Why did so many people see Fred Patten as the head of the C/FO?

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mbanu
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Why did so many people see Fred Patten as the head of the C/FO?

Post by mbanu »

Any reminiscence of the early C/FO seems to involve Fred Patten in a central role; more than any of the other early members, he comes up again and again. Some have even argued that him leaving the club scene to focus on Streamline Pictures was the tear that caused the national organization to unravel under Randall Stukey. Yet he himself insists that he was just the secretary, never anybody important.

As someone who discovered anime clubs long after the C/FO, I'm really a little puzzled by this. Was it false modesty? A way to avoid becoming a fanboy flak-catcher (as I imagine being the president of a national anime organization must inevitably have been)? Or is it just that since he has written far more about the C/FO than any of the other early members, he grows to fill a larger role even in other people's rememberances?

Or is it something else entirely?
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Re: Why did so many people see Fred Patten as the head of the C/FO?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

I'm going to go out on a limb here, as I wasn't around for the C/FO going national.

While his assertion that he was "just a secretary" and "not anybody important" is probably a respectable degree of modesty but if his role was interfacing with new chapters, working on newsletters and being knowledgeable about anim[e/ation], it definitely puts him as a face of the organization and if he's not technically in charge, he's the guy everyone talks to and he sounds like the guy who'd be in charge. Especially when you are in a hobby where social skills can be ... lacking.

Take the flip-side of someone like Stukey - I've never met him but I'm going off of what people here and their peers have said and posted - but imagine the C/FO having that personality type being the face, if not in charge. From what I've heard, comparatively, the national organization was a looser confederation of clubs, as opposed to Stukey running a very rigid, top-down organization. Imagine having that be the face of an attempt to expand nationally and it all collapses upon itself. Combine that with what sounds like being an awful pendant and it's a recipe for disaster, truly.

I've seen it happen in other aspects of fandom and I've seen it happen in corporations. Personalities matter and when you have someone who is likable and competent, they are often ascribed with more power/responsibility than they might have on paper.
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Re: Why did so many people see Fred Patten as the head of the C/FO?

Post by davemerrill »

Patten had a lot of professional published writing about Japanese animation under his belt, he had connections both in the SF fandom world and in the entertainment industry, and as Secretary, anything official that came from the C/FO had his name on it. His was the name people knew when the C/FO was discussed. Still is, for that matter.

Patten's departure from the national club came at a time when a wave of new fans was coming into the fandom, when several other prominent and active club members were stepping back from their national duties (the Blacks in Florida, for example) and when both the availability of Japanese animation and the number of local anime groups were increasing. New anime fans in cities with clubs could attend club meetings and watch new anime every month and didn't really see the purpose of a national chapter-based organization.

Nobody came forward to replace Fred Patten as "the voice" of the C/FO. Stukey, by his own admission, really didn't care for most Japanese animation that much, and was more interested in the nuts and bolts of organizational structure, explained at length in six-point dot-matrix type.
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