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BLESSED ARE THE GEEKS - by Mr Biffo

2/5/2016

17 Comments

 
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Of course, I went to see Captain America: Civil War at the weekend.

Pretty much the only thing wrong with it, in my eyes, was that I'd seen Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice only a week before.

Civil War is a much, much, much better movie - grounding the fights in emotional beats, rather than CGI ones - but I was at my limit of how many super-powered people punching one another I could handle in seven days.

Still. Remember when we had no super-powered people punching one another? What a glorious time we live in... that we can have too much of this good thing.

If you grew up as any sort of geek, try to imagine what your younger self would've made of the world today. New Star Wars movies every year, all the Marvel movies you could want, Spider-Man and Captain America, and zombie TV shows, and Doctor Who, and video games on demand. Our enormous games offer whole new worlds to explore. 

Being a geek is no longer about being part of a subculture. Now we are the culture.

PEGG IT
On Saturday, the day after I watched Civil War, we put on Simon Pegg romcom Man Up. Aside from being spat out the other end of it feeling like I'd been waterboarded at a middle class, media elite, dinner party, it was a throwback to a time when people who made Hugh Grant movies stalked the earth like they owned it.


It's a film - ironically starring Simon Pegg, who doesn't shy away from his geeky credentials - which feels like it had been made by people who live in a bubble, oblivious to the rest of us. The hares to our rocket-powered torties.

These people go to their art galleries, and have their drinks parties, and read their self-help books, and do their bickram yoga, and go on mini breaks to Florence, and eat their quinoa nibbles, and attend summer concerts at Somerset House - unaware that the balance of power has shifted. While they were distracted, the geeks inherited the earth.

Of course, not everyone who made Hugh Grant movies is that blinkered: Four Weddings and Notting Hill writer Richard Curtis wrote an episode of Doctor Who, and directed About Time - his own clumsy grab for the hem of geek, which seemed like a half-measure designed not to alienate his existing audience.

Interestingly, Ricky Gervais' latest one-draft movie also popped up on Netflix last week. In Special Correspondents, his wholly unconvincing character states, clumsily: 
“I think that’s why I play video games, ’cos they’re more interesting than my real life.”

What this tells us even more than what a terrible writer Ricky Gervais is, is how chronically out of touch Ricky Gervais is. That he can still use video games as a mark of the loner, the sad, the fringe-dwellers. It's lazy. It's outdated, and shows him to be part of that 
media elite that I mentioned. A cosseted, walled-off community. A clique of middle-aged, middle-class, white people who have never picked up a joypad in their lives.
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THE WRONG MANS
For me, that's what's wrong with The Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman.

They feel like they're being made by someone who doesn't understand or respect the geek community. Somebody who isn't connected to it.

​That he's instead used those characters to make the movie he wants to make... and it was different to the one we all waned.

​Admittedly, director Zack Synder isn't totally useless; he made an obsessively faithful movie out of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel Watchmen... but it was also one that missed entirely the point of a comic that was, above all else, about the form of comics.

Marvel get it. They make their movies using the characters and worlds already established in Marvel comics. If anything gets changed, it's in the service of the story, or to streamline for the purposes of a movie - but that story, by and large, serves the characters. And more than that, it serves the audience. 

And in doing so, Marvel has proven what we knew all along: the reason those characters endured is because they were fine in the first place. Consequently, more people go and see Marvel movies than read Marvel comics; the formula works, and always has. Why change it?

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MY BIG FAT GEEK WEDDING
Growing up, geek was an insult. If you liked sci-fi, or computer games, or role-playing, you were considered to be on the fringes.

​The generation who grew up like that are now the ones in charge. The ones who saw the potential of the things they loved.

Star Wars is being made by Star Wars fans. Doctor Who is made by Doctor Who fans. Marvel movies are made by people who grew up reading Marvel comics. Harry Potter fans can visit Hogwarts for real. 

​Video games are made by those who saw the potential of games - who saw beyond the limits of gaming - and are now breaking down those walls to reveal the lands beyond. Face it: games have never been better. We've never been so spoiled.

We're at a stage where popular culture is giving me everything that I ever wanted, and more. And that's happening because we're no longer the minority. They are. 

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES BY MR BIFFO
THE POWER OF NOWSTALGIA by Mr Biffo
​
IT PEGGLES THE MIND by Mr Biffo
17 Comments
combat_honey
2/5/2016 10:17:52 am

Interesting stuff. It's definitely odd to reflect on just how mainstream 'geek' pursuits have become over the last ten years or so. I wasn't in school so long ago (finished in 2003) and even then being interested in superheroes or videogames would definitely have marked you out as a geek, rather than them just being something that most people enjoyed.

I don't want to bring the malaise of GG to a non-GG article, but could this trend be part of what's caused the sentiments behind GG? (I'm using an acronym in case writing the word in full acts as a sort of 'bat signal' to those on either side of the debate.)

As games have become more mainstream they've been subjected to a wider breadth of criticism, like films are for example, including criticism from minority and feminist points of view. And maybe that's resulted in 'hardcore' gamers feeling as though the 'narrative' (ugh) surrounding games is being taken away from them. Or something.

Although I'm firmly in the 'other' camp, I do kind of get why that would bother some people - it always sucks when something you love goes mainstream and you end up feeling as though you've lost control of it. But yeah, I agree with the main thrust of your article - even with the ostensible downsides, we've never had it so good.

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Superbeast 37
2/5/2016 06:34:01 pm

Forget 2003! Can you imagine how odd it is if you were a geek in the 80's! Believe me, 2003 was a paradise compared to '93!

It isn't that the games have technically become "mainstream" as they never changed to appeal to the mainstream of my childhood, rather the niche cultures that enjoy the products have become the mainstream majority. The games didn't change that much, the population did.

The products were always good (in the eyes of the geek niche) and the people that liked those products are the same people that like them now - only there are far more of those people! GTA hasn't really changed much in terms of its overall premise (bar what new tech makes possible) but the sales are astronomical now. Same with FIFA. The game hasn't really changed to appeal to a larger audience, the demographic that like the core product grew in number.

In the case of gaming, no one is having anything taken away. That is a strawman created by those indoctrinated by identity politics who try to find an identity politics explanation when the free market doesn't give them what they feel they are entitled to or when others disagree with them.

The AAA core gaming market is still dominated (spending, units) by the same type of people that it was when I was kid. The difference is that people with my tastes are no longer a minority. I'm 40 and at my age you will find we geeks are still a minority because that is how it was back then in the 80's! With each newer generation the geeks grew as a percentage of the population.

You actually point this out in your post when you talk about "minority" points of view. I was once a minority yet I now find myself as the mainstream. If I’ve had trouble adapting to anything, it is that I no longer need to keep quiet about my interests! I can now safely talk about it - just not on Facebook with my old school mates! My generation still view it as a bit odd. In the case of my nephews generation, you are odd if you don't like it!

With a surplus of supply and low barriers to entry, there are products for everyone. Not just the minority that have become the mainstream (for whom they always existed), but the new minority too.

I suspect that those in the new minority are jealous when they see the large budget products that the spending power of the majority is able to fund. Rather than being content with the niche titles that they are able to support, they attempt to hijack and force their niche tastes on the mass market products.

Doing so risks a net loss of sales as co-opting products that way stands to lose far more customers from the majority than can be gained from a minority. That is what Zack Snyder got wrong. Well, ticket sales were good but he pee’d off more people than he pleased. The "new minority" don't like that push back.

I understand why those people are jealous. Back in the 80's I was jealous that the majority had these big budget movies or pop videos and my games were being made in by nerds in their bedrooms. Now I have games with 100m budgets! Of course back then I didn't try to co-opt the mainstream and hijack their funds for my niche tastes!

I just kept buying what I liked. It could still be a niche even today but as it happened my tastes won through. Others that like emerging genres need to be more patient, keep supporting products by buying them and just accept what happens.

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Kelvin Green link
2/5/2016 10:28:42 am

All I need now is for tabletop roleplaying to become cool and then I'll be on the cutting edge of trendiness.

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Paulvw
2/5/2016 12:07:53 pm

I agree. Civil war is excellent. Some proper comic to screen bits in it while still grounded in enough of a version of the real world. I'm not sure what the story was though. Life is just short?

Watchmen is an odd one. I like the film but agree that Alan Moore was ripping into all the standard comic characters. The film was a really good run through of the comic plot but as you say didn't transfer that central idea. Perhaps if someone did another version, now that Marvel makes a billion a film they could actually convert Moore's idea to film?

Cheers Mr Biffo you have made me think.

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Professor Toblerone
2/5/2016 12:13:47 pm

I can't help but feel that we're equally blessed and cursed. A couple of years ago, I'd have been racing out of the door to see Civil War with everyone else. Frankly, though, I just can't be bothered. The thing is, I know exactly what I'm going to get and it just doesn't excite me any more. That's the cost of being mainstream, I guess.

I feel much the same about the state of the AAA video games industry. I don't know what I want, but it definitely isn't more of the same.

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Ben
3/5/2016 08:24:00 am

Completely agree; I think the ubiquity of geek culture has really killed it for me. I guess being on the fringes, whilst alienating for some, made the whole thing more special and exclusive in some way. Having endless access to endless content has given me geek fatigue, especially with games... I actually loved thecdays when just being able to find the game you wanted might involve trawling around elusive independent game shops or jumping through the requisite hoops to find and get imports running etc.

It's like music; ever since everything went digital, became available 24/7 and people basically stopped paying for it, the hobby of collecting or being a 'fan' has kind of become meaningless. Everything has lost its value.

Sigh, I hate being old.

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LK Tomorrow
2/5/2016 02:23:42 pm

On his old XFM radio show, Ricky Gervais talked about playing The Getaway on his PS2.

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Little Blue Fox
2/5/2016 03:01:11 pm

I saw The Divine Comedy at Somerset House. It was lovely! :)

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Dangerous Dave
2/5/2016 04:10:27 pm

I've been playing video games religiously for a little over 25 years now, but I was never really a fan of comics. I remember enjoying reading things like Spy Vs Spy as a child, but the whole Marvel/DC thing didn't interest me. Most of these comic book film adaptations bore me, too. The Spider Man films (all 5 of them) are pretty poor films. They're not even on par with the 90's cartoons I grew up with.

Unfortunately, being recognized as somebody who plays a lot of games, it is often assumed I love comic books and super heroes. This means i'm often trapped in conversations with such enthusiasts and end up sounding like a miserable old fart.

That's a stereotype too far, damn it!

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Kelvin Green link
2/5/2016 06:29:58 pm

It's that Game of Thrones for me. People see I'm into all the other geeky stuff and then try to talk to me about GoT, because normal people like that too, but I am not a fan, so I just come across as surly. Oh well.

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Chris
2/5/2016 11:42:44 pm

It's football for me. People see that I'm male and they talk to me about football because, well, that's what normal people like. I'm not a fan so I come across as dismissive. Talk to me about geek stuff for Pete's sake!

Grantham Ho!
2/5/2016 06:00:31 pm

Geekery has been commodified, and I'm not so certain that's a good thing. The superficial signifiers of the geek have become marketable brands, and to be a "geek" is merely to be a passive consumer of these brands.

But I think your optimism's probably well placed. Wonderful geeky things like the Raspberry Pi and Steven Universe exist as well, after all.

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Nick the Gent link
2/5/2016 08:13:30 pm

This is a great point. And as Dangerous Dave and Kelvin Green pointed out above, people can make assumptions about what you like.

I've had the Game of Thrones conversation as well. And I've been told that I should watch The Walking Dead: it doesn't get good until four years in, but, you know - zombies!

It sometimes feels like "nerd" is now just another mass market to be pitched to.

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MrPSB
2/5/2016 08:11:40 pm

Hey, I'm a loner fringe outsider who plays videogames because they're better than real life, don't take it away from me :(

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Rimjob
3/5/2016 10:39:27 am

Zack Snyder used Superman to get to Batman, like a sluttier Lois Lane.

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Robert
3/5/2016 11:43:55 am

Star Wars was a massively popular mass market series in the 70s as it is today.

Liking Star Wars or Superman or any other billion dollar franchise has never been a mark of ridicule, liking the unpopular was and still is and all the people who'll tweet "Just saw the force awakens, I'm such a #Geek " Will instantly turn around and insult other people for liking the "wrong" video game or film or anime

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Finbar Saunders
3/5/2016 08:38:52 pm

LK Tomorrow - and don't forget that Ricky Gervais's brother received Gran Turismo for the PS1 for Christmas and the whole family had to sit and watch him play it for hours.

Geek? Me? Ohh, yes.

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