Failure Modes of Panels
"The Failure mode of Clever is 'Asshole'." -John Scalzi
Apropos of sartorias's post on con programming and my previous post on critical discourse, I wanted to (briefly) talk about common ways that panels can fall apart, and then dig into why they rarely achieve a level of discourse beyond that of an undergraduate seminar.
(Also, Scalzi's point is pithy but far from universal. Often the failure mode of clever is 'boring', 'pointless', or 'wow, that was dumb'. Anyway...)
Common ways to screw up a panel:
1) Write the topic badly. swan_tower and I had some back-and-forth in the comments of sartorias's post on this topic, which I felt highlighted two distinct failure modes - writing the topic too narrowly (constraining discourse or posing a question that's easily answered with a "yes" or "no"), and writing the topic too broadly (so the panelists and moderators are left flailing for traction). I think that 'writing too narrowly' can also crop up in other ways - asking leading questions, for example, or putting up straw men.
The key here is that the panel topic needs to be able to serve two purposes: It needs to spark interesting discussion, and it needs to indicate to con-goers whether they're interested in the panel or not. Which, because many experienced con-goers pick panels based on the panelists, leads into...
2) Bad/Inappropriate Panelists or Moderators. Lots of the discussion around panels in Sherwood's post revolved around the truism that good panelists can be fun to listen to about nearly any topic, while one or two bad panelists or a bad moderator can take the most carefully-written panel topic and run it into the ground. I honestly tend to think about this problem in terms of class or seminar composition. Surely most people have been in a class or seminar discussion which was dominated by one mouthy jerk who the teacher couldn't rein in? Or one where no one had read the text or was really interested in it, and so they all mumbled and didn't make eye contact? Or where the most interesting person in the class kept getting their comments drowned out by other people's jabber?
The key here would seem to be twofold. First, pick panelists and moderators that are all reasonably (and appropriately) well-socialized - re: the parenthetical, having a quiet and decorous moderator with several passionate but obstreperous panelists is not what you want to do here. Second, pick panelists and moderators with an established interest in either the panel topic itself or areas immediately adjacent to it. This is often easier said than done, but it's really important, in order to help avoid ending up with...
3) Argumentation rather than Conversation. I'm not saying disagreement is bad for a panel. (As you'll see below, I like a lively disagreement.) But acrimonious disagreement, where people fall back on rhetorical tricks and treat the panel as a competition rather than discussing the topic in good faith... that's usually a really bad sign. A panel's value comes from the panelists and moderator talking to each other and building on or off of each other's points. When panelists aren't listening to each other, that value-creation becomes impossible.
Good moderation and careful panelist selection seem to be the only way to avoid this one.
4) Vagueness and Platitudes. As a corollary to my previous point, the reason I'm in favor of lively disagreements is that one of the more common ways I see panelists stop building on previous discussion is by rapidly agreeing to some vague statement or truism - "A story needs the ending it needs!", or "A character's death should come as the natural result of their character arc!" (see this post by mrissa) - and then wibbling about and failing to clarify what said generality means to them, or to give concrete examples.
I get that there is a strong fear of spoiling stories for others that's emerged of late, and I sympathize with it, but as I've said before, concrete examples are vital to any sort of critical discourse. So not only do we need to name names (and again, I get the reluctance here - it's a small field) and go into why they worked or didn't work for us, we also need to be clear what they're examples of. (The otherwise worthwhile Happy Endings panel at FOGcon fell down here, IIRC.)
Social pressure for the desired level of clarity from the moderator, fellow panelists, or even the audience can help here, though unfortunately it's not guaranteed to work.
Failure Modes and Levels of Discourse:
Given the preceding (high level, and certainly incomplete) list of ways in which panels can fail, it's no surprise that most programming chairs and moderators are going to be more concerned with heading off bad panels than elevating the level of discourse on good panels. And I sympathize, I truly do. But in conventions which have already addressed or mostly addressed the sorts of issues described above (I'm thinking of smaller, single-track conventions like Fourth Street Fantasy or Farthing Party here) I think there's room to grow beyond "Yay, the panel was fun and didn't suck!" stage.
I want to emphasize that the following "failure modes" are essentially First-World problems; there's a certain amount of privilege involved in being able to worry about them. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they aren't problems, just that they shouldn't be considered at length before you've already laid a strong foundation.
5) Panel says nothing new/Covers well-trodden ground. This is something we've seen at Fourth Street off and on for the last couple of years, especially on the Food, Fashion, and Fornication panel (and its variants and sequels). That panel is a lot of fun, and involves people telling interesting stories and anecdotes. Trouble is, for those of us who were there last year? Often they're the exact same anecdotes, told by the exact same people.
This isn't a problem limited to repeat con-goers and recurring panels, of course. I'm sure that most of us have been subjected to the kind of arguments that tend to break out on C.S. Lewis panels, or Tolkien panels, or Philip Pullman panels, or... you get the idea. There are a lot of ongoing fannish discussions which seem to circle back to the same damn arguments over and over again (see failure mode #3), partly because fannish controversies never die (they only ossify), and partly because there's a constant flow or trickle of participants for whom the arguments aren't old hat yet, and don't quite understand why others don't want to fight the same exact battle for the twenty-billionth time.
This isn't just a question of panel topics and panelists, though. It's also connected to failure mode #4, and the fact that (as I noted above) getting to the point where it's a problem can be hard work. The fact of the matter is that it's easy to get bogged down in the same old disputes, easy to fall back on platitudes, and hard to actually spur discussion into new channels. Getting new panelists involved seems like it would help, but see my point about new participants exhuming old controversies. Sometimes new blood will help, depending on the specific nature of the problem, but it's not a panacea.
And then there's failure mode #6, and it's a doozy.
6) Panel leaves the audience behind/Limits itself out of fear of leaving the audience behind.
Let's say you've got a great, well-written topic and a dream slate of panelists. (Mine would probably involve some combination of papersky, truepenny, swan_tower, mrissa, pameladean, matociquala, and sartorias, but YMMV.) Posit that everyone is attending to each other and being specific and concrete with their examples. Heck, let's assume that the ground being covered is new and interesting and exhilarating, even for longtime fans!
Then the time for questions from the audience comes around, and it immediately becomes clear from the first question that the person asking it hasn't kept up. I mean, really hasn't kept up - they're still back in platitude land or last year's panel.
To what extent should we ensure that a panel discussion doesn't go over people's heads?
My considered reaction here is, "It depends." Various cons cater to different audiences, with different levels of sophistication. To take the most extreme example, at San Diego Comicon, I think that a panel of BNAs that's speaking to a room with over a thousand people in it has an obligation to keep what they're saying comprehensible to most of the audience. At Worldcon, I'd say that more can be expected from audience members, though with audiences of hundreds, the obligation to go back and explain and unpack is still there.
My *unconsidered* reaction (which I think is totally valid for cons like ICFA and Fourth Street, which can and should assume a certain critical acumen on the part of their attendees) is that accessibility is a fine thing, but it shouldn't be a priority if it would compromise a high-level critical or technical discussion.
"Gasp!" the unsympathetic reader says. "Horrors! Alec is saying that panelists should tell audience members who can't keep up to fuck off!" And you know what? I kind of am. Not all audience questions are created equal. (We all know the long, rambling, 'more a comment than a question,' yah?) Not all audience members have as much to contribute. If our goal is to advance a complex critical conversation (and I think that sometimes it should be) then we shouldn't let the fact that we'll lose some people along the way stop us from doing so.
To put things a different way: Most bad panels out there are like bad high school class discussions. Most good panels out there are like good undergraduate seminars. I would very much like it if some good panels, especially those at cons with higher standards of discourse, could reach the level of the graduate seminars I had at MIT.
Given how capable the best people in this field are (including but in no way limited to everyone I've named above), that doesn't seem like it's too much to ask.
ETA: As noted above, these lists aren't remotely intended to be comprehensive. Feel free to suggest additional failure modes in comments!
Apropos of sartorias's post on con programming and my previous post on critical discourse, I wanted to (briefly) talk about common ways that panels can fall apart, and then dig into why they rarely achieve a level of discourse beyond that of an undergraduate seminar.
(Also, Scalzi's point is pithy but far from universal. Often the failure mode of clever is 'boring', 'pointless', or 'wow, that was dumb'. Anyway...)
Common ways to screw up a panel:
1) Write the topic badly. swan_tower and I had some back-and-forth in the comments of sartorias's post on this topic, which I felt highlighted two distinct failure modes - writing the topic too narrowly (constraining discourse or posing a question that's easily answered with a "yes" or "no"), and writing the topic too broadly (so the panelists and moderators are left flailing for traction). I think that 'writing too narrowly' can also crop up in other ways - asking leading questions, for example, or putting up straw men.
The key here is that the panel topic needs to be able to serve two purposes: It needs to spark interesting discussion, and it needs to indicate to con-goers whether they're interested in the panel or not. Which, because many experienced con-goers pick panels based on the panelists, leads into...
2) Bad/Inappropriate Panelists or Moderators. Lots of the discussion around panels in Sherwood's post revolved around the truism that good panelists can be fun to listen to about nearly any topic, while one or two bad panelists or a bad moderator can take the most carefully-written panel topic and run it into the ground. I honestly tend to think about this problem in terms of class or seminar composition. Surely most people have been in a class or seminar discussion which was dominated by one mouthy jerk who the teacher couldn't rein in? Or one where no one had read the text or was really interested in it, and so they all mumbled and didn't make eye contact? Or where the most interesting person in the class kept getting their comments drowned out by other people's jabber?
The key here would seem to be twofold. First, pick panelists and moderators that are all reasonably (and appropriately) well-socialized - re: the parenthetical, having a quiet and decorous moderator with several passionate but obstreperous panelists is not what you want to do here. Second, pick panelists and moderators with an established interest in either the panel topic itself or areas immediately adjacent to it. This is often easier said than done, but it's really important, in order to help avoid ending up with...
3) Argumentation rather than Conversation. I'm not saying disagreement is bad for a panel. (As you'll see below, I like a lively disagreement.) But acrimonious disagreement, where people fall back on rhetorical tricks and treat the panel as a competition rather than discussing the topic in good faith... that's usually a really bad sign. A panel's value comes from the panelists and moderator talking to each other and building on or off of each other's points. When panelists aren't listening to each other, that value-creation becomes impossible.
Good moderation and careful panelist selection seem to be the only way to avoid this one.
4) Vagueness and Platitudes. As a corollary to my previous point, the reason I'm in favor of lively disagreements is that one of the more common ways I see panelists stop building on previous discussion is by rapidly agreeing to some vague statement or truism - "A story needs the ending it needs!", or "A character's death should come as the natural result of their character arc!" (see this post by mrissa) - and then wibbling about and failing to clarify what said generality means to them, or to give concrete examples.
I get that there is a strong fear of spoiling stories for others that's emerged of late, and I sympathize with it, but as I've said before, concrete examples are vital to any sort of critical discourse. So not only do we need to name names (and again, I get the reluctance here - it's a small field) and go into why they worked or didn't work for us, we also need to be clear what they're examples of. (The otherwise worthwhile Happy Endings panel at FOGcon fell down here, IIRC.)
Social pressure for the desired level of clarity from the moderator, fellow panelists, or even the audience can help here, though unfortunately it's not guaranteed to work.
Failure Modes and Levels of Discourse:
Given the preceding (high level, and certainly incomplete) list of ways in which panels can fail, it's no surprise that most programming chairs and moderators are going to be more concerned with heading off bad panels than elevating the level of discourse on good panels. And I sympathize, I truly do. But in conventions which have already addressed or mostly addressed the sorts of issues described above (I'm thinking of smaller, single-track conventions like Fourth Street Fantasy or Farthing Party here) I think there's room to grow beyond "Yay, the panel was fun and didn't suck!" stage.
I want to emphasize that the following "failure modes" are essentially First-World problems; there's a certain amount of privilege involved in being able to worry about them. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that they aren't problems, just that they shouldn't be considered at length before you've already laid a strong foundation.
5) Panel says nothing new/Covers well-trodden ground. This is something we've seen at Fourth Street off and on for the last couple of years, especially on the Food, Fashion, and Fornication panel (and its variants and sequels). That panel is a lot of fun, and involves people telling interesting stories and anecdotes. Trouble is, for those of us who were there last year? Often they're the exact same anecdotes, told by the exact same people.
This isn't a problem limited to repeat con-goers and recurring panels, of course. I'm sure that most of us have been subjected to the kind of arguments that tend to break out on C.S. Lewis panels, or Tolkien panels, or Philip Pullman panels, or... you get the idea. There are a lot of ongoing fannish discussions which seem to circle back to the same damn arguments over and over again (see failure mode #3), partly because fannish controversies never die (they only ossify), and partly because there's a constant flow or trickle of participants for whom the arguments aren't old hat yet, and don't quite understand why others don't want to fight the same exact battle for the twenty-billionth time.
This isn't just a question of panel topics and panelists, though. It's also connected to failure mode #4, and the fact that (as I noted above) getting to the point where it's a problem can be hard work. The fact of the matter is that it's easy to get bogged down in the same old disputes, easy to fall back on platitudes, and hard to actually spur discussion into new channels. Getting new panelists involved seems like it would help, but see my point about new participants exhuming old controversies. Sometimes new blood will help, depending on the specific nature of the problem, but it's not a panacea.
And then there's failure mode #6, and it's a doozy.
6) Panel leaves the audience behind/Limits itself out of fear of leaving the audience behind.
Let's say you've got a great, well-written topic and a dream slate of panelists. (Mine would probably involve some combination of papersky, truepenny, swan_tower, mrissa, pameladean, matociquala, and sartorias, but YMMV.) Posit that everyone is attending to each other and being specific and concrete with their examples. Heck, let's assume that the ground being covered is new and interesting and exhilarating, even for longtime fans!
Then the time for questions from the audience comes around, and it immediately becomes clear from the first question that the person asking it hasn't kept up. I mean, really hasn't kept up - they're still back in platitude land or last year's panel.
To what extent should we ensure that a panel discussion doesn't go over people's heads?
My considered reaction here is, "It depends." Various cons cater to different audiences, with different levels of sophistication. To take the most extreme example, at San Diego Comicon, I think that a panel of BNAs that's speaking to a room with over a thousand people in it has an obligation to keep what they're saying comprehensible to most of the audience. At Worldcon, I'd say that more can be expected from audience members, though with audiences of hundreds, the obligation to go back and explain and unpack is still there.
My *unconsidered* reaction (which I think is totally valid for cons like ICFA and Fourth Street, which can and should assume a certain critical acumen on the part of their attendees) is that accessibility is a fine thing, but it shouldn't be a priority if it would compromise a high-level critical or technical discussion.
"Gasp!" the unsympathetic reader says. "Horrors! Alec is saying that panelists should tell audience members who can't keep up to fuck off!" And you know what? I kind of am. Not all audience questions are created equal. (We all know the long, rambling, 'more a comment than a question,' yah?) Not all audience members have as much to contribute. If our goal is to advance a complex critical conversation (and I think that sometimes it should be) then we shouldn't let the fact that we'll lose some people along the way stop us from doing so.
To put things a different way: Most bad panels out there are like bad high school class discussions. Most good panels out there are like good undergraduate seminars. I would very much like it if some good panels, especially those at cons with higher standards of discourse, could reach the level of the graduate seminars I had at MIT.
Given how capable the best people in this field are (including but in no way limited to everyone I've named above), that doesn't seem like it's too much to ask.
ETA: As noted above, these lists aren't remotely intended to be comprehensive. Feel free to suggest additional failure modes in comments!