Aeons ago —or perhaps not so long ago, but how good it is to start a text like this—, Bringing a comic to school to read during recess or showing off your love of the ninth art could be an activity even higher risk than recording a video review of a Marvel movie wearing a DC shirt, and that could lead to physical and verbal attacks and the use of the term “geek” as something derogatory.
Many of us were there but, luckily, things have changed. What was an “oddball” hobby has now evolved into normative, and the arrival of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in addition to promoting this mainstream transformation of superheroes, has created an idyllic setting in which to enjoy without fear of what they will say. A pajama utopia.
But this landscape has been a breeding ground for the proliferation of a group of real-world supervillains. A legion of top series who choose to ignore the “with great power comes great responsibility” to turn their comic sapience into a weapon with which to fight the ghosts of the past and pass sentences in the purest Judge Dredd style: the fearsome “empowered geeks”.
Anatomy of the empowered geek
The empowered geek, usually in his late years, has gone from keeping his head down and trying to inconspicuous so he can read his staples in peace and quiet to taking an offensive stance and wield the handy —and indisputably sonorous— “you have no fucking idea” neophytes in the world of superpowers, masks and spandex suits. All this from the security provided by that horrifying contemporary loudspeaker that is social networks.
The fact that the MCU has been active for more than a decade is nothing short of a gold mine for these “distributes cards” that wave their banner of “authentic fan” in the wind when someone they consider outside their select circle, that kind of MENSA of superhero knowledge, dares to question some aspect of their favorite pastime.
But the key that makes it easy for empowered geeks to flaunt their authority so often isn’t the sheer number of products and sheer popularity of these stories and characters. What facilitates these behaviors is that the main target of this type of productions is largely made up of people whose first contact with The House of Ideas was Jon Favreau’s ‘Iron Man’ – that is if they were born in 2008 or old enough, of course. harmless victims that they do not have to have a close relationship with the ninth art to faithfully go to the cinema and watch their series on Disney+.
With “C” for “Cinematographic”
To this we would have to add the belief of a good number of empowered geeks that it is necessary know by heart the work and miracles of Lee, Dikto and company to be able to enjoy the MCU or comment on it without fear of public humiliation. Well, surprise; the C in MCU stands for “cinematic”and meeting critics alluding to the original material and an alleged ignorance of the respectable is nothing more than a baseless trap.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been almost three decades building your large-scale narrative on series and feature films, excluding —for the moment— comics from the plot equation. A fact that makes phrases like “you don’t understand it because you haven’t read a comic in your life” or “you don’t like it because you have no fucking idea” — one’s mouth fills just reading it — lose all meaning of world.
To understand this better, imagine a criminologist using similar arguments against a critic of ‘CSI’ or a historian doing the same with a viewer who has not finished liking ‘Roma’. Both are audiovisual productions that should be able to be digested by themselves and not based on previous knowledge —although these, ultimately, can affect the experience by enriching it or worsening it—.
All of the above can be applied, sadly, to any current fandom. So the only thing left to say is please let people have nice things and, as the Fary sentenced, “let the kids walk as they did.” And if you are an empowered geek and your fingers burn when you read someone else’s opinion, stop for a moment, take a deep breath and think about the boy who went into ecstasy when he first smelled a comic he had just bought. The Watcher will thank you.