Checking the academic side of the blogroll I find the yearly MLA hullabaloo has come and gone and been discussed, dissected, dismissed, distorted from every possible angle and that the flap is now dying down. My word, folks are touchy! Check the comments thread on the Invisible Adjunct's MLA post for proof of that.
In the spirit of fairness and affability that animates this blog--hey! You with the smirk! Knock it off!--I'm going to describe my one and only foray into the world of the MLA, where I, as a lowly grad student, was forced to give a paper (my thesis advisor chaired the session, and I know she was trying to help me out. And she did help me out--right out of academics, as it were, but that wasn't her fault, nor the fault of the MLA.).
I think I began to realize that I would rather be stabbed repeatedly in the eye with a fork than be an academic when I went down to the open bar. I had friends and acquaintances there, so we hung together and observed fawning and politicking that would be perfectly at home in Congress. It became apparent that my inability to smile and attempt to act like I care about big star so-and-so, coupled with my complete lack of recall when it came to names would definitely be a hindrance in the job-finding department. I've always been more of a point and laugh observer than a shmoozer--a quality that comes in handy when you're teaching literature, but not so much when you're trying to make a good impression.
Anyway, aside from the same tiresome observations about boring academic culture, my MLA experience was a non-event. Went to hear some friends give papers, delivered mine to a polite (and probably very bored) audience who took their boredom out on the presenter immediately after me--it was frankly surprising, the savagery of the attack on a paper about Chaucer, but sometimes I think Medievalists take some of the more martial and austere aspects of the Middle Ages to heart and use them in debates--and then came home convinced that if I had to present papers and go to conferences to get a tenured job I would kill myself. And it wasn't even a nightmare experience! Just...kind of banal. And a bit of a letdown.
Since then, in the course of jobs I've had, I've attended Higher Ed conferences, marketing conferences, tech trade shows, you name it. Know what? They're all the MLA, just with different jargon--deadly dull political fests where perhaps one interesting idea can be salvaged from endless sessions filled with dreck. I know why these associations exist, but I wonder if any of them are really fulfilling their charters in a meaningful way. It's not surprising that folks try to liven them up with goofy panel titles and punny papers, but I think that the only thing that could save the MLA at this point would be the Oh! Calcutta! All Live! All Nude! MLA conference. And that is frankly too terrifying to contemplate. Or funny. Pick one.