In so many ways, this is the best time to be a nerd. When I was growing up, the title of geek or
nerd was an insult, a degradation, a put down.
Now we live in a world where Weird Al Yankovich is a number one top
seller, and geek culture has entered the mainstream. It’s even popular to call yourself a nerd.
And that’s where my concern lies.
Any time something becomes popular, people want to
emulate it, even if they don’t care about it.
It becomes all about conformity.
Comic Con is a great example.
Once a hive for those of us who enjoy stories that were off the beaten
path, it’s now become the place for the mainstream to come see celebrities.
We don’t want to exclude anyone, of course, but it does
seem less than genuine when Entertainment Tonight and their wannabes are hash
tagging themselves as “total nerds” when they’ve really just followed fad after
fad, and they will leave when this one fades.
But my concern runs deeper still. To me, one of the major definitions of nerd
and geek culture was giving a chance to the more alternative art forms. While everyone else was following Debbie
Gibson and Tiffany and whatever nameless movies were the latest fads in the late
‘80s, I was reading The Dark Knight, watching Indiana Jones, and listening to
Weird Al. What was the common string in
all these things and others I was into?
They broke new ground. Only Spike
Jones had done anything remotely close to Weird Al. Indiana Jones was an entirely new invention;
it wasn’t based on books or old TV shows.
And even The Dark Knight, though it was based on Batman who had been
around for 40 years, it was an entirely new take on him, and superheroes in
general. The entire genre has blossomed
from that.
The point is, we were willing to try new things. That’s really what made a “nerd” or a “geek”
more than something being cerebral or fantasy-oriented. Today, however, it seems as though few
self-proclaimed nerds and geeks are willing to try anything new. They are stuck repeating the same things over
and over. For instance, I took my new
series Relic Worlds to the Indiana Jones fan club at Comic Con. It’s inspired by the series, and has elements
of Lucas’s other great creation, Star Wars.
Those movies caused me to grow up and want to do something new, though
similar. Instead of giving it a try, the
fan club showed no interest. What would
have happened if our parents had given the same chance to Raiders of the Lost
Arc in 1980? If, instead of giving a
chance to this new movie by these aspiring filmmakers, they were too busy
obsessing over something nearly 35 years old?
If they had been like current fans, they would have been so busy
obsessing over something from 1945 that Raiders would have been a failure, and
would not exist today in the lexicon of great adventure movies.
And the same is true across the board. It’s the reason why Hollywood and publishers
are obsessing on toys from the past.
It’s not that there aren’t good ideas out there. I know of many authors and filmmakers who are
striving to be heard; and many of them are in the areas that geek and nerd
culture would love. But people are so obsessed
with what’s in the past they’re not willing to give a chance to what’s in the
present.
So this is a call to all nerds and geeks out there. Find your roots. And by that, I don’t mean your old comic
books and toys still in their wrappers.
I mean, remember that what made all the things you enjoy from the past
famous is because people gave them a chance.
And there are new works that are equally great just waiting to be
found. Give them a chance. Stop looking backward all the time.
