32. Future Convention
20TH-CENTURY AMERICA FAN EXPO
Future Convention
Picture a convention center in a major metropolitan area, and think of all the conventions which pass through its doors, the attendees gliding across the calculatedly neutral designs that decorate the thickly carpeted floors. Think of the vendors, the costumed fans, the star guests, the businessmen; the babble of voices in the main hall, the smiles real and feigned, the half-heard conversations and bitter sideways glances, the hugs and handshakes; the floors littered with pamphlets and business cards, the impromptu dinner plans made in the lobby as people pile into taxis, and the particular air of sadness that fills the main hall once the final night of festivities is over and everyone has gone home.
Now imagine many years hence, in some future city within a nation that is yet to rise, a banner outside a convention center announces: 20TH-CENTURY AMERICA FAN EXPO. Inside a cavernous space, the convention is set up — rows upon rows of booths and elaborate displays, a schedule of celebrity speakers and prominent academics, and a sea of vendors hawking their wares: authentic posters for Hollywood films taken from the ruins of actual movie palaces, weathered binders filled with the yellowed, brittle printouts of long-dead corporate bylaws, soda cans rusted into near- oblivion (‘See, there, that blotch of color? That’s an M — this was a Mountain Dew,’ a dealer explains), vintage TV Guides salvaged from mouldering Midwestern basements, unopened candy bars, matchboxes bearing the logos of extinct gas stations, a large municipal traffic sign whose words have faded from centuries of sunlight.
‘Wouldn’t there be some trace radiation on these if they were authentic?’ asks a skeptical convention-goer, passing his small handheld Geiger counter over a stack of ancient action figures. The vendor on the other side of the display table indignantly defends his wares as if defending his ancestral honor: ‘This collection was taken from North Dakota, far from the blast zones. Read the historical maps yourself — the wind patterns of the time were such that no irradiated ash was blown that far north. Check the maps!’
And the costumes, everywhere the costumes — a veritable sea of costumed convention-goers. There is the iconic archetype of the Overweight American Businessman, complete with gray-templed wig, dark brown suit, and exotically strange “necktie” accessory. Also popular are the many variations of the Hollywood Movie Star and the Corrupt Politician, along with the Housewife, the Homeless Person, the Auto Mechanic, the Jazz Musician, the News Anchor, the Convenience Store Shoplifter, the Low-Wage Employee.
One of the 20th century’s most novel social inventions — and as such, the most popular character costume by far — is that of the American Teenager. Charmingly anachronistic and instantly identifiable, the teenager stands as a high-concept synthesis of child and adult, an image emblematic of the naiveté and opulence of the Western world which gave it birth.
At any given convention, there are dozens upon dozens of fans of all ages dressed up as teenaged youth, with slicked-back, coiffed, or exquisitely mussed hairdos, clad in white T-shirts with rolled sleeves or bobby-soxer get-ups, sporting jackets emblazoned with the names of antique musical groups and baseball teams.
And of course, beneath the mirth and escapist fun of these conventions, there is a great well of darkness: the ever-present memory of what happened to the vanished world of the West. While many of the convention-goers would dearly love to visit the lost land of America at the height of its grandiose past, none of them like to dwell on what it must have been like to live during that society’s swift and shuddering end.
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