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>* If people can take Transformers seriously, than I can take
>the issue of "nerdiness" and its pitfalls seriously.
Fair enough.
The Doc just thinks there's too much attention invested in the personal lives, likes and dislikes of people, sometimes though. Like, why go that far? Why is it such an issue? Or to get to the point, what do you care?
>* If TV, literature and film are the "nerdier" media, then
>what are the not-nerdy media?
Actually, to tell the truth, there really isn't any media out there that is not "nerdy" when appreciated past a certain level. Anything that is consumable, is victim to nerdiness. The Doc should have thrown music in that box too... It's more socially acceptable to be nerdy about these sort of things, though.
>Seriously, outside of SOAP, most of the film stuff I read here
>is about film nerds who take film seriously as art. I really
>respect that, even if Friday is way more interested in the
>films of the 30s and 40s than I am. The same with literature,
>even if Janey is more of a book nerd than I am. I think
>people respect me and Nick's passion for comedy (read: comedy
>nerdiness), because we know it's art. I'm fine with all of
>this and more.
>
>And I don't even have a problem with people enjoying
>Transformers (and I could be using another example here, but
>Transformers is the current reference) in a nostalgic way. If
>you're watching it because it reminds you of how much you
>liked it as a kid, that's totally fine. I'm not into that,
>but whatever, it's fine.
>
>But one of the problems with nerd culture (a cultural group
>that's maybe represented by the attendants of Comicon... as
>opposed to just nerdiness about something) is that it often
>steps way over that line. If you act like Transformers, the
>awful children's cartoon, was actually art, actually something
>that would be violated by a similarly silly film adaptation,
>that's absurd.
Again, The Doc asks, why is it such an issue? Those people are just doing them. Yes, The Doc is disturbed at times by the real life "Comic Book Guys", the "Man-Fayes", and some of the weirdos you might see at a comic book convention. And hell, he knows some people older than he hung up on some real PB&J out there. But at the end of the day, what they eat doesn't make The Doc shit, to be blunt. Some very visible, functional members of society attend those things, and as long as they ain't crapping on The Doc's street corner, shootin' up people, and robbing banks, they're all harmless. Is that population one that you personally want to emulate? No. Not one The Doc wants to, either (well, to an extent). But at the end of the day, it may not even matter.
Like it or not, it may not be artsy fartsy, but TF and the like actually are -art-. It may be silly, mindless art, but it is art nonetheless. Using the Transformers example: Somewhere, somewhere got the idea to repackage an defunct toyline, slap character bios on them, come up with an elaborate back story, and mass market them...jump starting something The Doc didn't think would be more than a footnote in people's memories 20 years later.
Now it's reached the kind of notoriety of a Star Trek, a Star Wars...at least in the US market, as the original consumers/target market are of age and can look back at it w/o the rose-colored glasses. It takes a certain bit of talent to make people actually give a damn that much about something 20 years after the fact. In that way, it is an art. (A lost one, rather).
Would one hang up a picture of Optimus Prime blasting Megatron halfway to Cybertron in the Guggenheim? Probably not. Would they have a likeness of Grimlock up in the Smithsonian? Nope. Fans wouldn't probably even seriously consider such a thing. Even more "serious" programming wouldn't end up the same box as a fine motion picture (historically used as period pieces), or a reknowned book, or even The Doc's favorite Herbie Hancock album, but it's still a form of art. "Art" is kind of an abstract concept, now that The Doc thinks about it.
>Another situation in which this might apply...
>
>If you're claiming comics are art, you have to be willing to
>admit that The Watchman isn't representative. That most
>(certainly not all, but most) superhero comics are for
>adolescents and adults who either are remembering adolescence
>or never got past it. That if you go to a comic book
>convention, you'll meet a lot of folks who are in it for
>literature, and a lot who are cases of arrested development.
Again, The Doc doesn't really buy into the "artsy-fartsy" definition of the abstract concept of art. To say that adults that read superhero comics are a case of arrested development (not all, but a good number) is troubling; maybe they just find such things entertaining regardless of what they thought about such things as a kid. There are a lot of reasons why an adult (or a child or adolescent) might read such things. They may like a good old good-guy versus bad guy story. They might like the visual art within...Considering the darker nature of comics today, and the subtle social commentary made in some notables in the past, The Doc would venture to believe that a lot of the stuff that the very-adult writers inject into their works go well over the heads of their target audiences.
The Doc just wondered where this stigma originated. When a story is pictorial, it automatically is devalued versus the case if it were without the visual representation in a novel or something of the sort. Granted, not every comic book out there is high-brow literature. But it shouldn't be, and it doesn't make it any less artful.
In short, yes, the people that can't get over the Joker jobbing over the good-guy-of-the week are a "problem", but in the grand scheme of things, they're harmless. They're no different from the people who got pissed off that Stringer Bell jobbed out in last season of The Wire and won't get over it.
Too much time/attention invested in that sort of thing, ITDO.
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