Geek Wisdom

by Stephen H. Segal

  “I HAVE ANOTHER TRICK FOR YOU.

  WANNA SEE ME MAKE ALL THE WHITE

  PEOPLE DISAPPEAR?”

  —THE CARD TRICKSTER, THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

  JOHN SAYLES’S 1984 FILM features an eponymous protagonist: a gawky, mute alien who coincidentally happens to resemble a black man. In very short order, it was embraced by non-white geeks as a cutting-edge classic, a perfect parable of race in geekdom. There’s a central dilemma they deal with: Because most geeks have, historically speaking, generally identified as outcasts on the margins of society, they often have trouble understanding that it’s possible for some geeks to be marginalized even within geekdom due to other qualities of identity, such as gender, race, and class. The Brother of Sayles’s movie struggles to find his place in the surreal and blighted landscape of 1980s New York—specifically, Harlem. He has almost nothing in common with his fellow Harlemites but the color of his skin. Yet in a society so powerfully impacted by race, skin color is more than enough to forge a common bond.

  The titular Brother was portrayed by Joe Morton, who would later achieve further geek cred as Dr. Steven Hamilton on Smallville and the guy who destroyed the future in Terminator 2.

  “MONSTERS, JOHN!

  MONSTERS FROM THE ID!”

  —LT. “DOC” OSTROW, FORBIDDEN PLANET

  MORE THAN ANCIENT squid creatures from another dimension, atomic-powered giant insects, and chain-saw-wielding zombies with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads, we fear that which is in ourselves. Humanity’s ties to our primitive past are not as distant as we’d like to believe, and in our hearts we know it. Our darkest thoughts, wants, desires—these things are a terror far greater than any monster we could conjure, not simply because they’re so difficult to confront, but because they show that we’re a mere half-step removed from the animals. Worse still, our minds are fragile things. Barely controllable. If we were to lose control? We fear we’d cease to be human, because more than any amount of spirituality, faith, or technical know-how, it is our conscience, self-awareness, and desire to rise above our primitive roots that is the soul of man. If we retreat to the id—our unconscious, instinctual mind—we abandon all that separates us from the apes. And that is the most frightening thing imaginable.

  Freud introduced the concept of the id in his 1920 essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” Forbidden Planet, the greatest science-fiction film ever inspired by Shakespeare, explored the id more tangibly in 1956.

  “ONLY SPARTAN WOMEN

  GIVE BIRTH TO REAL MEN.”

  —QUEEN GORGO, 300

  “THE ANALYTICAL ENGINE

  WEAVES ALGEBRAIC

  PATTERNS, JUST AS

  THE JACQUARD LOOM

  WEAVES FLOWERS

  AND LEAVES.”

  —ADA LOVELACE, ON CHARLES BABBAGE’S ANALYTICAL ENGINE

  THE REAL QUEEN GORGO of Sparta was a political mover and shaker on par with the modern age’s most respected power brokers. She was also a geek and early cryptanalyst, helping her fellow Spartans find the code hidden in a chiseled wooden board that warned of impending Persian attack. And, predictably, she may also have been one of the first targets of geek sexism, for she is lauded in many historians’ accounts not for her own (substantial) accomplishments, but primarily for her relationship to the men around her—as the daughter, wife, and mother of kings. But while Gorgo’s quote in Frank Miller’s 300 is a fairly accurate rendering of her words as recorded by Plutarch, the true context was quite different. Per Plutarch, Gorgo didn’t use the word real—and she was speaking to a woman from Attica who asked her how Spartan women had gained the power to rule Spartan men. Placed in this female-to-female context, Gorgo’s declaration becomes less a statement on her value in the eyes of men and more subversive—perhaps an encouragement from one woman to another on methods of escaping oppression and gaining power of her own. Gorgo may also have been implying that men can be partners in this process, if they are willing … or pawns, shaped from birth by the power of maternal influence, if not.

  Nineteenth-century writer Ada Lovelace may be one of the first women to triumph over the historical biases against Queen Gorgo. Though in her lifetime she was most known as the poet Byron’s daughter, today she’s remembered as the world’s first computer programmer.

  “OUT OF MY WAY.

  I’M GOING TO SEE MY MOTHER.”

  —SEPHIROTH, FINAL FANTASY VII

  SEPHIROTH: BADASS. Super-soldier. Terrifying megalomaniacal mass-murdering sociopath … and mama’s boy. An entire generation of geeks was transformed by Final Fantasy VII, for reasons that had little to do with the game’s groundbreaking graphics or gameplay. Games with complex plots and three-dimensional characters had been popular in Japan for some time, but Final Fantasy VII was the first introduction for many American gamers to the concept of games as an art form—as truly interactive storytelling. What made it work was the way so many of the characters resonated as their facets were gradually revealed. True, none of us were stereotypical fantasy-story warriors able to wield gigantic swords or summon dragons, as the game’s hero Cloud appeared at first glance. But all of us could understand the kind of crippling insecurity that lurked behind Cloud’s stoic facade. Most of us had no great desire to dominate the earth, but we all knew what it was to struggle for the approval of a parent or authority figure. Even if that parent was an incomprehensible alien life form—or the real-world equivalent thereof.

  Final Fantasy VII was released in 1997—a decade into the series’ life. The saga continues today: Final Fantasy XIV debuted in 2010.

  “WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE, HEATHER?”

  —HEATHERS

  YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE WORST? High school. Every geek has seen the havoc high school can wreak, in a way few mainstreamers can understand. Somehow, most teen movies construct their stories so that their heroine ends up with the dream date at the school dance, their hero wins the big game, and everything ends up all right. But most of high school is not all right, and Heathers realized that. Head bitch Heather McNamara’s signature catchphrase manages to be dismissive, aggressive, and superior at the same time—the soul-crushing gift of the high school cliquemaster—and literally haunts the counterculture girl Veronica long after Heather is dead. Everyone who’s been bullied recognizes the power play at work in this putdown; an important geek rite of passage to adulthood is trying to move past the power your too-cool enemies had over you. If you can’t quite get there, well, we can hardly blame you—some meanness is immortal. As long as you don’t start playing strip croquet with strangers, you’ll probably be fine.

  By starring in the quick triple threat of Beetlejuice (1988), Heathers (1989), and Edward Scissorhands (1990), Winona Ryder became the face of girl geekdom for a generation; it would continue with Dracula, Little Women (Jo is a protogeek!), and Alien Resurrection, among others.

  “RAY, IF SOMEONE ASKS

  YOU IF YOU ARE

  A GOD, YOU SAY YES!”

  —WINSTON ZEDDIMORE, GHOSTBUSTERS

  “TELL HIM ABOUT

  THE TWINKIE.”

  —WINSTON ZEDDIMORE, GHOSTBUSTERS

  GHOSTBUSTERS WAS, in its way, a straight-ahead satire of New York City. We laughed as much at the unflappability of the typical New Yorker as we did at the ridiculousness of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. It wouldn’t surprise us that any New Yorker might be so irreverent and arrogant as to claim godhood; in fact, many of us were surprised when Dan Aykroyd as Dr. Ray Stantz tried to deny it. Ghostbusters also poked fun at the arrogance of geeks. Ray and Egon, the brains of the outfit, might not have had the business acumen of Venkman or the earnestness of Winston, but they had this: They were right. The Twinkie comparison, the disaster of biblical proportions, the unlicensed particle accelerators; the whole thing was cockamamie, and it’s a miracle any of them survived. But they knew their stuff and refused to back down from the importance of their knowledge, despite a city full of jaded naysayers. Because of their dogged insistence,
the city was—more or less—prepared for a major disaster. So, when you get right down to it, Winston was right, too: After all that, a little bragging would have been completely apropos.

  In the novelization of Ghostbusters (1984), we learn that Winston used to be a Marine; in the 1991 video-game sequel, it’s revealed that he’s a learned Egyptologist.

  “WHY SO SERIOUS?”

  —JOKER, THE DARK KNIGHT

  BATMAN’S NEMESES over the years have rarely been superpowered; they were usually just a bit crueler and weirder than the norm. In earlier adaptations, the Joker was a Technicolor prankster who was more pun than prudence. After filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s 2005 movie reboot, however, Batman’s world was far darker, and it needed a Joker to match. The Joker of The Dark Knight as portrayed by Heath Ledger was a force of violent chaos, shocking even in the stakes-upping world of comic-movie sequels. Though superhero movies are nominally escapist fare, each iteration of Batman has reflected not just the Bat-world but the real world as well—which makes this Joker’s rallying cry a bitter reminder that life today is just as messy as Gotham City, and that recent news headlines have featured quite a few criminals who could give the Joker a run for his money. It might be a stretch to say that the Joker is giving us a direct call to arms—but sometimes there’s nothing wrong with taking stuff a little more seriously.

  The Dark Knight (2008) was Heath Ledger’s final complete performance before his untimely death at the age of twenty-eight.

  “TRANSFORM AND ROLL OUT!”

  —OPTIMUS PRIME, THE TRANSFORMERS

  MORE THAN JUST A KICK-ASS CATCHPHRASE, the call to arms of Autobot leader Optimus Prime en route to impending battle with the evil Decepticons represents a philosophy that, when you cut it to the quick, isn’t altogether different from what Martin Luther King Jr. was alluding to when he said: “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” There’s an underlying truth to the idea that one must enact change on the microcosmic level before attempting change on a global scale. And if there’s anyone who nobly represented the dichotomy of both continuous struggle and the wheeling in of change, it was the Transformers. While Optimus and his robotic cohorts are perhaps overly literal exemplars of King’s thesis, we take our wisdom where we find it. For an entire generation of children who came of age in the 1980s, that wisdom came from an animated robot who had a very deep voice, and who spent half his time disguised as a Mack truck.

  In addition to playing Optimus Prime and Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, voice actor Peter Cullen is the ear-catching basso whose narration has for decades heralded the introduction of countless action-movie trailers.

  “YOU’RE TRAVELING

  THROUGH ANOTHER

  DIMENSION, A DIMENSION

  NOT ONLY OF SIGHT AND

  SOUND, BUT OF MIND.”

  —ROD SERLING, THE TWILIGHT ZONE

  “I WAS BOLD IN THE

  PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE,

  NEVER FEARING TO

  FOLLOW TRUTH AND

  REASON TO WHATEVER

  RESULTS THEY LED,

  AND BEARDING EVERY

  AUTHORITY WHICH STOOD

  IN THEIR WAY.”

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  THE WORLD is most often changed by ideas rather than by guns, bombs, and fists. Albert Einstein. Karl Marx. Thomas Jefferson. Carl Sagan. Men like these have sparked revolutions and given us new ways to see and understand our world. This is no surprise; geeks throughout history have long known the power of the mind. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, however, that we developed a robust subculture that embraced the kind of flights of fancy that have come to define us. Jefferson correctly saw a need to fuel the mind, a cultural desire for speculation that gave people insight into the human condition. What he probably couldn’t have imagined is how modern geek artists such as The Twilight Zone’s creative mastermind Rod Serling would take that same need, that same appreciation for the power of the mind, and apply the metaphorical trappings of surely frivolous juvenilia—talking dolls! space aliens!—to achieve pure entertainment at the same time as profound enlightenment. In their own way, the storytelling tropes that emerged from Serling’s influence have been as sweeping a cultural revolution as anything Jefferson could have imagined.

  Sometimes, geekery is of such high quality that it takes over mainstream culture. The Hollywood trade journal Variety called The Twilight Zone (1959) “the best that has ever been accomplished in half-hour filmed television.”

  “TO DOUBT EVERYTHING OR TO BELIEVE

  EVERYTHING ARE TWO EQUALLY

  CONVENIENT SOLUTIONS; BOTH DISPENSE

  WITH THE NEED FOR THOUGHT.”

  —HENRI POINCARÉ, SCIENCE AND HYPOTHESIS

  WHETHER WE’RE TALKING about religious institutions or the news media, there are times when it’s crucially important to doubt the information we’re given and other times when the need to believe in something can be the only thing that offers any respite. Our tendency, however, is to choose one side or the other of that split and stay there. As human beings, we’re fundamentally lazy. We don’t like doing any more work than we have to or thinking any harder than we need to. That’s at least partially to blame for the age of extreme partisan polarization we find ourselves in: Reason has been removed from the discussion, and it’s become all about the ego we have invested in our point of view. What Poincaré points out, in addition to underscoring that inherent laziness, is how much more difficult it can be to navigate that razor’s edge right down the middle. If we’re ever to achieve true progress, it’s concomitant to have both faith and doubt comforting us in equal measure.

  French mathematician Poincaré (1854–1912) laid the groundwork for the modern fields of topology and chaos theory.

  “ME FAIL ENGLISH?

  THAT’S UNPOSSIBLE!”

  —RALPH WIGGUM, THE SIMPSONS

  ON EVERY OTHER PAGE OF THIS BOOK, you will find us elaborating on the quotations above. On this page, you will not. Ralph’s confused exclamation is like unto a Zen koan, and we suggest you meditate upon it. Then meditate upon it some more. We’ve been doing so for many years, and we still continue to find fresh nuances within.

  We would like to humbly suggest that Ralph Wiggum, like Rose Nylund and Phoebe Buffay, is an avatar of Delirium of the Endless.

  “MONKEYS’ BRAINS, WHILE POPULAR IN

  CANTONESE CUISINE, ARE NOT OFTEN TO BE

  FOUND IN WASHINGTON, D.C.”

  —WADSWORTH, CLUE

  THE WAY YOU SOLVE MYSTERIES is by identifying anomalies and tracking them to their source. In Clue, the ultimate parody of a murder mystery, everything was an anomaly; there was no baseline from which to deviate. That made the whole story an exercise in farce, but it also provided the opportunity for any number of complete-unto-themselves truisms. Here’s one: you can’t decipher a clue if you don’t observe it. The above revelation was offered toward the end of the film by the Boddy mansion’s butler, Wadsworth, as a key element in his chain of reasoning in solving the murder—but it’s a total and deliberate cheat, as the very fact that monkeys’ brains were the main course at dinner had never been mentioned. The line is emblematic of a narrative technique known formally in English masters’ programs worldwide as “pulling something out of your ass.” In a real mystery, that’s against the rules; in a mystery parody, it’s the source of humor; and in life, sometimes it’s just what you gotta do. (Speaking of English classes.…)

  Clue is a rarely cited credit of geek filmmaking icon John Landis (The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London), who cowrote it with director Jonathan Lynn.

  “YOU’RE A VAMPIRE. OH, I’M SORRY.

  WAS THAT AN OFFENSIVE TERM?

  SHOULD I SAY ‘UNDEAD AMERICAN’?”

  —BUFFY SUMMERS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

  BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T wear a skintight action suit, people sometimes miss the fact that Buffy Summers is, for all intents and purposes, a classic comic-bo
ok-style superhero. She exemplifies the life of every high-school girl—and, more than that, of every human being—writ on a larger, brighter canvas, the angst of her adolescent relationships exaggerated but not fundamentally changed by the fact that her daily routine puts her up against not just jerks and jocks but vampires and demons. This literalization of the metaphors of daily life stretches into the realm of identity politics when she sneers at her tormented vampire boyfriend, suggesting that perhaps his struggles will be less painful if the monstrous terminology of his existence is dressed up in politically correct language. Like Buffy, we’ve all caught ourselves on occasion saying snide, hurtful things to the ones we love—maybe even mocking or spurning something that matters profoundly to them. Yet beneath that moment of nastiness, Buffy can’t forget that she found it in her heart to recognize and love Angel’s damaged humanity in the first place. There’s a lesson here for all of us: If you’re going to breach the line of decorum, do it with someone you can trust to accept your apology later.

  Writer Joss Whedon’s snappy banter borrowed heavily from the flavor of Marvel Comics’ trademark bickering on the battlefield, which is why fans cheered in 2004 to see him take up the pen to write Marvel’s new Astonishing X-Men series.

  IV.

  KNOWING IS HALF

  THE BATTLE

  (WISDOM ABOUT CONFLICT)

  “HEY, YOU–GET YOUR DAMN

  HANDS OFF HER.”

  —GEORGE MCFLY, BACK TO THE FUTURE