In their 2007 Year in Review issue, Entertainment Weekly ran an article titled “The Year the Geek was King” in which Adam B. Vary explains how geeks rose to superstardom this year. “The Year Hollywood Decided the Geek was King, But Still Didn’t Get Them and Preferred Giving a Million Swirlies” would be a far more appropriate title.
Among the geek achievements cited by Vary are World of Warcraft jokes on The Big Bang Theory, Chuck, and Justin Long “stealing every scene from Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard.” With all that, we geeks apparently inherited the Earth in 2007.
And Vary says Michael Cera (Superbad, Arrested Development) is our geek king. Cera has a geeky charm, but king? Really? All it takes to be king is to play a believable social doofus in a movie?
Certainly there are other people with more geek cred who could possibly wear the heavy crown of king of the geeks. Seth Rogen comes to mind. So does Tina Fey, my own personal geek goddess.
Or John Hodgman, who may be best known as the living embodiment of a PC, but who, in reality, is a brilliant humorist, Mac user, and former literary agent for Bruce Campbell (yes, that Bruce Campbell). Hodgman is also an actual geek, compared to the aforementioned Justin Long, who is just plays one – kinda – on TV commercials.
A wise geek king, The Hodgman would be.
Vary depicts the legions of fans at this year’s Comicon as a force to be pandered to by the likes of Steven Spielberg, who “dragged Harrison Ford from shooting Indiana Jones [4 ] so they could genuflect via satellite before the Comic-Con throng.”
Umm. . . OK. Many of us just hope that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn’t rape our good memories of the franchise to turn a buck in the spirit of the Star Wars prequels (it saddens me that the children of tomorrow will never live in a prequel free world like the rest of us did until 1998. Damn you, George Lucas!!).
There’s no need to genuflect. Just make a good movie. And for god’s sake, don’t screw up Indiana Jones.
Vary goes on to describe the conventioneers going insane for Jon Favreau’s Iron Man teaser trailer. “Favreau didn’t just get the audience, he is the audience,” Vary writes. “So he knew that there’s just something about a man in a jet-propelled robotic suit that lights up the geek region of the brain every time.”
No.
It’s isn’t just about a jet-propelled robotic suit (which is actually powered armor – I’m just saying). It’s about filmmakers who have enough respect and/ or love for the source material to be true to it (organic web spinners, anyone?), who understand the characters enough to make good casting and directorial decisions (Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark is inspired), and are more likely to make a movie that’s actually good as opposed to making a spectacle just to make a buck. I trust Favreau to get Iron Man right.
Then Vary spends the last paragraph covering things that didn’t “fit the geek mold”, among them Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and the (amazingly hot) cast of 300.
Not quite. Pirates of the Caribbean is a Disney movie based on an amusement park ride – it never really had “geek” written all over it. The cast of 300 may have been superbuff non-geeks themselves, but they provided verisimilitude within the movie, even though it made fanboys really uncomfortable to see that much man skin (not me, though – a nearly naked Gerard Butler was my favorite part of 300).
Finally, there’s an inexplicable tangent about Zac Efron being a theater geek, which Vary calls EW’s “trump card”.
However, I’m not sure what that trump card is supposed to prove. Perhaps that there are many types of geeks (not all of whom have questionable social skills)? Or is it meant to prove that, despite the entertainment industry’s admission that geeks do exist and have money to burn, we’re still losers?
The crushy Zac Efron tangent notwithstanding, the Entertainment Weekly piece shows that “geek” is another entertainment industry trend. It’s not respect or achievement for geekdom. It’s exploitation without understanding, which I suppose is what entertainment marketing professionals do best.
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Lisa Fary's earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She's angry that it's 2011 and she still doesn't have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram. 
I would say Michael Cera is more of a Geek Prince. Wait, Nerd Prince. No wait, lemme change it back to Geek Prince…he was in Arrested Development, after all. But logically, he’s too young to be Geek King at 19. I don’t like that EW thrust him onto the throne. Too much responsibility for one so young and new to geekdom.
If I had to choose a Geek King, it would have to be…Simon Pegg. Self-proclaimed geeks are my favorite. Plus, his geekiness isn’t limited to, what I like to call, ‘surface geek’ stuff (basically, all the stuff they talk about in Chuck). You have to really be a geek geek to appreciate Simon Pegg’s stuff, and it’s totally worth it, because you feel like he’s speaking to you, geek to geek. Dreamy sigh, much? Oh, yes.
And plus, with Simon Pegg, you get Edgar Wright and Nick Frost!! WHAT A DEAL THEY ARE AWESOME.
I never knew all that stuff about PC (from the Mac commercials). I will have to check him out.
Cera does need more of a body of work behind him to be considered worthy of geek kingdom. He’s on the right track, but not nearly accomplished enough.
I didn’t think of Simon Pegg! (He’s totally part of my man-harem of British weirdos).
You make a great point about how our society is getting geekier everyday. But the thing that irks me about the EW article is that it's supposed to be heralding geeks, but instead it seems to fall back on geek stereotypes. Perhaps this is to be expected. I don't think people realize how geeky our world has become and so therefore use a geek archetype from Sixteen Candles to define geek today.
Also, how about this: there's one throne chair thing, and Simon, Edgar and Nick can all sit on it, in each others laps. That is an image to hold onto for life.
And if you love Michael Cera, you should check out Juno. He spends most of the movie in little yellow-gold short shorts. Amazing.
1) Actually, I would have to say that Simon Pegg would have to share the throne with Edgar Wright. Perhaps instead of a geek king, we could have Geek Co-Presidents?
PS – I would rock a Pegg-Wright threesome so hard.
2) Why is Michael Cera so YOUNG?! *sighs* I saw “Superbad” for the first time two nights ago, and all I could think was “OK, kid. You need to hurry up and become all the way legal so I don’t have to feel so guilty…”
3) The interesting thing about “geekdom”, though, is that the more technologically advanced our society becomes, the easier information can be transmitted, and the more easily accessible entertainment options become, the less geekdom will be one segment of the population and more of a general standard. The fact that there are so many different types of geekdom proves this. I wouldn’t worry about Hollywood “not understanding” geeks…because this isn’t a trend in the same way that certain cultures getting their moment is a trend, or certain genres of movies becoming popular is a trend. Society as a whole is getting geekier without even realizing it. The point that I think the Entertainment Weekly article missed is that talking about how popular geekdom is at this point is a bit superfluous, because mass geekdom is inevitable. It’s like someone back in the day being all “People who watch television are becoming more and more of a force.” It’s like, “Well, duh…”
(I’m so eloquent)
I love the idea of people catching “the geek!” without realizing it.
Michael Cera reminds me of this kid Troy I had a crush on in high school. Even though he’s 19, I still find him kind of endearing because of that.
Heh. I went to college with Adam Vary and did a project with him once. He had Ricky Martin desktop wallpaper on his PC. Guess he’s been replaced by Zac? Seriously, though, I always found Adam to be an enjoyable and witty writer so it kinda sucks that he’s turned in this lazy list of a trend piece, when it could have been something rather interesting and unlike all the other trend pieces out now about the year of the geek…
I completely agree with Teresa’s point: the internet and a bazillion cable channels have allowed niche genres to flourish, and their fandoms to grow and able to grab a portion of the mainstream entertainment pie. This is a HUGE change to how we had previously disseminated and absorbed culture. Instead of a small-circulating snail mail only newsletters, a show or a comic or a writer can have a whole web community devoted to them with thousands of members. Perhaps the thesis of the piece shouldn’t be about embracing a stereotype but rather how the marginalized aren’t (as?) marginalized anymore. Or something.
P.S. The notion of Pegg and Wright as co-rulers of geekdom totally made me think of Tenacious D’s song “Two Kings,” and that The D would have to be the court jesters/troubadors. And Joss Whedon can be Secretary of State.