Sunday, July 26, 2009

Kevin Smith and The Haters of Twilight

I follow Kevin Smith on Twitter because, well, why the hell not? I like his movies (warts and all, I almost feel obligated to say) and his live talks are simply awesome. (Wait, what are we saying now, Darcy? Superhot awesome sauce?)

Anyway, he's at ComiCon right now and partaking in all the nerdiness therein. (I did go to the L.A. Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror convention as a kid and realized I was not as big a nerd as I thought. And it wasn't fashionable back then.) Anyway, he reports on Twilight fans being booed and points out the stupidity of that on a number of levels. Perhaps the most telling of which is: why the hell do a largely male population want to chase a bunch of teen girls away?

But nerd pride is severe. One simply can't be seen liking the wrong Star* franchise. There's probably some peer pressure but more than that, there's a need to feel better than others. Not just nerds, of course; you see the same thing among sport fans, whether they hate baseball and love football or the other way around.

Smith's certainly not afraid to rip things he doesn't like, so his message of peace across nerd factions struck me as kind of nice. (Especially given that he did take heat for it, and surely knew he would.)

4 comments:

  1. Oh, yes, Kevin Smith, aka "Silent Bob." I like his movies pretty well, and I think I have seen them all. Can we have another?

    Speaking of Star *, is there any buzz about the other new Star Trek movie, Of Gods and Men?

    I think I liked that one better than the major studio reboot.

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  2. I was surprised to learn that a two 30-ish women I work with are Trekkies, and are otherwise fairly big nerd-sci-fi fans. As seemingly normal youngish women they just don't fit the image of the socially-misfit male followers of this genre.

    As someone who lives in the 18th century, I've got to say that the whole sci-fi/fantasy phenomenon eludes me. But, as someone with a passing acquaintance with the opera world, I know that factional squabbles about performers, specific pieces, even entire genres, are the stuff of life for many opera lovers.

    I think the more weird and stylized the art, the less it can be judged by ordinary criteria, and seemingly inconsequential differences start to loom large

    But I'm wondering about "Twilight," as it seems more like a Gothic concept, and how that fits in these days with sci-fi/fantasy? My kids won't watch it, because it's a "girl movie," so that leaves me high and dry. What's with this?

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  3. Honestly, Hector, hadn't heard of it until you posted it here. Did they actually get the old Trek stars to be in it?

    Theo--Horror completes the sci-fi/fantasy triad, and "Twilight", loosely, qualifies as horror. What with the vampires and all.

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  4. I sorta had the impression that the whole thing was Walter Koenig's idea. Might be wrong about that. But we do see Chekov and Uhura from TOS, and a number of others from later series and movies.

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