So many bodies sliding across one another. There are two rooms, each one huge, but neither offers much negative space once the people arrive in force. The bodies press in hard. I am at Monster-Mania.
After a weekend in this whirlpool of flesh, my back ached and my feet hurt, but I was not miserable. There is something purifying about being one small piece of a throbbing, sweaty puzzle. And there was much to think about. I spent the weekend of November 10-12 at the greater Philadelphia Monster-Mania con, in Oaks, PA. I've written before about events like these. Last spring I went to Steel City Con on the other side of the state and reported about community and the thrill of celebrity-sighting.
This time around, my mind spun around three things:
i.
First, the event oozed with commerce. Before one made it to the celebrity room (filled with cast members from the Scream franchise, Alice Cooper, a nifty Hellraiser duo, and the two leads from An American Werewolf in London -- which was the main draw for me — see the images below), one had to squeeze through the artist and vendor room, which was tightly-lined with hundreds of sellers.
I am not opposed to the commercial part of the cons. I enjoy the work of several artists on the circuit and I like supporting them. (I mentioned Corey from Vile Consumption last time. Let me add Nickolas Jackson from CineTredici Art to the list here; some really insightful and creative work from him — I picked up his piece inspired by John Carpenter’s The Fog, because of course I did. Also, a longtime favorite of mine is Byron Winton, whose skill has few rivals — his take on Hannibal is the best I’ve ever seen).
My geeky enthusiasm notwithstanding, the tight confluence of identity and commerce was not lost on me, however. The room was filled with people who have built their identities on the foundation of horror fandom, much more than even me in most cases. And there are plenty of people there to sell them symbols of that identity to wear on their bodies and on the walls of their homes. I was honestly surprised at the public tattooing rituals that lined one aisle. My posters will come down one day, the devotion of the folks lying on leather tables to be inked will follow them to their graves.
Entering the celebrity rooms is no release from the buying and selling, either. No only were we waiting in line for hours to meet our idols, we paid them on arrival. There is a lot of money in identity.
ii.
I remain struck by the instant bonds that can be formed when people recognize someone who knows what the hell they've been talking about all this time. On Saturday, I saw a man standing along a wall (one of the few harbors of rest available). He wore a shirt with a demonic face on it, surrounded by the words "Satan is good. Satan is our pal." I immediately recognized the line from the classic Tom Hanks horror comedy The Burbs. When I walked up to him and offered my appreciation, he lit up. I got the reference and this made him happy. Someone understood a part of him, which was too rare.
I had similar experiences talking with the artists I mentioned above. Their work differs a great deal from one another stylistically, but they share a deep knowledge of their subject matter. In short, the art they make shows they've experienced the movies I love as deeply as I have.
Finding a place where I don't feel like such a weirdo is no small thing.
iii.
I've been thinking a lot about DEI lately. It's easy to understand the value and importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for people like me, and for people who work in spaces like where I work.
It's also easy to understand the backlash such initiatives engender, especially when they are used as political blunt instruments. There are Substacks almost entirely devoted to these critiques and I have no intention of turning this one into one of those.
However, as I looked around Monster-Mania, I did see a beautiful diversity in that pulsating sea of tattooed, vaping flesh. The common devotion to this identity opened the doors of the Greater Oaks Convention Center to any kind of person one could imagine. Racial, religious, sexual-orientation, gender identities of all types, not to mention a sizeable population of people with disabilities. I’m not sure you’d call the place accessible, but that didn’t stop anyone who wanted to be there. The con was a true cross-section of all the groups that we can imagine including in our societies.
However, I also had a hard time imagining this version of diversity and inclusion would be very tolerable for some of the loudest, most partisan proponents of DEI.
This was not group that conformed to the DEI vision articulated in humanities graduate programs and in corporate seminars on the subject.
The jargon associated with the enterprise would have been alienating and, ironically, exclusionary here. This was a working-class diversity, for lack of a better term. And it brought together a huge swath of society that saw many races, ethnicities, expressions of disability, gender identities, sexual orientations, and body sizes merge into a unified mass. But like any real diversity, many of those gathered were rude and antagonistic to polite society. I'm thinking of the bearded thirty-something white man wearing the "Fuck You, You Fucking Fucks" t-shirt here. Or the t-shirts reading “Jason Fucking Vorhees.” Or the ones making the heady proclamation “No Lives Matter.”
One of the less-than-savory aspects of this horror-fan identity is the tendency toward transgression for its own sake. And there were many examples of people that would be labeled toxic (not incorrectly) by DEI session leaders.
The people, both men and women, buying and selling swag that celebrates various serial killers had certainly never sat through a Women’s Studies class about structural misogyny. And there are dissertations waiting to be written about the sudden, massive, and gruesomely-devoted fan base of the grotesque Terrifier franchise.
Yet even they were welcomed here. And often they laughed and bonded with the con attendee in drag.
In the end, I don't know what to make of my thoughts after this weekend. For diversity and inclusion to work, it has to be as confounding and frustrating and beautiful as this weekend, I suppose.