Tropes of Geek Cinema and Television

1. Geeks are fundamentally in conflict with jocks (frequently embarrassed / humiliated by jocks) -- see Benjamin Nugent's Amercan Nerd for definition of "jock"

2. melodrama / geek rage / victimhood (simulating / claiming a marked identity) [will ascend to white privilege like Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho, Dante becomes owner of Qwik Stop at end of Clerks 2 -- back to classic patriarchal (or fratriarchal) Oedipal narrative]

3. simulated ethnicity / post-racialism (incl. racial mimicry, "Slappin' da bass" in I Love You, Man, Randal's "Porch monkey" tirade in Clerks 2, "I'm post-racial" in Party Down "James Ellison Funeral") [Elvis impersonators / working class whites discussed by Eric Lott]

4. Voyeurism motif -- also porn consumption -- connected to media consumption and Cyberspace chronotope: American Pie, Party Down "Brandix Corporate Retreat"

5. Stalkerism (Say Anything. . ., Party Down "Brandix Corporate Retreat," Chuck&Buck) and endless neurotic answering machine messages (Swingers, "30 Rock") -- "The Big Bang Theory " episode wherein Leonard obsesses over Penny for a year or more before they date = stalking counts as a relationship.

6. Media creation and vivid fantasy life (fantasy POV: Annie Hall, Fast Times, Rushmore, The Girl Next Door, JSBSB, most John Cusack movies) -- geeks can't see themselves with an ugly girl (Roman's rating of Casey in Party Down Ep 1 or 2) -- the Heather Graham motif (Swingers, Arrested Development, Scrubs, The Hangover), which is nowadays the Mila Kunis motif as in Forgetting Sarah Marshall [Jerry Seinfeld and Zach Braff play geeks who end up with more beautiful women]

7. male bonding (bromance) and homoeroticism / homophobia -- most often buddy pairs (geek / slacker duos) are emphasized

8. marginalized and/or masculine women (domineering mothers, female geeks, butches, tomboys, lesbians) -- incl. "she turned lesbian after he slept with her" motif (Randal in Clerks cartoon, Andy Millman in "Extras") -- incl. the unappreciated woman (Veronica in Clerks, Kristen Bell in Fanboys, Michelle Trachtenberg in Eurotrip)

9. working mcjobs/ underemployment [connects to melodrama] -- Office Space, Clerks, Party Down , The Office [see also geek/slacker chronotopes]

10. slacking / lack of commitment / keep options open [connects to Gen X geek / slacker duos]

New Video, Geek Conceit, and Geek Misogyny: "Nice Guys"

I am going to start using this blog to catalog media reflects the zeitgeist of the rise of the geek. In particular, the themes that concern me are hidden problems with the rise of the geek. I am definitely a geek myself. However, I feel that a key aspect of the rise of the male geek is its unacknowledged misogyny. The male geek rises while trying to pretend that mysoginy only exists in the world of the male jock.

The geek’s core misogynistic conceit is this: Women are too shallow to recognize the good things about the sensitive, true, honest, and long-suffering, non-dominant males. Therefore, women deserve the pain and emotional torture they experience when they are assumed to get it from dominant males.

I will start this catalog with a freshly viral video made by an Asian American male to highlight the fact that, as an Asian American Geek. I am being critical of a culture I am very much a part of and not sniping from the outside. It is a video by Kevin Wu called Nice Guys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fz3zFqLc3E

It nicely illustrates the geek conceit I outline above. Here are the lyrics of the chorus:

Nice guys finish last,
That's why I'll treat you like trash,
It's not what I really wanna do.
But, you only date bad guys so,
I'll give it my best try to,
Treat you the way you want me to.

There are some theoretical analyses of the nice guy phenomenon which are critical of its mysoginistic conceit but I will not go into them here just yet. Perhaps in a later blog. I will continue to track the zeitgeist of this sentiment in this blog and tag it geek rage.

A key problem in this conceit is the that it implicitly asserts that Geek=Nice Guy.

Lane Moore on Female Geeks and Nerd Love

Read the article at this link.

The Influence of Carl Barks

Read this immediately:

5 Amazing Things Invented by Donald Duck (Seriously)