On HU
Featured Archive Post: Nadim Damluji on the tiny number of Chinese comics creators.
I talk about Kill Bill and Quentin Tarantino, Humanist.
Voices from the Archive: Trina Robbins on Marvel’s hapless efforts to sell Barbie comics.
I talk about the Johnny Cash’s work with Rick Rubin.
My nine-year-old explained the appeal of Lee/Ditko Dr. Strange. (with fan art!)
Subdee on the economics of Django Unchained. (This, incidentally, completed our Django Unchained roundtable.
Kailyn Kent on the ironies of Jason Lutes’ Berlin.
Michael Arthur provides a NSFW explanation of the furry subculture.
Ng Suat Tong with the case against Moto Hagio’s Heart of Thomas.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At the Atlantic I argue that the fake geek girl meme means maybe we need to get rid of geeks.
At the Atlantic I argue that the 50 Shades of Grey Movie will be better than the film (though still bad.)
At the Atlantic I make the feminist argument against women in combat.
At Splice Today I write about the mixed blessing of discovering the Republicans are not completely insane.
Other Links
Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith on Heart of Thomas.
Erica Friedman on manga’s bumpy move towards digital.
Brian Cremins on comics and nostalgia.
Calista Brill on when it might be time for hopeful comics creators to give up.
The American Conservative on how even Texas is sick of testing.
The Literary canon based on academic articles.
The Atlantic on sex and sexual assault at military academies.
Mary Elizabeth Williams on why you can think fetuses are alive and still be pro-choice.
This Week’s Reading
Still reading Fellowship of the Ring to my son. I reread E.M. Forster’s Room With a View; rereading Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Also read Alex Woolfson and Winona Nelson’s Artifice for a possible review.
Is your son enjoying Fellowship? I’m headed towards the end of Two Towers and I’m still surprised on how little action there is. A lot of walking… and then more walking.
Reading that as well as a recent Leonard Cohen biography, which I am enjoying (it’s well written and doesn’t linger on trivialities).
Read the new edition of Lynda Barry’s The Freddie Stories (D&Q), which was darker than I expected (I don’t think I’ve read more than 1 or 2 of the strips before) from my experience of her Ernie Pook’s Comeek. Barry’s a great prose stylist. Appreciated this book tons more than other recent books by her.
He does seem to be enjoying it, though he occasionally wonders when something is going to happen.
The ‘fake geek girl’ thing gives me an eye twitch. I wore a goddamn tee shirt and jeans and still had that random attack hug problem. You’d have to pay me to go to a geek con these days, and even then I wouldn’t go unless I could take the Pookie.
I’m still reading on fiber arts, working on the Sekrit Project, but I took some time out to do a bunch of cover illustrations for a friend’s books. They’re selling well, which makes me happy. I’ve done quite a bit of reading on DeviantArt, which always make me tilt my head at the chat shorthand of kids these days, but the art info is great.
I’m a bit baffled: oppose sexism, promote hot porn stars and wannabe actresses in revealing superhero outfits at cons. That’s your take? That being said, I see no problem with hot porn stars and wannabe actresses dressing in such outfits at cons, irrespective of how much they know about the source material. There are a lot of possible reasons for objecting to it, I imagine, and I probably won’t agree with them. Maybe male and female geeks are uncomfortable with seeing that much flesh, or maybe they think it’s sexist. I’m actually surprised — well, skeptical — that male geeks are the primary ones doing the objecting. And I’m even more surprised to read an appeal for accepting sexual objectification.
Right…any girl at a con who dresses up is a porn star or a wannabe actress. And then you wonder why anybody could possibly describe this meme as sexist. Sheesh.
The controversy isn’t over any girl in cosplay, but over a particular type of girl — i.e., the ones you can watch on youtube or that are featured in top 10 hottest cosplay lists on geek sites. Do you really have to pretend to not know which girls we’re talking about here?
And, btw, promotion of porn sites and the hopes of being discovered either at a con or later on youtube are 2 reasons why girls who aren’t so into geeky things would dress up in sexualized geek attire, which is what you asked for in the essay.
Right; because you need to pretend to be a geek to promote porn sites. And the best way to be “discovered”, whatever that means, is to go to cons where you don’t want to be and talk to a bunch of people purchasing star wars paraphenalia.
It’s idiotic Charles. As is the claim that “it’s just certain types of girls,” those types to be determined by you, as arbiter of all things geek. So you can decide who’s a slut and who’s authentic. Again, I say, if you can’t see why that might be sexist, I can’t help you.
Cons are extremely commercial venues. Pretending otherwise is idiotic. They’re there to sell people crap. If you’re upset by cons selling people crap, then say you’re upset by cons selling people crap. Don’t justify it by sneering at women.
San Diego Comicon is a huge media bonanza. It’s widely covered with many famous people there. It makes perfect sense to dress up so to be noticed. Being noticed is why gals are hired to stand around in tiny outfits hawking some geek products. Also, people like to be looked at, found to be sexually attractive. There’s another reason why a gal would dress up.
And who said anything about “sluts”? Fact is there are plenty of scantily clad gals at cons who are there mainly to promote something, rather than actually being nerdy themselves. It doesn’t take much interpretation to see this, just search ‘san diego cosplay’ on youtube for many examples. The one guy who’s article on CNN is referenced is more opposed to the crass commercialism aspect than anything else. Objecting to commercialism at a con at this point is pretty ridiculous, but people still complain about all the celebrity hoopla, too. Geeks like him want more of the old con feel where it was just fans there because they were really into the material being ostensibly celebrated by the con. It’s funny to me that someone would try to make him out to be a misogynist because he wants fewer scantily clad gals at a con. The rationale isn’t there, just assumed. Isn’t it mostly women who complain about this sort of thing online?
I’ve heard “concerned parents” complain, too.
People are complaining because the assumption is that the women there don’t deserve to be there, and because commercialism and inauthenticity are linked specifically to women. Which are really old misogynist tropes, and should be sneered at.
And yes, if you have paranoid fantasies about geeks being preyed upon by pretty girls, that’s misogynist. And discourses about crass commercialism are often linked to, and gain their rhetorical force from, misogyny, just as anti-capitalism and anti-modernity has often gotten some of its rhetorical force from anti-semitism.
Men are accused of commercialism and inauthentic, too. And just because some commercialism has been linked to misogyny doesn’t mean that it makes sense to do so, or that in every instance one is entailed by the other such that one can just assume the latter when the former appears. Here’s what that CNN fellow says:
He doesn’t sound that different from you complaining about DC comics. Why are feminists slutshaming Starfire?
Starfire isn’t real. She was made up by men. The woman he’s sneering at are real — or at least, he thinks they’re real, though I suspect that they’re just figments of his imagination, mostly.
The inability to tell the difference between actual real women and fantasies of women seems like a pretty serious analytic failure. To me.
Men are accused of inauthenticity. Often the terms of that accusation involve accusations that they fail in being sufficiently manly. In any case, when the attack on corporatism involves demonizing women, and coining a meme that links inauthenticity, femininity, and capitalism, I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest he’s tying into a history of linking inauthenticity to women, and often to capitalism as well.
Yeah, when one is accused of not being masculine or feminine enough, the claim of authenticity involves gender. I guess we agree on that. Otherwise, there’s the quote from the guy and then your “demonization.” What technique do you possess that this guy lacks when making generalizations about, say, why men don’t wear dresses, but women do? And when is critiquing the objectification of the female body not demonizing? Alright, i’ve had my fun, that’s enough.
Men don’t wear dresses because masculinity is policed in some ways more thoroughly and harshly than femininity. And as with any kind of critique or aesthetic discussion, it’s context dependent. Neither of those seems like particularly complicated arguments to me.
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Charles Reece says:
I’m a bit baffled: oppose sexism, promote hot porn stars and wannabe actresses in revealing superhero outfits at cons. That’s your take? That being said, I see no problem with hot porn stars and wannabe actresses dressing in such outfits at cons, irrespective of how much they know about the source material….
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Right…any girl at a con who dresses up is a porn star or a wannabe actress. And then you wonder why anybody could possibly describe this meme as sexist. Sheesh.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Did Charles say, or imply, “any girl at a con who dresses up is a porn star or a wannabe actress”? Hardly; merely that some who do dress up that way, are doing so with those goals in mind. But, why let reality get in the way of ferreting out sexism?
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Charles Reece says:
The controversy isn’t over any girl in cosplay, but over a particular type of girl — i.e., the ones you can watch on youtube or that are featured in top 10 hottest cosplay lists on geek sites…
And, btw, promotion of porn sites and the hopes of being discovered either at a con or later on youtube are 2 reasons why girls who aren’t so into geeky things would dress up in sexualized geek attire…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Right; because you need to pretend to be a geek to promote porn sites.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
The overwhelming majority of porn sites (I’m presuming, never having visited any myself; seriously) are not aimed at “geekily-minded” guys; therefore, the women promoting them would act like they’re girl-next-door cheerleaders, badass dominatrixes, “barely-legal” faux-innocents, sexually-frustrated housewives, hip, tattooed alterna-girls, or whatever the “flavor” the site is selling is.
Rather that “porn sites” in general — which is what your statement mentions — it would be “porn sites aimed at geeks” (does such a thing exist?) that “you [would] need to pretend to be a geek to promote.”
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And the best way to be “discovered”, whatever that means, is to go to cons where you don’t want to be and talk to a bunch of people purchasing star wars paraphenalia.
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“…Whatever that means”?? You truly don’t know? (Speaking of faux-innocence…)
Would-be actors, and actresses in particular, do tons of crap jobs going to places where they don’t want to be (like, say, dressing provocatively and draping their curves against some chunk of metal at car shows: http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/05/16/them-funny-furrin-cars-los-angeless-1958-imported-car-show/ , http://vimeo.com/23104134 ) and talking “to a bunch of people purchasing the sponsor’s paraphernalia.”
And I saw (incredibly, Google is failing to turn up any images) Arnold Schwarzenegger, before he got into movies, mopping floors in an muscle-revealing outfit in an old B&W commercial for a cleaning product.
But, I guess to some the idea of would-be stars doing promotional jobs that they’re not “into” in order to be “discovered” is a ludicrous, unutterably bizarre concept. Which Charles must be utterly wacko to suggest as a possibility.
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It’s idiotic Charles. As is the claim that “it’s just certain types of girls,” those types to be determined by you, as arbiter of all things geek.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Did he claim to be the “arbiter of all things geek”? He did not. Likewise, if you see some pouting bimbo posing with glasses and pretending to read some rarefied academic volume, you don’t have to be the “arbiter of all things intellectual” in order to note it’s just a transparent act.
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So you can decide who’s a slut and who’s authentic. Again, I say, if you can’t see why that might be sexist, I can’t help you.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Did Charles say they were “sluts”? Did he claim that’s the only two possibilities of women dressing up at cons, authentic geekiness or slut-dom?
Ah but only a truly more-feminist-than-thou feminist can see the sexism that permeates the very air we breathe! Like Dr. Wertham could spot that “blatant female vagina in Tarzan’s armpit.” (As Spain phrased it in his UG comix “take” on the doctor.)
“And if you can’t see that blatant female vagina, I can’t help you…”
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Cons are extremely commercial venues. Pretending otherwise is idiotic. They’re there to sell people crap. If you’re upset by cons selling people crap, then say you’re upset by cons selling people crap.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic! (I believe a “personal best” is being set here…)
Did Charles even remotely hint at unawareness that cons were steeped in commercialism, or “pretend otherwise”?
Might as well respond, “2 + 2 = 4! Pretending otherwise is idiotic…”
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Don’t justify it by sneering at women.
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Ah, (yet again) the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Did he “sneer at women”? I see nary a sign of that in his comments. But then, to a more-feminist-than-thou type, any but the most reverently respectful treatment of every single member of the female gender would be “sneering at all women.” (If you mock Sarah Palin…you hate women!
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Noah Berlatsky says:
People are complaining…because commercialism and inauthenticity are linked specifically to women. Which are really old misogynist tropes, and should be sneered at.
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“Commercialism and inauthenticity are linked specifically to women. Which are really old misogynist tropes.”
(Rolls eyes) Uh, OK, if you say so…
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And yes, if you have paranoid fantasies about geeks being preyed upon by pretty girls, that’s misogynist.
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Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic! (We’re setting a world’s record here…)
Did Charles say, or even hint at, having “paranoid fantasies about geeks being preyed upon by pretty girls”?
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And discourses about crass commercialism are often linked to, and gain their rhetorical force from, misogyny, just as anti-capitalism and anti-modernity has often gotten some of its rhetorical force from anti-semitism.
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Why not toss in racism, homophobia, and “ableism” too? “Discourses about global warming/animal rights/freedom of speech/abortion rights are often linked to, and gain their rhetorical force from _______________!” (Fill in your pet outrage; say, Islamophobia.)
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Starfire isn’t real. She was made up by men. The wom[e]n he’s sneering at are real — or at least, he thinks they’re real, though I suspect that they’re just figments of his imagination, mostly.
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I guess you’re referring to that CNN reporter’s comments. So, re those con women dressed up in revealing outfits, you “suspect that they’re just figments of his imagination, mostly”? Therefore, as you say, those women are either wholly or mostly “figments of [the] imagination”?
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The inability to tell the difference between actual real women and fantasies of women seems like a pretty serious analytic failure. To me.
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A little more than “analytic”; but put some effort into it, and you can overcome that personal failing!
Let me put it in a simple fashion: these are real women…dressing up as imaginary characters!
It’s like make-believe…they don’t actually become the characters!
The CNN reporter is talking about geeks being preyed upon by pretty girls. That’s the whole point of the meme.
It’s not about geeks being preyed upon by corporations, or by commercialism. If it was, the companies hiring the women would be the issue, right? But instead, it’s an attack specifically on the women themselves. Charles insists that the meme only applies to women who are actually fake…which is the same sort of argument you get whenever a group is targeted — i.e., they’re not really being targeted, because the thing they’re accused of is true.
If you want to argue against commercialism, argue against commercialism. But the guy at CNN isn’t attacking commercialism; he’s not railing against the evils of corporations or the cynicism of people who sell crap to geeks. He’s railing against the iniquity of individual, artificial women, who corrupt men, and who you’ve always got to be on the watch for…because who can be sure which of those sexy women is real and which are fake?
Charles says, well, if you’re arguing for women to be allowed to dress up, you’re arguing for objectification. How is that different from Starfire? And again, the difference is that Starfire is not real — and that in that particular narrative she’s turned into a brain-damaged sex bunny, which is supposed to be hot. Women dressing up at cons, on the other hand, are real people, and writing about them as if they are Machiavellian sex bunnies is, therefore, offensive.
Also, in terms of whether fake geek girls exist…the question isn’t just whether women dress up at cons, nor is it just whether there are for profit companies which sometimes employ women to sell their wares at cons (in which case it’s hard to see where the “fake” comes in, since the commercial nature of the enterprise is clear). The question is whether there are women who fake interest in geek subjects by dressing up at cons in order to gain some nebulous, personal satisfaction. I think that such women, with such motivations, don’t exist, but are in fact a paranoid misogynist fantasy.
And, in terms of being discovered…there aren’t any men at these cons who are networking and schmoozing and putting themselves forward and trying to sell crap? Are they “fake”? Why does authenticity only get invoked when its women doing these things? Why is the assumption that male schmoozers are “real” geeks, while female ones are infiltrators or corrupting outsiders?
Mike, as porn enthusiast myself, there is an increasingly noticeable amount of geek themes and interest around porn. I think the schoolgirl look has for a very long time occasionally been mixed with the geek appeal; librarian theme too. There has been a number of sites devoted to women dressing up as superheroes and action heroes; in a lot of sites, since many models need a photoset out every month, they exhaust every theme and often eventually run into fantasy/superhero/videogame themes.
One of my favorite recent topless models named herself after a Jaime Hernandez character and dressed up as Black Canary at a convention. There was also a supermodel looking girl who I think is a topless model, who did a really surprising and amazing job with a Mayhem t-shirt, full corpsepaint and an upsidedown cross on her forehead with a vicious snarl and metal hand signals.
It’s weird, in most of these articles I dont see any differentiation between women who are paid “booth babes” and cosplayers (who could be often mistaken for a booth babe). The difference is COLOSSAL! Cosplayers tend to be enormous fans of anime, videogames and comics; spending a lot of time making their costumes. There is a fairly famous one called Vampy who makes really professional looking costumes and is clearly obsessed with the culture. She usually dresses up as sexy characters but also she said she wanted to do the Warhammer 4000 stuff (heavy armor troop stuff).
I like quite a few cosplay girls and a fair number of nude models dabble in it and go to conventions just like any other fan cosplayer. I think Tumblr has changed a lot of things because models/performers have used it to talk more about their own lives, opinions and passions; a whole lot of them are into stuff that would be considered geeky and this often makes fans more loyal because they like that their favorite model loves Dr Who as much as they do. They can also lose fans because a lot of masturbators cant stomach a model who has outspoken political stances that differ from their own.
I may have been guilty of complaining about “invaders” (but nothing to do with gender). There was a lot of complaints when the Wii came around about “casual gamers” ruining the games industry, but I felt it was already spoiled in the Playstation era. Now I can appreciate a lot of the changes and diversification but I do still often think videogames have became less interesting because they pander too much to a wider audience now.
All that said, I can think of very little nice to say about geek culture. I do think it mostly revolves around a consumerism that deludes itself into thinking it is something more meaningful. I think it is possibly the most insidious form of consumerism and that geek culture ruins rather than cultivates all the things it is supposed celebrate. It puts specific franchises on a pedestal rather than trying to find things that stimulates the right thoughts and emotions that were the reason they liked these franchises in the first place. Then with all the dull humor, the obsession with trivial aspects.
I think it is an immensely unhealthy culture that needs hype and delusion to maintain itself or else people wake up and realize their expensive time consuming folly. Businesses cultivate this delusion and end up getting death threats and groups of people who have built something like an extremist religion around franchises. I’d like to challenge these people and try to get them to examine how they truly feel but it is a frightening idea because so many of them have driven themselves so mad.
Noah, have you heard of the culture in japan of guys who marry fictional characters and refer to real women as “3d pigs”? There was once a handheld dating videogame where the company organized hotel stays for fans with their videogames. That is probably the most dubious excess I’ve ever heard of in geek culture.
There is a comedian called Patton Oswalt who written a critique of the way geek culture had went, and I was excited about the idea of that, but he went in a really bad direction about it, saying that geek culture wasnt obscure enough anymore, which I think is an insane complaint.
In getting into “fantastic fiction”, I’m interested to see how much it has in common with the geek culture of genre movies, comics, videogames, tabletop gaming and animation. It seems to me that it is a lot more healthy than these because it is a lot more critical, but there is a lot of the collector aspect that I dislike, like expensive variant signed and fancy versions of books. There might be some geeky trivia about characters, publication dates etc, but I’ve never seen it hostile. People dont threaten to brutally rape each other in an argument about Olaf Stapledon.
I’m starting to think a lot of this stuff is very american, I’ve seen very little of the hostile geek behavior in the UK. Most of the geek talk I hear is humorously self-deprecating.
There is an old fashioned sort of geek obsessed with war history, that has train sets and likes old vehicles who is patriotic but sometimes you suspect they secretly admire Hitler. It is a strange mixture of masculinity and geekiness.
Oh, I see Noah raised a question I raised when I was writing but just before I posted.
Here is a funny variation on it about China Mieville…
http://teresajusino.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/china-mieville-is-a-poser/
If Noah actually admitted the obvious, that there are girls dressing up at cons for reasons other than they’re geeks, his whole point goes out the window. Then he’d have to acknowledge the distinction that CNN guy is making, in which case the argument is no longer about ‘attacking women’ but about ‘attacking certain women’s behavior’. It becomes about the content of actions, not a whole gender. A problem with behavior is, of course, exactly what the guy was writing about. But maybe Noah really is the kind of guy who doesn’t understand the librarian in porn isn’t actually a librarian. I kind of doubt it, though. No, it’s just that white knight helmet obscuring reality.
I do think the CNN essay is a bunch of shit, though, as if there’s a readily available distinction between the Felicia Days and Olivia Munns of pop culture. One is mostly getting work from geek favorite shows, the other is getting work at Maxim and Aaron Sorkin after having worked on a geek entertainment show. (I much prefer Newsroom to the really awful Guild.) If Munn were now pigeon-holed into working on the Syfy channel, she’d still be a true geek actress, I guess (even though she only dates sports figures). And the same applies to all those “poachers” on geek “culture” who dress up at cons for reasons other than true love (the Olivia Munn wannabes). Pure nonsense, only not the result of hating women.
Why? Because the guy goes out of his way to talk about how great it is that geek culture has expanded, that it’s for boys and girls, and that he has no problem with real geeks dressing up, even really beautiful real geeks. He even manshames a fellow critic for attacking Felicia Day. But Noah reads this characterization of the poachers:
As the guy saying women are preying on men at cons. More nonsense on nonsense.
And I should think that I wouldn’t have to explain that talking about a fictional character isn’t all that different from talking about a real person playing a fictional character when the issue is about what either represents. Or is that Noah now doesn’t believe fictional characters are relevant to any realworld matters …
Robert, your raise a lot interesting issues, but for starters:
I think there’s a lot of truth here. For example, at what point does a 78s enthusiasm become little more than another example of mere object fetishism under capitalism? That being said, there does seem to be something admirable about a person who can pierce through the mass junk accoutrement to find something of lasting value within. I tend towards your skepticism, but it’s worth noting that there is something more to geekdom than merely another example of capitalism. It can be something of a rejection of consumerism. There’s a lot wrong with that Oswalt essay, but I think that’s sort of what he’s trying to get at. And I think that’s a feeling about “poaching” that isn’t reducible to fetishism, nostalgia or sexism.
Fictional characters are relevant. But it’s hard to figure out how they’re relevant if you’re not willing to think about how they’re fictional.
Charles Reece: “That being said, there does seem to be something admirable about a person who can pierce through the mass junk accoutrement to find something of lasting value within.”
I’m a big fan of a lot of toys from the mid eighties to the mid nineties, I think it was the golden age of toys, I dont think this is just because I was a child at this time, some people older than me agree who were adults at the time. But it was also perhaps the worst time in many ways because of the “Collect them all!” aspect. I suppose it might have been because toys were so big, they got to be both better and shitter than ever.
Also, I already said I’m a huge fan of soft porn despite the heap of reasons not to like it. I genuinely find this world more exciting than comics, movies and videogames combined. The only things I think are better are music and pictures/sculpture (not decided about books yet). It is the only thing I’m into that gets better everyday (apart from the business realities and that so many people refuse to pay for it and that results in models starting and quitting quicker than ever), never goes in a slump, it is always exciting.
People would think I’m mad when I feel like telling everybody “Get into soft porn, it is amazing! You dont know what you are missing!” but people do tend to think of generic playboy, hardcore and other photoshopped junk. One of the biggest obstacles in getting it better is that it is extremely difficult to get porn away from the factory like production it has to have to stay in business. The question of royalties is also difficult. A lot of the best stuff is done for a hobby rather than a career. But a lot of the consciously artistic stuff lacks life and personality.
“If Noah actually admitted the obvious, that there are girls dressing up at cons for reasons other than they’re geeks, his whole point goes out the window.”
Only if you assume that
(a) women, unlike men, have only one motivation, so when they claim to be interested in commerce and in content, they are lying.
(b)There’s something deceptive about women selling things; therefore, when they are selling things, they are fake.
I’d also point out that the hard line distinction you’re making between someone actually selling something and those just dressed up is not in the article. His distinction is between women who care and those who don’t. It’s a relationship to the heart, not to the market. He’s more focused on (mythical) attention whoredom than on selling stuff, as far as I can tell.
Incidentally, the idea that, say, people selling porn sites are fake geek girls seem completely incoherent to me. In the first place, as far as I can tell, there’s a fairly substantial number of guys who are porn geeks, in various senses. There are porn conventions, after all, and porn sites that (as Robert says above) cater to geeks. So the women involved in those sites are “fake geeks” if…what? They don’t actually want to have sex with every guy who watches the site? Or geeky guys into porn are authentic, but the porn they’re into is inauthentic? Or what? The whole thing is just stupid. (Not even mentioning the fact that, you know, porn stars are people, some of whom have geeky interests…and even if they don’t, they may well appreciate their audience in various ways or for various reasons, none of which involve being liars or predators.)
Re your argument that geek culture is oppositional to capitalism in some way. That’s certainly the propaganda. I find it pretty thoroughly unconvincing. Even copyleft and free culture stuff tends to be more about new business models or marketing than about being really opposed to capitalism per se. Which makes sense, because actually being opposed to capitalism is really extremely hard, especially when your supposedly oppositional cultural identity is formed largely by your relationship to capitalist-produced media.
Which isn’t even a bad thing. It just seems like recognizing it would allow folks to spend less of their time making idiotic claims about other people’s authenticity.
“there does seem to be something admirable about a person who can pierce through the mass junk accoutrement to find something of lasting value within”
Sure. I’m all for that, as long as they can do it without being sexist assholes.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…Starfire is not real — and that in that particular narrative she’s turned into a brain-damaged sex bunny, which is supposed to be hot. Women dressing up at cons, on the other hand, are real people, and writing about them as if they are Machiavellian sex bunnies is, therefore, offensive.
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First, from my limited “conning” experience, most women who dress up at cons are fans, who dress up for fun, though thy may not mind getting some ego-boosting male appreciation, either.
And second, we can heartily agree that the current incarnation of Starfire is utterly noxious; detestable catering to the dumbest sex fantasies imaginable.
But what, real women aren’t capable of being “Machiavellian sex bunnies”? Why, there is a minor, but significant portion of the gender — at least in cultures which allow the freedom to do so — who deliberately make themselves as “sex object”-like as possible, that they may thereby become some rich guy’s “trophy wife,” or land some less exalted “catch,” or some Hollywood career, where superficial, generically flashy “good looks” are at a premium. (Why, look at how women singers are overwhelmingly marketed with heavy emphasis on their looks; how exceedingly few are average-looking, or homely. As opposed to male singers.)
I don’t condemn these types as “sluts,” even if I’m dismayed that their “female Uncle Tom” act lends them such nigh-universal male admiration, that they’re neglecting the development of deeper inner qualities which would serve them in better stead in later years than plastic, superficial image-mongering…
On that subject; Daniel Clowes’ great “Ugly Girls”: http://singleape.com/stuff/ug.html ; Saul Steinberg’s “Beauty Mask”: http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Horizon-Magazine-April-1978-Steinbergs-Beauty-Mask-/08/!B22P2G!BGk~$%28KGrHqR,!jYE%29pWI-gMpBMkEZIw-E!~~_35.JPG .
Norman Rockwell’s 1954 “Girl at Mirror” sadly shows ( http://uploads5.wikipaintings.org/images/norman-rockwell/girl-at-mirror-1954.jpg ) a touchingly vulnerable, subtly beautiful young girl yearning to be transformed into a smug, inhuman, makeup-trowelled Hollywood image of “beauty.”
And no, I’m not saying women shouldn’t have the freedom to do whatever self-destructive and denigrating thing they feel like, merely decrying that so many do so, that this culture is so noxiously shallow and sexist that this behavior is so rewarded.
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Robert Adam Gilmour says:
…There was a lot of complaints when the Wii came around about “casual gamers” ruining the games industry, but I felt it was already spoiled in the Playstation era. Now I can appreciate a lot of the changes and diversification but I do still often think videogames have became less interesting because they pander too much to a wider audience now.
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At work, our very smart art director has been complaining over how — in an effort to make their product more marketable to a wider, less erudite and dedicated audience — a video-editing program (Final Cut) has been “dumbed down,” made harder to work with for the purposes of experts.
And, in her blog ( http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/ ), the superbly gifted fantasy author of books, stories, and comics (and regular gamer) Caitlín R. Kiernan has likewise complained about how formerly intelligent games are ruined in attempts to suck in more “mainstream gamers.” (Which sure sounds like an oximoron.)
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Charles Reece says:
…at what point does a 78s enthusiasm become little more than another example of mere object fetishism under capitalism? That being said, there does seem to be something admirable about a person who can pierce through the mass junk accoutrement to find something of lasting value within. I tend towards your skepticism, but it’s worth noting that there is something more to geekdom than merely another example of capitalism. It can be something of a rejection of consumerism. There’s a lot wrong with that Oswalt essay, but I think that’s sort of what he’s trying to get at. And I think that’s a feeling about “poaching” that isn’t reducible to fetishism, nostalgia or sexism.
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To collect or, simply, appreciate anything which is “purchaseable” could be put down as “mere object fetishism under capitalism.”
But, this falls into the “devalue the currency” argument which I have with extremists who attack some guy checking out a good-looking woman walking by as horrendously sexist, misogynist. There is plenty to criticize about what the capitalistic system leads to and encourages (like, the monetization of everything; “Our children are our most valuable resource”…).
I snap up and delight in plenty of stuff whose monetary value or “collectibility” is near-bupkis; old paperbacks with cool cover art, neckties with great designs picked up at the Goodwill, old magazines and books with spiffy illustrations.
Certainly the comics “speculative bubble” shows where greed infests and overtakes the appreciation of whatever lurid charms superhero comics may possess; where the Object itself — bagged rather than read — is more valued as a rare possession, an investment, than for the aesthetic virtues it may contain.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Fictional characters are relevant. But it’s hard to figure out how they’re relevant if you’re not willing to think about how they’re fictional.
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They’re all fictional in that they’re “not real.” What is more telling is how they’re perceived; whether, say, the latest Starfire is sincerely drooled over as The Ideal Woman, or considered as a painfully telling example of how moronically retarded, dehumanizing and retrograde many males’ idea of what an “ideal woman” is…
“I’d also point out that the hard line distinction you’re making between someone actually selling something and those just dressed up is not in the article.”
He speaks of attention seekers who are frustrated wannabe models. I’m not defending the guy’s argument, but filling in certain reasons that you didn’t see as to why a gal would seek such attention at a con even though she’d be less inclined to go if it were simply about acquiring geekeries.
I was talking a female friend last night who also thought I was full of shit. Like you, her disgust over this fake female geek stuff was because men weren’t called out in equal measure. She, too, jumped to the impossibility of there being fake female geeks. My argument to her was that if it’s true that men show up at cons in order to flaunt their bodies with the intention of being discovered on youtube while commentators are ignoring them to focus only on their female counterparts, then this is obviously not an argument against the existence of the latter, only evidence for a sexist exclusion of the former in the critique. So, I’m open, are there a whole bunch of scantily clad males doing the same thing? Why isn’t anyone making hottest cosplay men lists? … Wait, there is, at least now there is as a reaction to the pics of women. But everyone here surely knows that women get more attention for sexually displaying their bodies then men do, and that has everything to do with why an article calling out fake geeks in cosplay would be mostly about women. Now, there might be a whole lot of non-geek fellows at the con who are there only to make money off or get discovered through this geek explosion: maybe they’re trying to sell their first shitty attempt at writing a scifi script or comic book, but they’re not going to be any more easily noticed by this CNN guy than the women (dressed in jeans and a t-shirt) who are attempting to “poach” in the same ways. The guy was writing about cosplay, and so is going to be presented with a much larger quantity of his girl poachers than boy. Again, one has but to look at youtube to see this. However, I’d grant that the guys in body paint in the above link are probably advertising that body paint more than their love of the JLA.
(Once more, I emphasize that I fundamentally don’t agree with the guy, only that I don’t see his problems in reasoning as an instance of hating women. I preferred cons when the geekdom was so pure that CNN and other news outlets completely ignored them.)
“My argument to her was that if it’s true that men show up at cons in order to flaunt their bodies with the intention of being discovered on youtube while commentators are ignoring them to focus only on their female counterparts, then this is obviously not an argument against the existence of the latter, only evidence for a sexist exclusion of the former in the critique.”
The point is that women’s bodies are connected to commerce and posited as a problem. Men’s bodies are not seen as a problem, so the ways in which they schmooze or promote commerce don’t make them less authentic.
It’s good to know that your friend is also explaining to you that you are full of shit. Give her a high-five for me.
“The point is that women’s bodies are connected to commerce and posited as a problem.”
This isn’t a problem? I’d say (to borrow Mike’s example) it’s the underlying reason that women who don’t probably care much about cars are used in a car show and not pretty men who don’t care about cars. It’s also why anyone concerned with people faking a love of cars at car shows just to be seen would tend to focus on the scantily clad women. The ensuing argument shouldn’t be about whether these models really love cars it seems to me.
I’ll give my friend the unfortunate news that you agree with her.
But the scantily clad women at the car show aren’t faking anything. Everyone knows why they’re there. They’re being paid. So where is the faking?
The fake geek girl meme is about deception; it’s about saying that women who claim to be interested in geek culture, i.e., women who are at the con for reasons other than just being paid to stand outside a booth, are actually not into geek culture. And I’m saying that that’s stupid. And your response is, well, some women are paid to be there. And, you know, the janitorial staff is paid to be there too, and they probably don’t actually care about Star Wars. But what this has to do with the price of memorabilia is really unclear to me.
“Still, I have to admit that seeing the Republicans behave in a semi-lucid manner is in some ways more chilling than if they were actually full-on gibbering and slavering”
But not as chilling as their inability to see how close they flirted the country with disaster nine-ten years ago with their stupid war.
“…or would you rather watch Alexander Skarsgard insert silver balls into Mila Kunis? ”
Which would probably be nice but as we all know the real movie will most likely play it “safe.” Like you say, “echo” is the safe, I mean key word.
Oh god, this argument is so fucking stupid. Noah’s right about the real problem being geeks who want to dictate who should be allowed to celebrate the same shit they like. Who gives a fuck why people are at a convention? Who is anybody to say what the “right” reason is? Waah, waah, somebody likes some character or franchise in a different way than I do, and thus they’re trying to trick me, somehow, for some reason! God damn, grow the fuck up.
So anyway, this week I’m reading Lucy Knisley’s Relish and Joost Swarte’s Is That All There Is? I finished the second season of the 21st century series of Doctor Who, and I’m working my way through the first season of Buffy, which is kind of rough. I’ve heard that it gets better in the second season, and I’m sure hoping so. It’s decent enough, but there was one episode called “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date” that was so bad, I would have quit watching the series there if I hadn’t read so many accounts that it eventually gets really good. It definitely picked up a few episodes later with “Angel”. I just gotta power through this first season, I guess. Hey, I made it through the first season of Deep Space Nine, and that one took a while to get going too…
Noah, you mean those showgirls are really that happy to be opening car doors over and over again? Porn stars really are turned on by pizza delivery guys? Of course, they’re faking it. It’s acting. Why can’t you just admit that there are cosplay gals who dress up for reasons other than a being a geeky fan? You can still think the cnn essay is a load of bs — I do.
Matt, i’ve vowed to never again watch a show that takes an entire season to get warmed up. Breaking Bad was the last one. That’s anywhere between 12 to 22 hours of your life gone. I liked Buffy, but it wasn’t noticeably better in the 2nd season that i can recall, so you should just quit now.
If they’re being paid, then they’re being paid, and saying they’re faking it doesn’t make any sense (acting isn’t duplicitous faking when everybody knows why you’re there.)
If they’re there on their own account, then they have an interest in being there, and calling them attention whores is sexist paranoia.
Why can’t you just admit that its sexist to deride women for being uniquely artificial?
Yeah…re: Buffy, I agree with Charles. The first season really is not noticeably worse than anything that comes later, and it’s better than some. If you hate it now, quit.
What next, Noah, beautiful women date Donald Trump because they really like who he is on the inside? To say otherwise makes one a sexist pig? There are attention whores out there, believe it or not. If there are just as many men showing their asses at cons to get noticed on YouTube then I have no problem admitting that it would be sexist to only focus on the women doing it. But because of the sexism of linking women’s body with commerce much more so than men’s, you’re not likely to prove that any time soon. So it’s more likely that women will be the ones dressing up in provocative costumes, exploiting their bodies at cons for reasons other than geek camaraderie. And I don’t see why that’s different just because one is paid. They’re still playing a part in either case. The CNN essay doesn’t make the claim that people are supposed to be fooled by the fake geekness, only find it appealing enough to give it attention (that’s why he criticizes the target audience for this sort of thing). But fuck this argument; it’s really pointless and it requires one to dissect some fanboy essay as if it were philosophy. I just thought it funny that you were opposing another guy for criticizing the exploitation of women as if it were an anti-feminist stance. The guy was pretty much making a feminist argument to begin with, or at least trying to, but the memetic fog of blogging created another argument about nothing at all. And I just participated in it much to my embarrassment …
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Charles Reece says:
(Once more, I emphasize that I fundamentally don’t agree with the guy, only that I don’t see his problems in reasoning as an instance of hating women.
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Ah, but if it’s “misogyny,” as opposed to plain ol’ garden-variety sexism, that pumps up the supposed outrageousness of his words…
Am currently reading Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography, “Hitch-22.” Am on the part of his Marxist student days, and ran across a line that certainly was telling: “A consciousness of rectitude can be a terrible thing…”
Hitchens didn’t go on to enumerate why — for all his lively prose and intelligence, he shows himself (in the book, at least) as uninterested in analytic thought, prone to ideologically being driven whole-hog by simplistic demi-“thinking,” often motivated in his condemnations by absurdly facile, inaccurate reasons.
But, certainly feeling oh-so-righteous tends to the negative consequences of demonizing the perceived opposition, seeing complex reality in simplistic fashion, thinking which is based on ideology rather than messily contradictory reality…
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Charles Reece says:
I preferred cons when the geekdom was so pure that CNN and other news outlets completely ignored them.)
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Same here! Ah, remember when Comic-Con was about…comics? Instead of publicity, and media interest, being now massively focused on some actors plugging their horror TV show, producer/director plugging their big-budget SF movie?
Finally reading the “CNN guy” (somehow, I’d gotten the impression he was a reporter) comments at http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/24/booth-babes-need-not-apply/ , what a non-surprise that someone, for all the outraged condemnation aimed his way, you’d think would be a “rape all the bitches” troglodyte, actually makes a lot of reasonable and feminist-sounding arguments like:
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I absolutely do not believe that every girl who attends conventions and likes “Doctor Who” is pretending to be a geek.
There are lots of geeks who are female. Some of these female geeks are pretty girls. I find it fantastic that women are finally able to enjoy a culture that has predominately been male-oriented and male-driven.
The presence of female geeks means that the fiction we’re reading is broadening and, frankly, getting better in quality. It means nerdy films and television shows aren’t relying on damsel in distress stories and objectification of women to draw readers. It means content is broadening and becoming smarter and more accessible. I want more of that….
As a guy, I find it repugnant that, due to my interests in comic books, sci-fi, fantasy and role playing games, video games and toys, I am supposed to feel honored that a pretty girl is in my presence. It’s insulting.
Is it abuse in the same vein as the harassment? Not even slightly.
Someone dressing up to feel good about themselves isn’t the same as guys lobbing insults, threats, disgusting suggestions and the like at women.
Case in point: there is a website called Fat, Ugly Or Slutty that catalogs insults, harassment and verbal abuse from male gamers to females on Xbox Live. Reading through just one page of the site made me ill. The big brother in me wanted to go pound the crap out of the thirteen year olds who think it’s cool or funny to demean women for sport.
Is this type of harassment is deserved? Not at all…
You’ve no doubt heard about a young journalist named Ryan Perez who did something stupid. Really, really stupid. He “called out” Felicia Day on Twitter, asking if she really contributes anything to geek culture other than being a celebrity.
I believe that Felicia’s main drive is probably writing and acting, and that geek culture is where she chooses to exercise her talents. She’s found a niche, and she works within that niche – but so have Nathan Fillion, George Takei, Wil Wheaton… All actor/writers who make the most of their geek celebrity. However, no one gets it in their blood to call these guys out. So why Felicia Day?
It’s because she’s a girl, and some men are disgusting. Plain and simple…
There’s an entire contingent of guys in geekdom who absolutely love you [non-geek models], because inside, they’re 13 year old boys who like to objectify women and see them as nothing more than butts and a pair of boobs to be leered at…
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Now, some of his arguments are dubious, this bit utterly absurd:
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…there is a website called Fat, Ugly Or Slutty that catalogs insults, harassment and verbal abuse from male gamers to females on Xbox Live. Reading through just one page of the site made me ill….Are guys acting this way toward women just as disgusting and base as women poaching attention from our culture, satisfying their egos by strutting around a group of guys dressed in clothing and costumes from a culture filled with men they see as beneath them? Absolutely.
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No, the former is vile; the latter, at worst, obnoxious, pathetic. But this contradicts his earlier:
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As a guy, I find it repugnant that, due to my interests in comic books, sci-fi, fantasy and role playing games, video games and toys, I am supposed to feel honored that a pretty girl is in my presence. It’s insulting.
Is it abuse in the same vein as the harassment? Not even slightly.
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…which makes one wonder if he actually meant to write, “Absolutely not.”
But overall, is this guy a slavering woman-hater? Hardly. At worst, guilty of excess concern about the pollution of the precious bodily fluids of geek culture.
But, as that Hitchens books recounts, uber-feminists are like the Stalinists, forever raging about and attacking the Trostskyists, whom they falsely describe as utter sellouts to capitalism/misogyny…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
[To Charles] It’s good to know that your friend is also explaining to you that you are full of shit. Give her a high-five for me.
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Yes, she’s a woman, therefore any criticism aimed at a white hetero male (guilty of three crimes!)is automatically valid.
But (not being prone to cut anyone any argumentative slack because of their “oppressed” status) let’s look at what she said:
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Charles Reece says:
…Like you, her disgust over this fake female geek stuff was because men weren’t called out in equal measure. She, too, jumped to the impossibility of there being fake female geeks. My argument to her was that if it’s true that men show up at cons in order to flaunt their bodies with the intention of being discovered on youtube while commentators are ignoring them to focus only on their female counterparts, then this is obviously not an argument against the existence of the latter, only evidence for a sexist exclusion of the former in the critique. So, I’m open, are there a whole bunch of scantily clad males doing the same thing?
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(Emphasis added)
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of scantily-costumed people at cons are women. Geek culture being just a variation of mainstream culture (consider that what geeks are looked down for is just a different version of sports fanaticism, sports-memorabilia collecting), of course the noxious “women packaging themselves as sex objects” habit of mainstream culture is replicated at geek culture.
Thus, the “you’re full of shit” accusation is itself full of shit; it’s absurd as (to flip things around) some guy griping that, in a documentary about rape, “women weren’t called out in equal measure.”
I don’t actually hate Buffy, there was just one episode that I thought was really shitty. I do plan to keep watching, but maybe I should temper my expectations that there will be a big leap in quality or something after that season finale.
Oh yeah, I meant to mention one other movie I watched last week: Chronicle. It was all right, a decent teen drama with the added bonus of superpowers (but not really any superheroics). There was one thing that bothered me though, but it’s a nitpicky thing that probably won’t occur to 99% of people who watch it (although it is kind of related to the often-heard complaint of why the characters keep filming their lives, or the apocalypse, or whatever).
You see, the thing with “found footage” movies is that there’s an implied filmmaker, or at least an editor, somebody who discovered all the footage and put it together to form a coherent narrative. In some cases, like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, the explanation is given, and in others, like the Paranormal Activity series, it’s assumed, but in Chronicle, it would be just about impossible for anyone to gather all the footage and make a movie out of it. For instance (uh, spoilers from here on out, if anybody cares), when the kids first get their powers from a meteor in a cave, the cave collapses and somebody mentions that the camera they had was lost and buried. And at the end, the surviving character flies to Tibet and leaves a camera in the snow on a mountaintop as a tribute to his friend. Who managed to find all these cameras and put the footage together? It doesn’t make sense, and while I kind of hate this complaint about movies, it “took me out of the story”.
Actually, it opened up other bits that had me questioning the “authenticity” of the narrative, which I admit is pretty silly in a fictional story. The big finale of the movie is pretty thrilling, with characters fighting each other in the sky over Seattle, and the footage is pieced together from bystanders filming the events on their camera phones, security cameras, police helicopters, etc., which is a neat idea. But here’s another “false” bit: the big dramatic moment hinges on one character raging and screaming and about to telekinetically tear down all the buildings around him, and his friend is knocked out on the ground, but we get a close-up of his face as he wakes up and comes up with a way to stop him. Who would be bothering to film the unconscious kid’s face when there’s so much chaos going on? The only reason to have this shot is for dramatic effect, but it’s not something that would realistically happen, and as obnoxious as it is to complain about it, it kind of breaks the illusion that the movie is based on.
Maybe it’s just the fault of the filmmakers that they didn’t create a compelling enough story to make me forget about the shortcomings of the framing device, but I think if you’re going to set limits on a movie, they have to make sense, and you have to stick with them. I suppose it’s a case of a movie stretching at the boundaries of the genre, but in this case, the movie went beyond them, broke the illusion, and kind of ruined things, making me care more about the external circumstances of the decisions that went into making the movie than what was happening in the movie itself.
So, take that, makers of Chronicle, you didn’t completely satisfy me with your teen superpowers drama. Do better next time, I guess?
I quite liked Chronicle; wrote about it at The Atlantic. Talked about the way the found footage isn’t really found footage a bit as well, if I remember right….
On the other hand, I read Chronicle as challenging the supposed realism of the found footage style. There were a lot of pretty much impossible shots (the one at the end, for example, who found that camera?). I really liked the crazy edited together big battle scene. It looked properly nuts and felt more like a comic book battle than most superheroic films.
Didn’t read Noah’s comment. I agree.
Attention whores can be geeks, too, you know. They can love receiving love and also love Star Trek. As a matter of fact they often are introverts, because interacting with real people is exhausting when you constantly crave their approval. Interacting with fictional people is probably safer and easier.
I’m reading The Savage Detectives and really enjoying it. At first it seems like it is going to be mainly a book about madness, because the narrator is mad and so are most of his friends, but then it turns out to be about a lot of other things – Mexico, class, poetry, language, how much you really know about other people.