The Big Bang Theory – It’s Chic To Be Geek

Rick Dixon writes from Cambridge: I want to take you on a journey back in time. Unfortunately I don’t have a TARDIS, or a DeLorean, so I’ll have to paint a mental picture for you. If you want to supply your own kaleidoscopic time tunnel effects and ‘woooOOOOoooOOOOOooo’ sounds, that’s perfectly fine – I don’t have a special effects budget.

So come with me back to the summer of ’89…

Kids are wearing flares, doing ecstasy and acid (only acid could make flares seem like a good idea), and illegal raves in fields and warehouses are all the rage (yes, I did say ’89 – not ’69), and a film that would become the template for modern superhero movies was released. Tim Burton’s Batman was remarkable for several reasons: the hype it generated in the media and in public; the amount of money and critical acclaim it received as a ‘comic-book’ film; and that it managed all this while having a soundtrack by Prince. Much of the revenue generated by the film came from an aggressive merchandising campaign featuring the film’s logo: Batman baseball caps, Batman toilet rolls, Batman T-shirts. Ah, Batman T-shirts…

Now the younger of you may find this very difficult to believe, but despite the popularity of the Batman film, wearing a Batman T-shirt to school in 1989 as a skinny sixth former was an offence serious enough to ensure my – sorry – your underpants were swiftly and roughly pulled up over your head. While you still wore them. Yes kids, wearing a Batman T-shirt in public 23 years ago at best invited scorn, but usually attracted physical violence. In fact, many things that you take for granted today were simply not done or publicly acknowledged: reading comics in your teens, wearing superhero-themed clothing, discussing computer gaming openly, or watching Doctor Who. Being caught doing, or admitting to any of these would ensure your status as a social outcast on a par with being caught in bed with a goat.

So flash back to the present – not only is being a nerd socially acceptable, but a certain group of people (hipsters) go out of their way to appear as geeks, despite not knowing a Star War from a Star Trek. It’s this kind of change in cultural attitude towards ‘geek chic’ that has allowed a TV show like The Big Bang Theory to exist and become popular in the mainstream.

The Big Bang Theory is a massively successful US sitcom about a super-intelligent group of friends who work at a university as research scientists or engineers. And you better believe they cover every geek stereotype in the manual: one still lives at home with his mother; they are all obsessive regarding just about any sci-fi or fantasy program/film/game – they all play Warcraft and Dungeons & Dragons, and they all read comics and collect comic memorabilia.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yes; they are all spectacularly bad with women. One character is so far removed from society and romance that he could be a robot – he even expresses a desire to download his consciousness to a robot. The comedic Jewish character thinks he is the group expert on women, but is actually a loathsome, desperate pervert, and the comedic Indian stereotype has a pathological fear of even speaking in the presence of a woman, yet has very feminine tendencies. So far, not a huge leap forward from how nerds were portrayed in the 80s…

To be fair, while a reasonable amount of humour in the show does come in the form of jokes which only a nerd could understand, the vast majority of the laughs come from watching these hapless geeks try and interact with ‘normal’ society. Some of the nerds do manage to win steady girlfriends, but we’re laughing at them, as they hopelessly break every dating rule in the book. When one character attempts to learn the intricacies of American Football in an attempt to integrate with his girl’s friends, we end up laughing at him as he learns and repeats the entire rule book verbatim as they watch. Whenever they are required to do even the most basic of ‘manly’ tasks, the first thing they do is consult the dumb, but streetwise blonde across the hall. Oh, how we laugh. At them.

It’s 2013 – the highest-grossing film of all time is a comic-book movie, and so are two of the others in the top ten, two of the highest-grossing franchises are the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings  series – why are TV executives still stuck in the 80s when it comes to portraying geeks? Is it too much to ask that a sitcom be made for geeks where the humour is not mostly aimed at them? The Big Bang Theory is a step in the right direction, but it is still very much removed from a reality in which fans of the Twilight saga are allowed to exist, and even breed.

Now please excuse me, I need to find my Batman T-shirt – I’m off out to buy comics. I won’t be wearing underwear though. Just in case…

–End–

1 Comment

1. mahatmacoatmabag says:

   February 14, 2013 at 7:50 pm

   The Big Bang? I was 18 1/2 , she was 19, it was a warm summers eve & we were in love, well at least that summer we were, the summer of the Big Bang !