Respectable Geeks?

By Lisa Fary

We got entries in the National Film Registry and a knight. Are geeks finally becoming respectable?

Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series and many other fantasy novels, was knighted by the Queen of England the other day for services to literature. Pratchett said:

“I’m glad a genre writer has got a knighthood, but stunned that it was me.”

So, that will be Sir Terry Pratchett, from now on.  But, our road to respectability doesn’t end with Sir Terry Pratchett.

Every year the US National Film Preservation Board selects twenty-five films to be preserved in the National Film Registry. It’s kind of like the mythical Disney Vault, but not filled with direct-to-DVD crap like Cinderella III (where the prince has a midlife crisis and Cinderella gets Botoxed) and Lady and the Tramp II (in which Lady realizes that the Tramp got the better deal).

A board of professionals has determined that the list of culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films will now include The 7th Voyage of Sinbad – Ray Harryhausen’s first color film – and The Terminator.

It’s not the first time. Alien is in there, as are Blade Runner, Jaws, Night of the Living Dead, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and This is Spinal Tap. It’s obvious that more awesome than average people are on the preservation board because Eraserhead is in the registry, too.

However, this writer at the LA Times complains that there aren’t enough Oscar winners represented on the registry, arguing that enduring significance to American culture and winning an Oscar are the same thing. Which, of course, any geek looking at the nominations each year can tell you are so not the same thing. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, which isn’t on the registry, may have been an award winner, but The Terminator has clearly touched the mass consciousness more deeply and is still relevant in the ongoing discussion of ethics and the evolution of technology.

Besides, sometimes Oscar winners are way overrated and kinda suck (I’m looking at you, Forrest Gump). There may be great Oscar-winning movies, but the movies that are groundbreaking and change the way movies are made are typically genre movies and they deserve to be preserved and recognized.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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