| the oppressive existence of deadline monkey |
[Jun. 25th, 2010|02:40 pm]
Thomas Wilde
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| [ | Current Mood |
| | speculative | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | J. Ralph, "Kansas City Shuffle" | ] |
One of the things about nerd culture that has always mystified me is the generally conservative atmosphere. As a general rule, the silent majority of science fiction fans seem to want more of what they already have: familiar characters, new takes on old scenarios, etc. For these people, nerd media - even with its heavy focus on fantasy, possibility and wonder - doesn't function to challenge, inspire, or innovate; instead, it's something like a warm bath in a familiar room.
I suppose that's fine as far as it goes; it's a big, weird world, and whatever gets you through it sane is probably a good thing.
What's frustrating is that the silent majority is where the money comes from, and they tend to recoil, hissing, from anything they don't already know. (That is, unless they're hit with a multimillion-dollar, multimedia ad campaign, on the level where it's less a marketing initiative and more the PR equivalent of the Visigoths sacking Rome.) You see a lot of this just about everywhere; the examples that come readily to my mind are "Firefly," Beyond Good & Evil, and the recent Sarah Polley movie Splice.
( and now we talk about comic booksCollapse ) |
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sleepy
irritated