This week I've taken a break from the usual Collection posts to talk about some thoughts that I've been mulling over while attempting to make sense of my place in this wild world. Enjoy.
Being excited about the recently-aired Dr. Who 50th anniversary special, I watched a short clip from the BBC Graham Norton chat show which featured the two most recent doctors, Matt Smith and David Tennant, as well as comic Jimmy Carr. During one of Norton's audience-involvement segments, Carr mocked a die-hard Whoovian with what has undoubtedly become a tired trope of nerd-hate, "What do you think its going to be like to touch a girl?" The jibe got uproarious laughter from the audience and deprecating giggles from the object of Carr's mockery and got me thinking about my career. Didn't see that coming, did you? I'll explain:
Admittedly, Carr is known for being particularly aggressive onstage and undoubtedly the joke was made in fun, but the canned response to such a joke reveals a very interesting trend in the way that nerds are understood in popular culture. Sure, the growth of Comic-con and the mass success of nerdy franchises have all served to legitimate the nerd in global pop culture, but I would submit that this popularity is still held at arms-length by a large portion of the global population, and a lot of this liminal space is packed with anxieties of conventional masculinity. What Carr hits upon in making this comment is a certain expectation of heteronormative masculine performance that is threatened by another male who wears his passions on his sleeve, as it were.
In a 2013 convention appearance, a loud voice for nerd-culture Wil Wheaton articulated what it means to be a nerd, explaining that nerds are not afraid to wholeheartedly explore and share their passions. The unfortunate thing is that far too often, this means that those who do not share those same passions are alienated by the nerd to the point of feeling a need to respond with a reaffirmation of the most traditional and, I would say, least self-critical of masculine passions: sex. The non-nerd dissociates himself from the nerd by valuing a passion that he unquestioningly places above pursuits that he labels puerile. I would say that this response is riddled with anxieties of identity since the non-nerd is most threatened by the self-possession of the impassioned nerd; the non-nerd is not self-critical in his immediate assumption that his access to tail is ontonogically superior to the nerd's desire to, perhaps, make his/her own tail.
Yet I would say that popular culture as a whole, despite its grand investment in all-things nerdy, has not quite caught up to this realization. Case in point: The Big Bang Theory. While this show would appear to bring a representations of nerd-culture into the mainstream in a sympathetic light, its wild popularity among the same people that make Jimmy Carr-esque jokes indicates that its popularity is problematic (a BBT fan is more likely to talk about how badass Christopher Nolan's Batmobile was than to discuss the issue of its being armed with lethal weaponry). Instead of doing justice to nerds and truly allowing audiences to connect to the characters, The Big Bang Theory manages to include just enough of nerd culture for the popular non-nerd audience to recognize what is nerdy, but ultimately reduces a handful nerd personality tropes into a few manageable tidbits that allow the non-nerd viewer to maintain his/her distance and still laugh at, and not with, the nerd. In essence, The Big Bang Theory is the vaudeville blackface of nerd culture.
Admittedly, there are a great number of nerds whose social skills and general presentation do not fit with what the non-nerd considers the standard fare of cultural interaction and often the visibility of these inconsistencies allow for the nerd to be reduced to these stereotypes. The typical response is to expect the nerd to conform to the same social standards of the non-nerd, although this conversation is rarely much different than that of Jimmy Carr and his Whoovian quarry above. But I would submit that these nerds represent alternate masculinities (and sometimes femininities, although this is typically a smaller portion. Stereotypical, I know, and some of that is changing, but you won't see many women in D&D campaigns or at Magic: The Gathering tournaments) that deserve recognition and understanding.
It has been my observation in working among a phenomenal department of English graduate students and faculty that most scholars tend to pursue fields of study that hit closest to home. Latin American scholars are interested in chicano literature and Latin American studies; my gay and lesbian colleagues often gravitate towards queer studies and many of the female scholars I know are often compelled to seek representation for the feminine in their work. Each scholar works to represent and understand what is important or integral in his or her own identity. For the longest time I have been wondering what it is that hits closest to home for me; I am a white middle-class male from California and I have experienced what I feel has always been a limited amount of diversity or adversity. I love medieval literature and tales of warriors and heroes and probably can attribute most of my interests to a continuing love of J. R. R. Tolkien, an author many still consider escapist. But Tolkien fans are passionate, nerdy, and number among a vast subculture of people that may no longer be entirely shunned by the dominant culture, but still occupy a marginalized space within it. In High School I had always occupied a shifting space between the nerd and non-nerd; I could wax philosophical about Batman but played basketball, I knew what furries were but could converse comfortably with the ASB kids. Yet I was always disappointed at the interaction between those with less fluid identities, especially since the socially dominant would invariably belittle the 'socially' awkward. At the time, I was probably too self-conscious and insecure to make an articulate defense for the little-guy, but if I learned anything from my dad, it was that one should always root for the little guy (a strangely chivalric notion from one of the least literate men in my life, God bless him).
I don't see myself working directly to change this, but if there is any cause that I see myself fighting for in my scholarly work it is to foster an understanding of marginalized masculinities that does not demand that the nerdy learn to conform, but that the non-nerdy learn to empathize.
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