The distillation of Uncool

I suppose it was inevitable. It's happened to numerous cultures before and I suppose that my sub-set was just ripe for the picking. But this has gotten well out of hand. The cultural iconography of my life has been distilled down to its most crude, greasy form.

I mean c'mon! "No Ordinary Family", "The Cape", "Heroes". Apparently super-powers are no longer a rare commodity.

I'd gotten used to the fact that at least 50% of the big blockbuster movies of the last few years have been a translation of a comic book. It's a trend that has bothered me for some time, for no small part of the fact that the transition from comic to film usually has the habit of losing a great deal of the history and the breadth of the character(s) being. Even the decent renditions always leaving some aspect of it lacking. This is not a new trend, the most archetypal characters, Batman and Superman, have been turned into live action versions since almost the moment of their creations.

But now the Hollywood types of begun to notice that they're running out of famous characters and comic titles to milk. To that end they've decided to come up with their own versions. The show "No Ordinary Family" smacks of a horrible combination of the Fantastic Four and Pixar's The Incredibles. This distillation is getting quite pathetic really.

Flipping through the channels I came across the Space network. They were advertising one of their shows in which they talk about upcoming nerdy news bits... action figures, movies, video games, and whatnot. They had a line in the commercial that said "Never has been being so Uncool, been so cool." Now that's Hollywood logic if I've ever heard it. I can't help but thinking about high school at times like this... when the "cool kids" start doing what the "nerds" are doing, then how does a person delineate the cliques that determine our social standing?

One of my favourite shows on TV is The Big Bang Theory. When it first came out I admit that I despised the show, the "Nerd" is being paraded out to be mocked by society once again. But the more I watched the more I started to realize that the show is less about mocking the nerds and more about showcasing the culture as being a misunderstood class of people that generally don't care what people think about them. Not concerned with the social norms of modern society, these four characters go about their lives with little to no care for what is generally thought to be cool or important. I agree with these characters, if you enjoy something, you should stick to it no matter what the rest of society says about it.

So, as much as I covet my continually growing DVD, comic and video game collections (and yes, there inevitable off shoots), I'd really like to take a break from seeing all the things I love and adore put up as the new social norm. When the cool kids and jocks of our world tell me how much they like Batman and can only reference the movies as their evidence... I shake my head and ask if they've ever read one of the comics. They usually say 'no' and have no idea why I'm shaking my head. You don't like Batman! You like paying $12 to see a poorly constructed blockbuster so that you have something to talk about with your teammates at practice!