"Perfect.
Now the geeks are in charge."
Do you remember a time before the geeks inherited the earth?
It might be difficult to imagine in a world where
comic-book movies dominate the box office,
shows based on Star Wars and Star Trek are considered prestige TV,
and everyone’s fluent in Harry Potter and Game of Thrones.
"I'm learning how to speak Dothraki.
Color you impressed?"
But geeks were not always this out and proud.
“Hey, write a poem about this, geek!” [screaming]
For a long time, pop culture treated geeks as outcasts and weirdos.
If we look at geek characters in TV and movies over the years,
we can see some of the common patterns that define them:
They have specialized knowledge and niche obsessions,
whether it’s with technology,
“We need more input.
We gotta fill this thing up with data.”
academic pursuits, or pop-culture ephemera.
"Who ya gonna call?
The nerds!"
They’re romantically awkward and sexually frustrated
"Didn't you read Lord of the Rings in high school?"
"No, I had sex in high school."
and often get flustered —even terrified—
by interactions with people they’re attracted to.
“My density has popped me to you."
Because of all this, they’re often filled with angst,
longing to break out of their social station, find love,
or otherwise change themselves to be less of an outcast.
But do these longstanding signifiers still hold true,
in an age when the geeks increasingly hold all the power?
"'Nerd culture' is mainstream now.
So, when you use the word 'nerd'
derogatorily, it means you're the one that's out of the zeitgeist."
And if they become confident, happy, and popular,
are they even really geeks anymore?
Here’s our take on the geek, and
what happens when the outcast becomes the ruler of the pop culture world.
“bow-hunting skills, computer hacking skills…
Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.”
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I'm Susannah.
And I'm Debra.
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[chanting] “NERDS!!!
NERDS!!”
The term “geek” has often been used interchangeably
with terms like nerd, dweeb, or dork.
“You might have been called a spaz, or a dork, or a geek.”
But it’s worth noting that the word "geek" comes from
19th-century carnivals, where the “geek show”
would find performers biting the heads off chickens.
"The word is 'geek,' as in someone who can perform freakish acts
without actually themselves being a freak of nature."
So being a “geek” meant you were repulsive yet strangely fascinating.
Thus, it’s fitting that early onscreen geek portrayals
conflated nerdiness with freakishness.
The 1963 comedy, The Nutty Professor,
depicted the nerd as hyper-intelligent,
but a buck-toothed, bespectacled, socially awkward mess.
“Actually, I would appreciate the assistance, for
were it not for your assisting me, I might very well be here all semester.”
Jerry Lewis’s characterization became the classic geek standard.
"Glayvin!
That’s a powerful, whoa!"
with his geek voice echoing for decades after.
“Did you really put her liver in the mailbox
because I heard they found the liver in the mailbox
next to her spleen and her pancreas.”
In this riff on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
the scientist resorts to creating an actual potion to transform himself-
“I know what you’re thinking… where’s he been all my life?
Right?”
and variations on this plot still appeared decades later
in more stories about geeks who longed
to use their smarts to achieve social acceptance
"All these girls…
They'll know my name-
"Gary!"
"What?"
"Nobody likes us."
"Why are you messing with the fantasy?"
"We're a hit, man.
We're popular."
Early geek characters were usually ostracized from the main group,
and the audience wasn’t expected to identify with—or even like—them.
"Hey Eugene!"
"How ya doin?"
[taunting and laughing] [electric shock sound]
So the 60s offered a notable exception
when Star Trek’s super intelligent yet socially awkward Mr. Spock
“What happened?”
“The occipital area of my head
seems to have impacted with the arm of the chair.”
was portrayed as an essential member of the team
who’s also comfortable with himself.
"I prefer the concrete-
the graphable, the provable."
"You'd make a splendid computer,
Mr. Spock."
"That is very kind of you captain!"
He became an early geek role model, the kind of idealized geek
that you could look up to— maybe even love.
It wasn’t until the dawn of the ‘80s teen comedy,
led by writer-directors like John Hughes, that the geeks
were allowed to be more than just freaks or human calculators.
"Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind,
because I’m too torqued up to say no."
The geeks played by Anthony Michael Hall
in Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles
weren’t typically the leads —and they didn’t usually get the girl.
They were still goofy and awkward.
But they were also treated
with more sensitivity.
"I can't have an F,
I can't have it and I know my parents can't have it!"
And in movies like the Hughes-scripted Weird Science,
they were even allowed to be the heroes.
"We're gentlemen so we're going to give you a choice.
"Yeah, you can go in peace."
"Or you can stay and die."
With 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds, the geek revolution officially began.
"I'm a nerd, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it."
A college comedy that showed that geeks could party
just as hard as the frat-boys of Animal House, it also proved
that they could be every bit as misogynistic and problematic.
"Hey!
What are you doing!"
“That nerd saw me naked!”
Still, it allowed for a much greater diversity of geeks and nerds.
“A-and we certainly won’t discriminate.
I mean our chapter will be open to
people of all races, and creeds.”
“And sexual orientation!”
And most importantly, it established the idea
that there’s a little geek inside of everyone.
This message resonated with an entire generation of geeks
who finally saw themselves represented.
“You identify with those nerds?”
“Yes, I consider myself a nerd.
And this movie has uplifted me.”
“Tonight is the night we fight back.
Tonight is our independence night.”
Even after the nerds got their revenge,
they were still subject to some eye-rolling caricatures.
“I’ll be all the Screech that I can be!
Ow!”
Characters like Saved By The Bell’s Screech
or Family Matters’ Urkel were portrayed as
annoying, unwanted intrusions.
"Did I do that??"
[audience laughter]
The message to the young viewers of these shows was clear:
You don’t want to be a geek.
“I don’t know what to say!”
“Oh good!
We don’t have time to hear it!”
Soon, though, the emergence of “alternative” culture
in the ’90s fostered the idea that being an outcast
was not only okay, but actually kind of cool.
“Hey, chicks dig smart guys.
Who knew?!”
Suddenly, glasses-wearing geeks could be rock stars,
with many of them winking at their own geekiness.
At the same time, rising internet use
meant that everyone was now tied to their computer.
"This is our world now.
The world of the electron
and the switch; the beauty of the baud."
The internet allowed geeks to find thousands of others like them,
creating a sense of community that reassured them they weren’t alone—
and that their interests weren’t as niche as they once thought.
“Alt dot nerd dot obsessive.”
With the real-world geek in bloom, it was only natural that geek characters
became more nuanced.
Brian Krakow from My So-Called Life
is awkward, uncool, and has no idea how to act with girls.
“How am I supposed to get her number?
I just like ask her, just ask some girl
I don’t even know for her phone number, like without warning?”
But he’s also a sympathetic, multidimensional character
that almost every teen could identify with.
“It made you like happy?”
“Yeah.”
“Cuz that’s probably all that, you know, matters.”
Judd Apatow’s Freaks & Geeks went even further-
looking past the popular kids to focus squarely
on these characters that had long been consigned to the margins.
“I wish Cindy liked me.”
“She likes you.”
“Yeah, like a friend.”
“Ew.
That’s the worst.”
The show treated their lives as every bit as
joyous, confusing, and complex as any other teen’s.
It also looked at more subtypes of social outcasts,
as the central group of “geeks” are nothing like the so-called “freaks,”
with their edgy, alternative-cool brand of slackerdom.
"Why does she hang out with those guys?
They're gonna ruin her life.
If you don't care about high school, you won't get into a good college,
no future, and you'll wind up dead or in jail."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer likewise found multiple
types of geeks within the halls of Sunnydale High,
from the more traditionally meek and studious Willow
"And I'm a big fan of school.
You know me, I'm like
[singing] Go school, it's your birthday."
to the comic book-loving dork with a heart of gold, Xander.
“I laugh in the face of danger, then hide until it goes away.”
Geeks could even be villains capable of causing as much pain as they endured.
"You guys want to team up and take over Sunnydale?"
Geekiness could still be funny on these shows,
"Stop touching my magic bone!"
but the laughs weren’t usually at the characters’ expense.
More often they were intended to include winces of recognition.
“I don’t need another friend.
I-I already have two.
I mean, how many more friends does a guy need?”
And those more nuanced and empathetic portraits paved the way
for geeks that a broader range of viewers could identify with—
diverse characters like Ugly Betty or Abed from Community
"Cool.
Cool cool cool."
who showed us that geeks could come from anywhere.
“The best part about Obama is that he’s a black nerd.
I love that junk.
Because I’m a black nerd
and that shit was illegal until like 2003.”
Not only were the geeks often seen saving the day
with their special skills, they were becoming downright aspirational.
And geek girls were no longer just love interests for their fellow nerds.
"I'll be right there behind you, kind of like your nerd in shining armor."
They were the romantic leads- the ones you suddenly realized
you should have been falling for all along.
The O.C.’s Seth Cohen even managed to become a genuine geek heartthrob.
“Did you seriously just ask if there was a comic book based on the X-Men movie?!"
An emo-loving comic-book fan, Seth made being a geek seem like
something not only to be proud of, but actually desirable.
"Yes Brad, she's dating this emo geek...
Yeah, that's right,
I'm a big dork and I listen to emo.
And I’m dating her."
The geeks were finally becoming the heroes of their stories—
which turned them into other people’s heroes, too.
“Yeah!
Yes!”
[cheering]
“Aw, man… the geeks have inherited the Earth.”
Today, the geeks’ stories are our stories.
CBS’s The Big Bang Theory centers geeks and geek love,
“Sheldon and I engaged in sexual intercourse,
in other news I’m thinking of starting an herb garden,
Mum’s the word.
Gotta go!”
yet this mainstream sitcom is about as far
from a niche interest as you can get.
"And the People’s Choice is…
The Big Bang Theory!"
The same goes for movies: Erstwhile geek obsessions
like comic-books and Star Wars now dominate the cultural conversation.
"I have been kind of tense lately.
Just thinking about the new
Star Wars sequel.
I'm afraid they're gonna
rely too heavily on CGI and I'm carrying it all in my shoulders."
Creators like J.J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, and Guillermo del Toro—
who make no bones about their own geeky obsessions
—are some of our most powerful, influential filmmakers, translating
their personal interests into massive hits and industry-wide veneration.
But this mainstreaming has also caused a shift
from a pop culture that sympathizes with geeks to one that panders to them.
As critics of The Big Bang Theory will tell you,
the show relies on broad caricatures not all that
dissimilar from those early Jerry Lewis-inspired nerds.
“Uhh when will Stuart be back?”
“I don’t know…
He went out for coffee… with a girl.”
[geeky laugh]
Meanwhile, it traffics heavily in shoehorned references,
making its supposed embrace of geek culture seem largely superficial.
"The fate of Doctor Who’s TARDIS will be decided by a Game of Thrones-inspired
death match on the battlefield of ThunderCats versus Transformers."
These days it’s common practice for movies and TV shows
to jump on that bandwagon by having characters
proclaim their geek bona fides— however unconvincingly.
"I'm an amazing kisser.
All us nerds are, cause we appreciate it more!"
And in a more extreme form of pandering, movies and shows increasingly
tailor themselves to please the geeks who make up particularly vocal fanbases.
"Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
This fan service and the constant, internet-fueled coverage
of some of their dominating interests have led some geeks
to believe that they hold all the power.
And that can lead to the problem of gatekeeping:
“What day of the week do new comic books come out on?”
“Wednesday.”
“What’s Wonder Woman’s secret identity?”
“She doesn’t have one."
"True,
which I think is a mistake, by the way.”
As the tent of geek culture has become bigger, geeks
have become increasingly territorial— attacking those who dare to criticize
or enter their space without their permission.
“And if she and her social justice warriors
don’t leave gaming now…
We will make them!”
Movements like GamerGate have exposed the toxic masculinity that’s long been
percolating within geek culture, where geeks have often been
characterized as awkward nice guys who are implicitly deserving of sex—
as if this somehow excuses even their most disturbing actions.
“If it's 'creepy' to use the internet, military satellites, and robot aircraft
to find a house full of gorgeous young models
so I can drop in on them unexpectedly, then fine, I'm 'creepy.'”
Stories that center male geeks as the heroes can engage
in a, sometimes dangerous, romantic wish fulfillment-
“Are all nerds as good as you?”
“Yes.”
and encourage a sense of entitlement that’s
an even more toxic influence than rejection.
“Howard, would you like to explain to me
why your Facebook page has a picture of me
sleeping on your shoulder captioned ‘me and my girlfriend’?"
Fortunately, with more people self-identifying as geeks,
we don’t need to define “geeks” so narrowly—
or let the angriest or loudest control the narrative.
In both pop culture and in real life, anyone can be a geek,
and geeks are no longer freak shows.
“Does him wanting to play with us again mean that he’s turning into a geek,
or we’re turning into cool guys?”
“I’m gonna go for us being cool guys."
This widespread acceptance has led to some frustration
from quote-unquote true geeks.
"I'm just a total nerd." ["nerd" echoes] 'Hi there.
I'm Brian.
I'm an actual nerd.
I wear these glasses to see."
True—maybe it comes off as facile when attractive,
popular, seemingly well-adjusted people proclaim their awkwardness.
But feeling out of place, or just plain weird
is a universal human experience.
If we allow everyone to
express the geek inside, we all feel slightly less like outcasts—
and maybe the nerds will no longer feel the need to exact revenge.
"What do you say?
Give these geeks one more shot?"
This is The Take What do you want our take on next?
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