August 24, 2024

Revenge of the Nerds

I was talking to a friend recently about Star Wars and pointed out that “nerd culture” disappeared over the course of the 2010s, or more specifically went so mainstream that the “nerd” identity is not meaningful anymore. To wit:

• The MCU, based on superhero comics, became the most profitable film franchise in history and was acquired by Disney, the most mainstream of mainstream media companies. Star Wars (which was, admittedly, already fairly mainstream) was also bought by Disney.
• Game of Thrones, based on a dense fantasy novel series, became one of the most popular television shows of all time.
• Dungeons & Dragons, the ur-nerdy hobby, is still not quite mainstream, but it has gained a level of mainstream awareness through actual play series like Critical Role, and the setting itself was the source for a summer blockbuster(ish).

Obviously “nerdiness” was more mainstream than might be suspected (e.g. superhero films were already very popular in the 2000s, well before the MCU!) and there are still pockets of “nerd” identity (e.g. the extremely toxic Star Wars fandom). But there was definitely a shift.

This isn’t a particularly original observation, but it is another example of how fast culture can change. (Similarly: I can remember when every restaurant had a smoking section.)

But a couple additional thoughts:

• One aspect of being a subculture is having culture heroes that are popular within the subculture and virtually unknown outside it. Fifteen years ago we had minor celebrities like Felicia Day coming out of The Guild¹ or Jonathan Coulton coming out of, uh, the Portal soundtrack. Those “nerd-focused” celebrities just don’t seem to exist anymore.
• Why did this happen? I’m sure some media critic has an answer, but it strikes me as somewhat mysterious — it helps that Iron Man and Game of Thrones were good, and it probably helps that they were released during the era of mega-franchises and the Golden Age of Television, respectively — but is that confusing correlation and causation?
• More broadly, why was there “nerd subculture” to begin with? Even as someone that identified as a member of that subculture, I find it a slippery concept — it wasn’t defined by an aesthetic, like goth or emo, but it also wasn’t defined (solely) by adherence to particular franchises. Perhaps a topic for another newsletter.

Anyway, see you in a week or two,
Russell

P.S. Literature and History, which I call one of the greatest educational resources of the twenty-first century and most people would call a podcast, is finally back with a two-and-a-half-hour-long episode on the Talmud. Highly recommended.

P.P.S. As a fan of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, I appreciated this Atlantic profile of Lisa Fagin Davis, the doyenne of the recent spate of serious academic Voynich research. I loved her keynote on the manuscript from a few years ago, where she delves into what we can confidently say about its production based on what we know of medieval manuscript production.