APE IN A CAPE: It's Interesting...

APE IN A CAPE: It's Interesting...:

constellation-funk:

gailsimone:

… I spoke with someone recently who said they wondered what their life would have been like without geek culture, and they seemed to totter a bit on whether or not it would have been a good thing.

I certainly have had some unpleasant experiences because I was a nerd, or a fan of nerd things. I…

I do think there is a specific difference between geek culture and geek artifacts; I don't think the two are necessarily inextricably linked. I can (and do) read comics without going to cons, for instance.

It is interesting that glam rock acts are listed in your examples of geek culture, specifically Ziggy Stardust. It does raise the question of what geekery actually means, since the general cultural consensus is that David Bowie is the coolest person who ever lived and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars sort of cemented that image of him as such. What is geeky, exactly, if that album and that persona can be labeled as such? (and I'm absolutely not saying they can't because I think there's definitely a case to be made that they are) Is Tarkovsky's Solaris geeky? Is Fantastic Planet? Krautrock? The work of Henry Darger? How does one describe geekery as an ethos as opposed to a demographic?

(this turned into more of a free-form musing than an actual response to anything)

I understand the separation between culture and artifact, but I might suggest that if you have the latter, you are holding a piece of the former.

And there was definitely a time when Bowie was outsider music. His reputation as a universal genius came much later.

I think 'geek culture' may not be the best wording, but I certainly imagine some musicians as fantasists, certainly Wagnerian opera appealed to King Ludwig II in that manner. Is a musician different from an artist or a novelist in that sense? If so, why? 

Alice Cooper and Ziggy Stardust were characters, Diamond Dogs is a futurist concept album, certainly. I think they fit right in there.

And, sure, it is possible to hate fantasy and enjoy, say, Lord Of The Rings for the swordfights, but I would maintain that even those with the smallest imagination like Star Wars and Tolkien for the the fantasy on some level, assuming they like them at all.  I think there's still a big chunk of the mainstream that dismisses virtually any SF or fantasy culture as silly or juvenile. It's a fairly recent development that the AVENGERS or AVATAR can actually BE the mainstream. Even the Wizard of Oz wasn't a big hit when the film debuted.

It may be that we all define what is beloved geek culture by purely subjective standards. That may, in fact, be the only definition that means anything.