September 27, 2005
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth
The words of Huey Lewis have come to pass: It's finally hip to be square
There was a time--yes, my children, the legends are true--when J.R.R. Tolkien was not cool. Really. Very much not cool. Also video games, and Spider-Man, and the X-Men. There was a time, not even that long ago, when you could get beaten up by jocks in the woods behind the backstop for being down with the X-Men. Not that this happened to me personally. Friend of mine. Friend of mine's cousin, actually. Lives in Canada. You wouldn't know him.The point is, things like that don't happen so much anymore. Over the past few years, an enormous shift has taken place in American culture, a disturbance in the Force, a rip in the fabric of space-time. What was once hopelessly geeky--video games, fantasy novels, science fiction, superheroes--has now, somehow, become cool.
[....]
Just ask two of the ringleaders of this bloodless, prom-dateless coup: archgeek Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the science-fiction movie Serenity, which opens this Friday; and Neil Gaiman, creator of the classic comic book Sandman and author of the fantasy novel Anansi Boys, which comes out this month. Gaiman also has a movie opening this Friday, the Dark Crystal--flavored fantasy Mirrormask. "It will be national geek day!" he says.
Whedon and Gaiman agree that the line between dork and non-dork has become hopelessly blurred. "When I started doing Sandman, I could look at a group of people lined up to get my autograph, and I knew who was my fan and who was somebody's mum there to get a signature," says Gaiman, who's English. "It doesn't work that way anymore. They're people. They're us. That's what they look like."
"They're a lot more attractive than I am, actually," Whedon deadpans. "Which kind of disturbs and upsets me."
Well worth reading the whole thing, and an interview with Whedon and Gaiman here.
Posted by Ithildin at September 27, 2005 3:17 PM | PROCURE FINE OLD WORLD ABSINTHE