Intelligently Childish

Premier nerd, (and a personal hero of mine) Simon Pegg recently gave an interview where he talked about the effects of geek and nerd culture. "Before Star Wars, the films that were box-office hits were The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Bonnie and Clyde, and The French Connection – gritty, amoral art movies... Then suddenly the onus switched over to spectacle and everything changed … I don’t know if that is a good thing."

He went on to add, "Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema but part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilised by our own taste. Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes. It is a kind of dumbing down, in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues. Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about … whatever. Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk just had a fight with a robot."

The backlash against his words was almost immediate, because you know... the Internet, and the uglier side of nerd culture in general. However, this time I must admit that I felt like grabbing a digital pitchfork and joining in on the cacophony of Twitter rage, but then I had to stop and step back. Why did I feel so personally hurt by his words? And surprisingly the pain was personal. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that geek culture has very few true-blue celebrities, and we tend to put them up on a pedestal, Seth Green, Nathon Fillion, Simon Pegg, etc. So hearing those words from one of our more vaunted namesakes hurts. It's like hearing a harsh truth from your father who is telling you to do as he says but not as he does.

However, the real fact is that it is a harsh truth. First off, Simon Pegg, as much as we want to put him on a pedestal of lightsabers and starships, is only human. He is fully in his right to have his doubts, his personal struggles, and even a crisis of consciousness or two about the work he has dedicated his life too. We all have moments of doubts, and he is entitled to his own. Secondly, he may not be wrong, which may also explain the backlash. People don't like accepting hard criticism, even when it is done with the best of intentions.

With the widespread appeal of nerd culture through comic conventions, blockbuster movies, and TV shows, there has been a neglect of adult-problems and real-world issues. You don't need to look any further than Star Trek: Into Darkness to see how far the once lauded and highly intelligent Star Trek franchise has fallen from its intellectual roots. We spend our time talking about the accuracy of Batman's voice or we nitpick how close Game of Thrones stays to the books, but we rarely talk about the issues that face our world today, political elections, Middle-East turmoil, global warming. It's easier to watch Captain America punch a Nazi than try to understand the soci-economic-politcal justifications and ramifications of facism. This dumbing down of, not just our society, but nerd culture in general (again I refer you to Star Trek: Into Darkness) is a natural outcropping of our culture's growing popularity, and that is also important to remember.

Bonnie and Clyde made more than $50 million, and at the
time was considered one of the most controversial films in
Hollywood due to its depiction of sex and violence, but
it has largely been credited as being a film that changed the
way Hollywood did movies. (Sex and violence sells tickets.)

Now, I do want to get one thing straight before I receive any angry Tweets of my own, (they're mostly from my mother,) Simon Pegg isn't entirely wrong but he isn't entirely right either. There are still plenty of adult movies making money, American Sniper and The Imitation Game, both did well, and movies like Interstellar and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, made more than subtle attempts to talk to something more intelligent than just explosions. And as for the movies he mentions, The Godfather was top at the box office in 1972, followed closely by the (two amoral and gritty real-life movies:) the Poseidon Adventure and What's Up Doc. The French Connection was beat out by Fiddler on the Roof, and just edged out, James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. Lastly, Taxi Driver never broke the top fifteen in highest grossing films in 1976. Number one that year was Rocky, and number two was To Fly!, which was one of the first movies ever shot in IMAX. (I wonder if the ticket was double the price.) The spectacle and infantile-ness has always been there. These days it may be superheroes as opposed to cowboys, or space operas compared to sports movies, but the general idea remains the same. I will admit that technology has allowed the "genre" film to snowball like never before, but the bottom line for Hollywood remains the same, money.

More to the point, it is tempting to blame nerd culture for making the world more childish, but the world was always kind of childish. If its not comics, its celebrity culture, reality TV, sports, and even religion. In the fifties it was radio programs and shopping sprees. In Roman times it was gladiators and chariot racing. The movies Simon Pegg holds up as "artsy:" The French Connection, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Bonnie and Clyde... do you notice a connection between them? They had a lot of violence in them, and if you don't think that was part of the appeal that put butts in the seats, than you have never met another human being before. His argument also discounts movies like Gone with the Wind, Ben-Hur, and King Kong. Those movies were just as much about spectacle as Star Wars, but the argument also seems to imply that none of these movies have anything to teach us. As if they have no inherent or real-world value of their own, and that is just wrong.

Star Wars was mythology (then commercialism, but that came late.) There is a lesson in there about growing up, confronting challenges, finding spirituality. Its not all laser swords and impossible outerspace dog fights. The original Star Trek inspired people to dream and believe in the possibilities of science. Superman (when not directed by Zac Synder) gives us hope and an example to try and live our lives by. I would argue that these lessons are just as important as any lesson found in Taxi Driver or in the study of the Israel-Palestine conflict. A lot of these stories and these passions, at least for me, become the basis of how I see the world.

The real trick then becomes to use that basis as way to inform the world. Yes, nerd rage is real, but I would argue that if you go to Comic Con or the opening of any new geek-culture movie you will find a society of people who are intelligent, peaceful, and willing to help. We need to turn those impulses and the message of who we are into something greater. In fact, I would go so far as to argue that geekdom could save cinema and popular culture from its own infantile self. We have the tools, the stories, and the understanding to make our summer blockbusters and our smash TV hits more intelligent and more engaging with real-world issues.

Pictured: A female scientist respected for her mind.

Historically, fantasy and especially science fiction have always challenged our beliefs, given us a lens to understand society, and given us license to dream about a better future. The irony of this, (and personally I think some of where these feelings are stemming from for Simon Pegg,) is that Star Trek was always the one thing we could hold up as the pinnacle of this idea. The original series tackled everything from the Vietnam War to the counter-culture movement, and the more recent shows have continued that trend with varying degrees of success, (I have been slowly re-watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and even though I have seen them all before I always find myself amazed by some of the poignant stories they tell and the new lights they cast on problems we are still having today,) but that changed in 2009. The rebooted Star Trek movie became more about popcorn, lens flare, and explosions, a trend that the second movie continued, only with less success. Star Trek: Into Darkness had the perfect opportunity to talk about the ideas of security versus liberty and blew it, (but I will stop there, because I have ranted on that subject before.) Simon Pegg has been tapped to rewrite the newest Star Trek installment, and had this to say:

"They had a script for Star Trek that wasn’t really working for them. I think the studio was worried that it might have been a little bit too Star Trek-y... Avengers, which is a pretty nerdy, comic-book, supposedly niche thing, made $1.5 billion dollars. Star Trek: Into Darkness made half a billion, which is still brilliant, but it means that, according to the studio, there’s still $1 billion worth of box office that don’t go and see Star Trek. And they want to know why."

The Millennials are growing up, and we are taking our childish culture with us. There is no stopping that, but now we need to use that culture and the lessons it has taught us to change the world and tackle the problems that are out there. Superhero movies don't need to be mutually exclusive with real-world parallels, in fact the best ones aren't. Captain America: Winter Soldier worked so well because it became a parable about America's growing police state, and Captain America: Civil War will probably hit similar notes about privacy versus public safety. These blockbuster movies can be more than spectacle. They can be smarter, and also successful. They can inform national discussion and spark new ideas in the next generation, but it is up to us to make sure that nerd culture and our society in general are not dumbed down in the name of opening week profits.

I think a lot of Simon Pegg's frustration is coming from his process with Star Trek. "Sometimes [I] feel like I miss grown-up things, and I honestly thought the other day that I’m gonna retire from geekdom." 

Personally, I don't want to see him go, if only because he is saying things that I think we need to hear. We have to make sure nerd culture finds a balance between smart and entertaining. It's okay to be childish, as long as you do it intelligently, and maybe that means we need to take a look at our own nerdiness and accept that we might have to make some changes for the better. Either way, it is a worthwhile topic to talk about. So I ask everyone on the Twitter-verse to lay off. These statements should be the start of a discussion, not the end of an angry rant. The last thing we need is to drive another of our ranks from the conversation.