(This is a true story. All names, dates, and locations in
this story have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. In the interests of decorum euphemisms have been used to replace some of story's more colorful language.)
Back in the 80s I was involved with an anime fan club in a
large Southeastern city. To this city
came "Melvin", a charming and gregarious fellow who was a very
talented artist. Older, with more fan
experience and contacts, he quickly became friend to all, host of many
gatherings, a valuable club official, and participant in our various anime-fan
projects, schemes, pranks, and other young-adult shenanigans.
Sadly, Melvin developed wanderlust and he moved to, oh,
let's say, Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. He hooked up with the fan community in a
nearby large city and, as an extrovert among introverts, quickly became an
integral part of that community as well. Club meetings, conventions,
newsletters, gaming sessions, tape swapping; he was in the thick of it.
But all was not well.
Jealousy and suspicion lurked in the hearts of some of his new-found
compatriots. Melvin became the target of
an anonymous hate-letter campaign, which sent letters to anime clubs across the
country decrying this newcomer, casting doubt as to his motives and his morals,
and begging for information as to his previous nefarious deeds in other
cities. I received one of these letters
and immediately got on the telephone to Melvin and asked him what in the Wide
World Of Sports was going on?
What was going on was nothing more than the dumbest-ass kind
of dumb-ass fan politicking BS. Some of
the local fans in the Frostbite Falls region resented Melvin's outgoing
demeanor, his "why bother" attitude towards persnickity fandom rules
and regulations, and in general the concept that this brash outsider could
waltz in and take over THEIR anime club. In turn, Melvin found himself
exasperated at the childish attitude of those who would vote him into the
club's leadership cadre, appoint him librarian in charge of the club's
videotape library, and at the same time start an anonymous smear campaign
behind his back.
Right around this time, one of the club's founding
members... let's call him Fred Mertz - Fred got transferred out of town. Way out of town. Fred was the local tape god and had lots and
lots of old-time anime tapes - 13th gen VHS copies of movies, TV shows and
OVAs, gathered from wherever and whoever. As was the custom of beneficent tape
deities, Fred would duplicate items from this collection for the benefit of
club members and whoever could send blanks and return postage. However, Fred wasn't going to take hundreds
of VHS tapes with him on his trip, so the collection was donated to the club's
library. The club agreed that our friend Melvin, as tape librarian, should have
the cheerful duty of copying all these tapes onto other tapes that would be
loaned out to club members at meetings.
That's right, the same club members who felt Melvin's presence was as
odious as to require an anonymous smear campaign, also felt Melvin should spend
his free time duplicating anime video tapes for their benefit.
And that's just what happened; Melvin copied tapes and
brought them to the meetings and club members borrowed them. Until one day when Melvin's house was
robbed. Robbed in broad daylight by
people who knew what they were after - the Fred Mertz collection. Nothing else was touched. Just the tapes were gone. Not a trace of them was found, no copies were
unearthed that seemed to come from the collection - and what would be the point
of stealing these tapes if you couldn't brag about having them, or show them to
anybody? Remember, this was in the days
before torrenting, before Amazon, before DVD
box sets. A collection like Fred’s was
fairly unique, and its appearance among any gathering of anime fans would cause
a stir.
The tapes remained gone.
Melvin soon left Frostbite Falls
for greener pastures. The anime club
disintegrated, as many of them do. Years
passed. I caught up with Melvin at an
anime convention in a completely different part of the country, and soon we
were relaxing in the hot tub catching up.
But there was one thing I had to know.
"Melvin," I asked.
"Melvin - I just gotta know.
What REALLY happened to the Fred Mertz tapes?"
Melvin laughed.
"Dave, I'll tell you the truth.
You want to know what happened to the tapes? I’ll tell you what happened
to the tapes. I SET THE MOTHER
SCRATCHERS ON FIRE."
"I went out to the back yard and I opened up the grill,
and I got the lighter fluid, and I carried the boxes of tapes out there and I
just TORCHED THE WHOLE JUMP-ROPING LOT OF THEM.
They all went up in smoke. If
those jump-roping mother-scratchers in that anime club thought I was going to
take their back-stabbing and their anonymous abuse without FIGHTING BACK, they
were WRONG. JUMP-ROPING WRONG, DAVE.
"
I was horrified. And
yet at the same time I was amazed at the brilliance of the act, at the
theatrical, Biblical proportions of what he'd done. He'd taken the most holy objects of anime
fandom - VHS tapes of Japanese cartoons
- and destroyed them in a ritual that both punished the sinful AND
freed them from the object of their desire, ALL
AT ONCE.
Was he right or wrong?
Should we condemn or applaud this act?
I don't know. Certainly in the
greater scheme of things, a tape collection isn't much to get worked up about,
and the club, certain members of it anyway, well, they certainly deserved
punishment. On the other hand, it was,
let's face it, destruction of somebody else's property. I can't say what I'd do in that situation,
and before anybody is quick to cast judgment, I would remind them of the Indian
proverb that says not to judge a man until you've walked a mile in his
moccasins, or copied Project A-Ko or the Macross movie a few hundred times.
With the distance of miles and years, I believe we can look
back on the events and draw a few conclusions.
First off, if you have a problem with a club or with a club officer,
air your grievances publicly through healthy and constructive criticism. And secondly, if you DO mount an anonymous
smear campaign against somebody, DON'T LOAN
THEM YOUR VIDEOTAPES.
