Slowly but surely, I’ve been catching up on the prime time television Deb and stored on the good ol’ DVR.While watching Veronica Mars the other night, I laughed out loud as the geek explained he’d been to Comic-Con to hear Dave Gibbons talk about a graphic novel he had written and drawn before going in to the Battlestar Galactica panel.Elsewhere on the CW, Lorelei Gilmore has been heard to use the word “frak” on more than one occasion.And on Heroes, we’ve seen instance after instance where not just Hiro but other characters make references drawn from across pop culture.Sum it all up, though, it seems geek culture, once a hidden corner of pop culture, has really gone mainstream. These days being a geek is not to be the object of ridicule on television or in real life and those of us growing up geek can now take pride in it.More than that, it appears that mass media no longer relegates science fiction and comic book references to snickering asides meant to belittle fans of either genre. Sure, every one in a while there’s a report on how comics have grown up (over 20 years ago so it’s no longer current news) and headlines might still drag out the hoary Zap! Bam!s bequeathed us Batman.Drawing the circle a little wider, the related field of Renaissance Faires have even crept up on some series, notably Gilmore Girls, without looking down on people who make their living on the circuit.Things have a ways to go before all the snide comments are done with, but we’re come a long way from my days in junior high where being the Star Trek/comic book/science fiction fan was no longer a curiosity or invitation for abuse.Kate reported that while rehearsing Guys & Dolls she discovered half the cast, largely Egyptian, were deep into World of Warcraft and addicted to Heroes. She indulged her inner geek chatting away with them about stuff for the first time since her pal Taylor returned to the states.Geekdom, it’s gone global and it’s become okay.And that may be cooler than any reference to Dave Gibbons on an American TV series.
I even saw it on “Scrubs” once, when some patient was named Bruce, so the cast was going “Hello Bruce…. Hello Bruce…. Hello Bruce…. ” ala Mony Python….And we all know JD (ZACH BRAFF) is the Uber-Geek!
In a similar vein, the other day, bored during a lull at work, I picked a book randomly off a shelving cart – a mainstream fic author I’d never heard of, someone along the lines of Jodi Picoult but not JP, opend it randomly near the end, and discovered two characters arguing about the proper phrasing of To Boldy Go Where… Marina, in her voluminous readings, continues to cry almost daily when she finds a Trek reference poisoning her books (Star Trek Manga almost killed her) – she’s still swearing at James Patterson. If we aren’t mainstream, what is?