian, I think the point is that girls can be geeks, too. Having girls at conventions is hardly "taking away" those conventions. Or should we take conventions away only from those geeks unlucky enough not to have been born male?
And who says girls don't like LAN parties?
Come on, guys. Room in the clubhouse for everybody. 😉
The point is Comic-Con logistics system of panels s-u-c-k. They knew this would happen from last year's cluster. Why not schedule Twilight FIRST thing in the morning on the first day and get it out of the way? It's best for obsessed fans on all sides. The camping Twilighters will have their Robert Pattinson fantasies fulfilled and the rest of the geeks can enjoy the other panels without seeing throngs of girls who only remind them of the fact that they will never in their lives be able to please a woman. Problem solved.
Maybe Twilighters deserve their own Con. Since, as in most all things, GIRLS simply DO IT BETTER.
But seriously - I can understand these guys not wanting to be confronted by their shortcomings so blatantly, seeing how ill they fit in with these sweet, adorable young girls' (and many decently cool women's) fantasies.
They're kinda at Comic-Con, & into all that entails, to escape this very fact, no? I sort of do feel for them, in this regard. It's a harsh intrusion, reality.
All the 'duuurrr, bitter male virgins don't like being confronted with cute young girls' comments are absolutely brain dead. More like a group of obsessed fans doesn't like being completely shut out of a room hosting an event they are eager to see at a convention because a bunch of other obsessed fans have taken all the seats. It's like waiting for months to get tickets to a concert only to find at the last minute that fans of the back-up group have formed an alliance to crash the ticket selling servers and acquire all tickets for themselves in a couple of seconds.
Turning this into a gender conflict is tiresome, and a massive cheap shot. This is not uncool guys not wanting to be confronted with cool girls. News flash: the people lining up overnight to get seats in the Twilight panel are every bit as pathetic...no, scrap that, MORE PATHETIC than the guys who line up the next day and want to get into a panel. I don't think the problem that geeks have with this crowd is that it's made up of girls and women, but that they're batshit insane.
CHRAD says: 'Turning this into a gender conflict is tiresome, and a massive cheap shot. This is not uncool guys not wanting to be confronted with cool girls. News flash: the people lining up overnight to get seats in the Twilight panel are every bit as pathetic...no, scrap that, MORE PATHETIC than the guys who line up the next day and want to get into a panel. I don't think the problem that geeks have with this crowd is that it's made up of girls and women, but that they're batshit insane.'
one cheap shot for another eh?
Stating that crowd A is batshit insane for lining up overnight to see the stars of a film is not a cheap-shot. On the other hand, suggesting that the frustration of the locked-out-of-a-panel crowd B actually stems from their being bitter and sexually unfulfilled (because they're at a comics convention, LOL!) is.
Tempus Fugit gets it right. I don't think that the problem is that their are crazy Twilight fans who literally camp overnight to fill out Hall H at Comic-Con, I think that its organisation that disadvantages one group in favor of another. Knowing the lengths Twilight-crowd have shown they go to get seats, the Comic-Con organisers should have scheduled the Twilight panel first thing in the morning. That way, everyone's satisfied. Twilight people don't need to wait so long (after already braving the night) to see their panel, and everyone else actually gets to access the events they want to see.
In any case, Comic-Con have shifted the 'Avatar' panel until after the Twilight Panel, so I imagine they understand this too. The Twilight event should have come first, though.
I agree with everyone saying that Twilight fans have as much right to be at the event as anyone else. There is an element of old-school geeks feeling threatened by the Twilight fanbase and what they represent, but I also think they have a valid point about the organisation of the event that goes much further than such pettiness. Speaking of which, I need to point out that all of the suggestions in this thread that Twilight fans are normal, well functioning women who intimidate geeks with their superiority are nonsense. Maybe the Comic-Book Guy archetype is too strongly embedded into our consciousness and people aren't ready for the advent of Comic-Book (vampire book?) Girls, but their are many Twilight fans are just as lonely and withdrawn into fantasy as the male geeks people in this thread are mocking. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions to this generalisation, but the same can be said of all pop-cultural contingents: you have your hopeless cases, reality escapers, social fans and casual fans.
Hey, I AM a girl and I think a Twilight screening would be more at home at a Jonas brothers fan convention. Perhaps with some High School Musical thrown in as well.
This is not about a gender bias. It's about taste. That stuff is just tacky.
I'm soo looking forward to James Cameron's Avatar.
Hilarious! Both the article and this comment by No Wire Hangers.
What??? You nerds have been the only ones to get crazed about anything for so long you don;t know what to do with a mass greater than yours!!?? So what?? So someone cares about a saga as much as you care about the Star Wars saga. It's high time you kids quit acting like a bunch of bitches and grow up. Quit crying in your cheerios...it's just teen girls. Oh wait...I forgot...that's exactly who you're afraid of!
I agree that it is hardly a gender issue. While the vast majority of Twihards may be girls and the vast majority of regular Comic-Connees may be men it is an matter purely of taste. What makes the two crowds different is that Twihards are at the stage of being socially accepted. E! News is practically bending over to kiss it's ass and every celeb talk show is asking Rob P the same questions about his hair. Did the superficial programmes ever give vintage comic book readers our indulgence? NO! We do what we do cause we like it enough to withstand society's judgement while they do what they do for the capacity. Maybe they are the same when you look at them objectively: losers objectifying hot characters but why is it that society treats the two groups so differently? I'm just gonna move to Asia where there are more female manga geeks than male and they have their own channels for it. Plus I'd be surprised if any of them gave a shit about Twilight.
Let's send a message and make James Cameron's "Avatar" the biggest hit of the century!!!
For starters, I am NOT a male chauvenist. I have no problem w/ more females fans in Comic Con at all, but I am worried about the trend this is setting in films and comics, in general. Hardcore action & fantasy films, in particular superhero films, are probably going to get an even more "Twilight"-like bent to attract more women, which won't bode well w/ fanboys, but in particular fans of good storytelling & writing. Even more "chick-a-fication" is on the way; younger stars, terrible acting, & stilted dialogue to a theater near you. Alot of movies today are becoming too much of a showcase for actors & stories that appeal to the younger, underdeveloped brains of the tween, Disney-crowd, and that's simply going to make for films worse.
I'll give you an example; if the classic science fiction/horror film "Alien" were filmed & directed today, we wouldn't have Tom Skerrit as Dallas, but some 20-something cornball stud actor w/ gel in his hair, flexing his abs while trying to find the alien in the tunnels! lol! Pretty soon we won't be abe to tell if the next action/fantasy/superhero film is a new X-Men offshoot or another "Twilight" flick!!
Let's face it, "Twilight" is a primarily tween-teen/female phenomenon and that's fine, as long, as for example, any new Conan films or Batman flicks are NOT specifically tweaked & geared towards them, if you catch my drift. But it will be used as a template for sure-fire success and that's going to demolish what integrity comic book/fantasy films have. This would be a huge step backward. But that I what I fear is coming, if we are not already there now. In some other cases, this trend is also going to make already-dumbed films even dumber, because fans of "Twilight" are not objective about how good or bad these films are, as long as it's geared toward them.
There's still hope, though. Let's send a message and make James Cameron's "Avatar" the biggest hit of the century!!! lol!
haha!! I didnt think New Moon or Twilight was that good, and I`m a 13 year old girl...rofl. I saw Avatar 3 times and each time I saw the beautiful colours and stunning CGI I thought holy shit!!! Avatar is my favourite movie......hehe :3
Does Paris Hilton actually think that we all believe she thought the drug was candy. When she will fail the drug test, what will she say ? This child has probably test some drugs... She's 29 and continues to be a party hound. She probably forgot about the cocaine because she was too high.
By the large volume of comments here, it seems that this article did it's job and got people stirred up. Hey, at least it's generating a conversation. That's always a good thing.
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