This saying has spawned a favorite geek parody: “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”
“NO, MR. BOND.
I EXPECT YOU TO DIE!”
—AURIC GOLDFINGER, GOLDFINGER
THERE’S JUST NO TALKING TO SOME PEOPLE. Oh, you can try. You can form your arguments, bring your evidence, and go in with as open a mind as possible. But at some point you have to realize the other person isn’t interested in a meeting of the minds. For James Bond, that realization probably hit when he was strapped to a solid gold table by the dastardly Goldfinger with a laser beam inexorably advancing toward his unmentionables. We may never be in a similarly precarious position against a similarly implacable foe, but at some point in our lives we’ll likely square off against a rival who doesn’t believe in fair play, can’t be appealed to or reasoned with, and doesn’t just want to win but wants you to lose. While Agent 007 finessed some very quick thinking to stay the hand of his erstwhile executioner, sometimes the quickest thinking of all is to simply recognize the Goldfingers in our lives before we end up staring at that laser.
The laser in Goldfinger (1964) was a clever atomic-age updating of the tension-filled threat found in Edgar Allan Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum (1842).
“AS YOU WISH.”
—WESTLEY, THE PRINCESS BRIDE
“IT WAS BEAUTY
KILLED THE BEAST.”
—CARL DENHAM, KING KONG
WHY DO WOMEN love The Princess Bride so much? Here’s a thought: because its hero, Westley, is able to simultaneously fill the roles of dashing romantic adventurer and seriously devoted (maybe even borderline henpecked) fiancé. Buttercup first knows him as her subservient farmhand, and his response to her every request is, “As you wish.” Every woman loves to have minions, of course, so having such an eager and handsome one tickles Buttercup’s fancy no end. But Westley knows he’s got to go make an independent person of himself before they marry, else he’ll never have his love’s true respect. So off he goes and doesn’t come back until he’s a world-renowned man of action. Buttercup can’t believe that this self-possessed pillar of macho resolve is her farm boy—until she realizes that he will still do anything she wishes. To have the power of another entire human being at your disposal: that’s an overwhelming gift for one person to give to another, and if trust and respect are to flourish, it demands utter reciprocation. Otherwise, you end up with a power imbalance that can’t be sustained—just look at Ann Darrow and poor King Kong. But Buttercup and Westley had that kind of mutually trusting relationship, and that’s ultimately what made it, famously, “true love.”
III.
WE ARE
ALL INDIVIDUALS
(WISDOM ABOUT HUMANKIND)
“KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!”
—GENERAL ZOD, SUPERMAN
“CRIMINALS ARE A
SUPERSTITIOUS,
COWARDLY LOT.”
—BATMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS
LET’S FACE IT: The thing about villains is that we all hear the call. We all, eventually, reach that point where we’d like to cut loose and tell the world what to go do with itself. The villains are the ones who get to do all the cool stuff: dream up ingenious plans, show off superweapons, and command minions to fight and die on their behalf. More to the point, good villains are the ones determined to be the protagonists in a story of their own devising. Their actions motivate the hero, their intelligence drives the plot, their declarations make the world dance to their tune. Or so they think. But there’s a catch: What looks like strength really isn’t. Villains are people too weak to master their own interactions with the world, so they’re determined to hand off their problems to everyone else. In fact, it doesn’t take bravery to steal from another; it doesn’t take balls to mess with someone else’s life. Doing these things is easy. Those who succumb to the lure, who can’t commit to accomplishing the truly difficult—learning to weave their own thread into life’s pattern rather than tearing a hole through the bits they don’t like—take the coward’s way. And for this, they live a life of unease. They see enemies in every shadow, because human beings are predisposed to see ourselves in others. The casual racist assumes others are equally small-minded. The white-collar criminal thinks everyone else is gaming the system, too. And the common street criminal, low man on the totem pole of wickedness? He assumes everyone else is out to get him, just as he is out to get others. If you’ve ever done something you knew was wrong, no matter how small, you’ve taken a taste of how the villain lives every day. Yet any person, no matter their status or place in society, need only assert responsibility for their own fate to rise above the gutter. Bravery is in living well regardless of your circumstances.
Batman’s scorn for criminals was articulated in his very first story: Detective Comics #27 (1939).
“IT’S PEOPLE. SOYLENT GREEN IS
MADE OUT OF PEOPLE.”
—DETECTIVE THORN, SOYLENT GREEN
WHEN CHARLTON HESTON’S THORN makes this dire proclamation at the close of 1973’s Soylent Green, the ramifications of what he’s uncovered become clear: In a world stricken with ever-scarcer resources and an ever-growing population, the bodies of the recently dead are being processed into the wafers that serve as the food supply for the citizenry—a necessary evil for the world to continue on its path without a care for the consequences of our consumption. It’s the ultimate expression of dystopic paranoia, and the truly frightening part is that it’s not too far removed from the age we’re living in right now. That doesn’t mean you need to give that potato chip you’re about to eat a closer look in case it’s actually the remains of your buddy. But perhaps you should consider how, whether children in sweatshops or migrants working under substandard conditions, the lifestyle of comfort that we likely take for granted has been built on a foundation of systemic dehumanization. It’s made out of people.
The climactic revelation of Soylent Green might be considered a spoiler, but it was seared indelibly into the public consciousness by a hilarious parody from Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live in the late 1980s.
“IDEAS ARE BULLETPROOF.”
—V, V FOR VENDETTA
IF THERE’S ONE THING Alan Moore is good at, it’s anarchist characters who get to the heart of the matter. (And then perish.) In V for Vendetta both the principled cause and the willingness to die for it are necessary to effect change in a totalitarian regime. Though one hopes that our own society hasn’t quite reached that point, there’s certainly no shortage of legitimate threats today to freedom of ideas. The Internet, the closest thing we have to an utterly free exchange of information, is under so much threat of censorship—from both governments and telecommunications companies—that hacking around institutional firewalls has become a cottage industry. However, it’s individuals’ privacy that’s coming under real fire. Bloggers are harassed for breaking controversial stories, and Facebook, one of the most ubiquitous social networks on the planet, has become little more than that guy who sits in the bushes outside your house. Ideas are bulletproof, yes, but they’re only as strong as the protections granted to those exercising them.
Cory Doctorow, one of our generation’s übergeeks, achieved that status by simultaneously undertaking one career as a science-fiction novelist and another as an Internet-rights activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“THERE ARE 10 KINDS OF
PEOPLE IN THE WORLD:
THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND
BINARY, AND THOSE
WHO DON’T.”
—THINKGEEK T-SHIRT
IF YOU’D NEVER heard of the digits 2 through 9, you could still count from 0 to 10, you’d just have to write the numbers differently: 0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000, 1001, 1010. That’s how a computer does it, in the harsh, unflinching 1-0/on-off/yes-no of binary notation, and that’s why computer-science nerds find this T-shirt hilarious—the “10” actually means “two.” Rarely has an epigraph engaged in such vigorous dialogue wit
h its own subtext. On the one hand, it’s incredibly self-reinforcing: There are only two kinds of people in the world—us, who perceive the world correctly in strict, black-and-white, binary opposition, and them, who don’t. You can practically hear the dogma giving itself a high five. But the spirit lurking a bit deeper beneath the sentiment sings a different tune: There are alternate ways to see the world that reveal hidden possibilities. Surely, if there can be one alternative to common wisdom on something as fundamental to life as numbers, it’s not much of a leap to realize there’s probably another, and another, and another. Heck, that holds true even in computer science itself; just ask the thousands—excuse me, the 3E8s—of people who laugh at binary while figuring in hexadecimal.
ThinkGeek.com sells this T-shirt. May all the gods bless ThinkGeek. Who else brings us a plush killer rabbit from Monty Python, canned unicorn meat, and a TARDIS USB hub, all at the same online store?
“MR. AND MRS. DURSLEY, OF NUMBER
FOUR PRIVET DRIVE, WERE PROUD TO SAY
THAT THEY WERE PERFECTLY NORMAL,
THANK YOU VERY MUCH.”
—J. K. ROWLING, HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
AHHH … GOOD OLD “NORMAL.” It’s an idea that clings to us with bewildering tenacity. The implication is that there’s a baseline human standard of everythingness that represents how we “should” live—yet half a second of considering what life on earth truly looks like shows that, of course, that’s not true. Still, note that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were pointedly proud to be normal, proud not to be noticed, proud not to be special. Oh, my! Geeks understand that spending your time trying to “act normal” is a special kind of hell. Not because we want to be different just for the sake of being different—that’s as bad as militant normalcy, if not worse—but because, in the end, happiness means accepting who you are, even if it turns out that who you are involves standing out like a tattooed, costumed, dice-rolling, blue-haired sore thumb. And because, well, normal is a fantasy far more ridiculous than a secret school of wizards. Nobody’s normal—and those who insist they are are broken people.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published in 1997. The seven-novel series that ensued soon became the publishing phenomenon of the century, encouraging millions of children worldwide not to worry so much about being “normal.”
“THE CAKE IS A LIE.”
—PORTAL
GLaDOS, THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE who serves as the primary antagonist in Valve’s critically acclaimed video game, possesses a rare and unexpected trait for a computer. She lies. When she tells you, “There will be cake,” what she really means is there will be death. But hey, doesn’t cake sound a lot better? This hypothetical serving of nonexistent dessert is Portal’s understated way of symbolizing the lies told to us in any oppressive and deceitful system. The cake is the promise of safety from enemies that’s used to excuse intrusive government policies. It is the “I love you; I promise it won’t happen again” of the abusive spouse. It is the advertisement for terrific new stuff to buy that will surely make tomorrow happier than today. We’ve all been offered the cake. Some of us, the hundredth or thousandth times we’ve reached for the cake, have noticed what’s actually being served on our plates and have tried to tell people what we’ve seen. The trouble is getting them to listen. Because, well, who doesn’t like cake?
Portal (2007) is the first true science-fiction classic written in the medium of video games. If you’ve played it, you know this. If you haven’t, go play it.
“THE SPICE MUST FLOW.”
—DUNE
ECONOMIC SYSTEMS are bigger than people. That’s why distribution of the precious mind-expanding spice, mélange, that is the lifeblood of galactic society in Frank Herbert’s Dune must continue unimpeded. That’s why, when Paul Atreides—the young nobleman who finds himself hailed as a prophesied savior—asserts his messianic will over the hitherto-powerless throngs of poor wretches living amid the spice mines of Arrakis, he causes commerce to grind to a standstill across a thousand planets, bringing the entire universe to heel. Just as the spice is Herbert’s thinly veiled standin for oil, gold, or any commodity that greases the wheels of earthly progress, its necessity highlights the inherent danger of linking any one such commodity with the maintenance of a particular status quo—whether cheap gas for our cars or cheap clothes at Wal-Mart. “He who controls the spice controls the universe,” says the evil Baron Harkonnen elsewhere in Herbert’s epic, and it’s a lesson that Paul takes to heart, bringing an entire monolithic structure of ingrained corruption down on the heads of those whose only real job was maintaining it. Economic systems are bigger than people … except when they’re not.
The Dune saga becomes extremely amusing if you imagine that the spice was, in fact, coffee.
“FACTS DO NOT CEASE TO EXIST
BECAUSE THEY ARE IGNORED.”
—ALDOUS HUXLEY
HUMAN BEINGS are very good at ignoring reality. We’ve had renaissances and ages of reason, but even at our most rational we are a superstitious, irrational species. We are set in our ways. We too often celebrate outmoded ideals and cling to ways of doing things that have long since been revealed as pointless or even detrimental. Even when there’s overwhelming evidence that our sincere intentions lead to more harm than good—for a perfect example, just look back at Prohibition in America—we do our best to pretend otherwise and repeat those same mistakes. Maybe it’s a collective inability to admit when we’re wrong, and we’re all just exhibiting the stubborn pride of the know-it-all writ large. Maybe despite what we tell ourselves, we remain an emotional species rather than a rational species. One thing is clear, though: Facts are our friends. The longer we as a society insist on ignoring them when they get too uncomfortable, the more we erode our potential to be truly great.
Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World was an early science-fiction classic that endures as high school recommended reading. But his most fundamental geek truism, quoted here, is from his essay collection Proper Studies (1927).
“THE WORLD IS ONLY BROKEN INTO TWO
TRIBES: THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ASSHOLES
AND THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT.”
—SHERMAN ALEXIE, THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN
SOMEHOW, GEEKS ARE ASSHOLE MAGNETS. There’s something about being sincerely attached to a nonmainstream pursuit that traditionally brings the jerks out of the woodwork sniffing for scapegoats. Often these same assholes are avid fans of something themselves and just can’t make the connection that one man’s fantasy sports team is another man’s online RPG. Luckily, the Internet’s ability to connect geeks has given us a community that helps combat our tendency toward solitude. That’s not to say that geeks can’t be assholes to one another, too. Racism, for instance. Consider the assholishness on display with many publishers’ continued practice of taking books starring black characters and giving them covers that depict those characters as white, because “it’ll sell better that way.” Sure, and buses were better organized when African Americans had to sit in the back. Here’s hoping we speed up the process of dealing with such questions, because it behooves all of us to work toward a better understanding of one another. We have enough trouble with outside assholes to be dealing with ones of our own.
The “whitewashed” cover-art issue blew up in 2009, when author Justine Larbalestier found that the African American tomboy protagonist of her novel Liar had been pictured as a white girl on the cover of the U.S. edition.
“THERE ARE WEAPONS THAT ARE SIMPLY
THOUGHTS. FOR THE RECORD, PREJUDICES
CAN KILL AND SUSPICION CAN DESTROY.”
—ROD SERLING, THE TWILIGHT ZONE,
“THE MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET”
THIS CLASSIC TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE hinges on an alien invasion that employs human beings’ own fear and distrust of one another—easy to arouse, even easier to enflame—to turn an otherwise ordinary neighborhood against itself and do the invaders’ job
for them. As he did so often from his Twilight Zone pulpit, Serling uses the epigraph above to express frustration with an unfortunate reality of the human condition. The essential truth at the heart of Serling’s dark fable is equally applicable regardless of which “other” we choose to point our finger at; it has manifested at least enough times to allow Japanese Americans to be herded into camps for fear that they were the “enemy” and for countless law-abiding citizens to lose their livelihoods after being labeled Communists during the Red Scare. The wisdom of Serling’s sentiment makes it easy to see why “Maple Street” was crowned the all-time best episode of the series by Time magazine. Like all great science fiction, it succeeds by pointedly asking its audience: “What would you do?”
Some of the greatest science-fiction writers of the century contributed stories to The Twilight Zone: Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Jerome Bixby. This one was written by series creator Serling himself.
“LIFE’S A BITCH. NOW SO AM I.”
—CATWOMAN, BATMAN RETURNS
RARELY HAS THERE BEEN so loaded a feminist statement in the middle of the boy’s club comic-movie genre. When Selina Kyle delivers it, she’s just thwarted her boss’s attempt to murder her, trashed all the trappings of her traditionally feminine home, and violently constructed a threatening new identity. And yet: That identity involves a skintight leather catsuit and a full face of makeup, which doesn’t scream “empowered, outspoken feminist” so much as it does “dominatrix wet dream of a million teenagers.” What’s more, Catwoman is hardly a bitch; she strikes out against her enemies, sure, but that’s no bitchier than any stunt the Penguin pulls. This two-faced social construct—of angry woman as vengeful bitch, and of angry woman as secretly lusty sex object—is a common and problematic one. In the film, though, director Tim Burton gives a nod to the cinematic tradition of cheesecake femmes fatales while taking care to show us the tormented individual behind the mask. We can only hope that general perceptions will shift similarly, so when we look at a woman—angry or not, sexy or not—we see a person rather than a stereotype.
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