Is Simon Pegg right? Is Nerdom hurting us?
Ok, so, if you haven't heard; in the last 24 hours Simon Pegg has questioned the intelligence of the movie going populace. He mainly called out the nerdcore on their obsessive attraction to nerd genre movies like Superheroes, Scifi, etc. He also threw out a new word out that I've never heard used; infantilised. Basically, he was questioning if the massive popularity of such geek favorite franchises was the 'dumbing down' of us all. Oh, he backpedaled a bit since then realizing that he was one of us and that he also makes his money on such franchises as Star Trek and the sort. And, since then, there have been endless tirades on the internet explaining how he's wrong. I, however, see some validity in his argument.
Now, first of all, I am in no way going to say that comics or movies about them are infantile or childish. I think this is where Pegg realized his mistake and began apologizing. And neither is this anything new. Going back as far as the forties (and maybe farther) the general populace has gone out of its way to bully anyone who reads and loves comics as children who just don't know when to grow up. As I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, people would publicly scoff at anyone over middle school age still reading such things. To argue that there was literary worth in such 'kiddie books' was useless. The droning message echoed out of every adult you came into contact with.
Most 'authorities' (aka anyone with a soapbox) would go even farther to say that comics and the reading of them would be the death of literacy. SO, my question is, 'Are they right?'
After 75 years of comics, have they finally had their expected effect and destroyed the literacy of today's adults? And, to allude to Pegg, has the influx of comic and scifi based 'nerd' movies sufficiently killed the art of cinema?
Now, obviously, comics have had a sufficient effect on today's society; far more than anyone would have every dreamed. You can't watch television, get on facebook or even go outside and look at billboards without realizing that nerdom has changed society in all sorts of ways. No one would have dreamed that the biggest box office draws of the 21st Century would have been the Avengers. NO BODY! Neither would they have believed that such things as racism, sexism, bullying, as well as the way the general public views women, homosexuals and anyone different than the original status quo would be championed by comics. Just get on any nerd group on Facebook and tell me that comics and the movies they spawned aren't front and center of the social dialog.
Just in the past few months, I've found myself blogging about the way we market to little girls, the rights and wrongs of female depictions on comic covers and the growing diversity in the medium. Just like Star Trek was the epitome of the social forum in the sixties, comics have become the center for social reform and education for our age.
Also, comics have a deep and varied scale of literary style and worth. I'm not going to insult you by saying that every comic you pick up is literature. On the contrary, some of it barely passes as decent or grammatically viable. But, just as there is a vast array of differing types and levels of excellence in the book world, you take the good with the bad in comics too. I remember reading one of my favorite Batman comics of all times; THE PLAYER ON THE OTHER SIDE. It was written by Michael W. Barr and illuded to themes put forth by literary greats Thomas Henry Huxley and Ellery Queen. Also, one would have to be hiding under a rock not to recognize the literary wealth of writers like Alan Moore or the storytelling imagery of a Frank Miller. Bottom line? In today's comic rack, you will find both the infantile and the genius.
So, I said that I saw validity in Pegg's original argument. Why so? I do see a dumbing down of the world as we know it. Books are being tossed for Netflix. Letters forgotten and replaced by texting and email. Writing is replaced by blogging and Facebook posts; of which, yours truly is guilty. (Although, in my defense, I am also finishing up several books under the BDC name) So, I can understand how Simon can look over the state of how things are and see a loss of brain matter aka intelligence.
BUT (and I think Simon is realizing this already), comics, nerdom and nerd movies are just a symptom and not the cause. Technology, which in Scifi circles have been warned as possibly the greatest evil of our time, is partially to blame. The more we make things easier on ourselves, the less we have to think about it, the less we think period. On the one hand, we 'better' our lives and, with the other, we take away the initiative and creative energy that spawned one of the greatest periods of scientific and philosophical advancement of all time. We find that we don't need full sentences to communicate and we truncate words to quicker get the message out. And, in the process, we begin to loose the ability to fully communicate on the whole with the world around us.
The movie business in general has to take part of the blame. They gravitate to the easy money and not always the best cinema. This is what has made comic based movies wildly popular right now. Movie rights to any and every comic book property known to man is being swept up in a feeding frenzy because 'that's what sells right now'. Reminds me of the 'reality tv' craze. Suddenly, everybody flocked to that idea because someone made it work and made bookoos of money at it. So, instead of innovating, you mimic. So everything from the tried and true Marvel and DC comic characters down to Izombie is being made into a television show or movie as fast as they can while the trend is up. Does that mean that there will be a crash of interest in such properties? I don't think for some time to come acutally. But we will get a weeding out along the way where the cream of the crop will survive and all of the crap that's being thrown against the wall in the name of comic franchise greatness will fade away.
We're also to blame. I'm also to blame. I don't read as much as I ought. Books that is. I find myself writing A LOT; which is good. The practice is dying, I'm afraid. No, the blame is us all. What we allow to happen to our own intelligence or how much or little we work that brain of ours is the major culprit. It's just too damn easy to pop a DVD in or stream Netflix versus picking up a book and actually reading. No, if anyone is to blame for the 'dumbing down' of the world, it is we ourselves. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm preaching to the choir here. If you've read this much, you are in the minority. And that is sad...
