That's it, I'm done. I can't take it anymore. I've given up. I am never watching NBC's show Heroes again. Ever.
They had finally done it. They've gotten me to swear off the show. It's an amazing accomplishment for a show about superheroes to get a lifelong comic book and superhero fan to stop watching their program, but after seasons of bad stories, horrible plot twists and bad acting the show has finally done something truly unforgivable.
They have insulted and mocked their core audience.
For those of you who don't watch the show, or who haven't been keeping up with this season, let me explain. In one of the show's many boring sub-plots, the character of Claire (a young attractive blonde cheerleader) decides to try to get a job at, of all places, a comic book store. She doesn't actually read comics mind you, she just plans on using the job to help her smuggle fugitive superheroes to safety. It's sort of a cover.
Anyways, in one of the scenes from the show, she goes in to interview with a manager at the store. He talks to her a little bit about comics, asks her if she can work Wednesdays because that's when the new comics come out and then he asks her "Invisibility or flight"? Claire is obviously confused and doesn't know the answer. Basically, she has a really crappy interview. She knows she's failed and turns to walk away when the store manager tells her she has the job. Perplexed, she asks why and he whispers to her, "Every guy in here has been staring at you since you walked in. You will definitely sell comic books." We are then shown shots of a number of the stores patrons, all of whom are either staring at or are blatantly leering at Claire through the comic racks or over the comics they're pretending to read.
The comic book fans are portrayed as pimply faced geeks who gawk at the sight of a pretty girl and they become lusty creeps in the process. This angers me for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I am so annoyed that this image of the comic geek still exists in today's culture. The socially outcast nerd who have never even talked to a pretty girl, let alone ever had sex. It's a negative stereotype that the media seems to love to push. Everytime some big geek event happens, there's always some jackass media reporter who will find people standing in line waiting for the event who will ask them something along the lines of, "Have you ever seen a woman naked?"
Case in point.
In an era where comic book movies are topping the box office and the Dark Knight can take in a half a billion dollars, the fans who actually read the comic books these successful films are based on (which millions of people have seen) are summarily mocked time and time again for being social freaks and outcasts. Meanwhile, comic books, science fiction and other typically "nerdy" things continue to become the mainstream forms of entertainment. Look at things like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or even TV shows like Lost or Chuck or Big Bang Theory. Geek stuff is in. Geeks are everywhere, and we're taking over the world.
Yet again and again we stuff like this. There's also the stereotype being portrayed here that women, especially attractive women, never ever read comic books. The stereotype that a woman in a comic book shop is a more rare occurance than a bigfoot sighting is as old as time itself. Yet the truth is so far away from that. It makes the writers of scenes like this look like out of touch leftovers from the 1960's. Today's comic audiences have a huge female population. There are just as many geek girls out there as there are geek guys, yet the perception remains that geeks as a whole are a bunch of loser guys who never have dates.
Matt and I ran into this during the impromptu Geek-tastic panel at Wonder Con too. One of the guys in the audience had made a comment about the exhibit hall floor being filled with nothing but geeky fat guys, with nary a woman to be seen. Matt was quick to retort though and asked the guy to look around him. The room was about a 50/50 split of men and women. Matt challenged the guy to walke the exhibit hall floor for a while. There were just as many women down there as there were men. When I go to comic conventions, you see tons of women.
Geek isn't an entirely male thing, and I'm sick and tired of it being portrayed as such. Whenever I see something like this it just reminds me of the old shows I used to watch growing up that mocked and ridiculed me for watching cartoons and reading comic books and sci-fi novels. I would have thought that by now in the 21st centure we had moved past such outdated views, but apparently I was wrong.
What makes this a truly horrible slight though was that this came from a show about superheroes. It's a show about comic books. It's watched by millions of comic book fans, and in one fell swoop the writers of the show have gone and openly insulted their fans right to their faces.
I don't know about you, but I refuse to take that from a show. I've been on the fence about Heroes for a while now anyways, and this just seems to be the last straw with me. The show had a great first season. Sure, it was all a blatant ripoff of the X-Men, but that was ok because the show was good and entertaining. But since the end of the first season we've had to suffer through absolutely horrible seasons of television filled with atrocious writing, plots that went nowhere, one plot that was given up entirely without any resolution whatsoever (Peter's Irish Girlfriend who got trapped in the future), annoying characters who die only to be replaced by their even more annoying twin sister, weak villains, lots of time travel insanity and a general lack of direction or purpose.
I've put up with all of that because I had hope the show would get better. But it hasn't. It just gets worse and worse and worse. And now they've even sunk so low as to insult their fans, the ones who have made it so that the show hasn't gotten cancelled long ago like it should have.
I refuse to watch agood TV show which insults me or my intelligence, so you can rest assured I'll be god damned if I'm going to let a crappy show insult me like Heroes has. I have watched my last episode of Heroes. They have lost a viewer due to their old fashioned and stereotyped sensibilities. May the show rot in ratings hell and get the early cancellation it so richly deserves.
My only hope at this point is that there is a panel for Heroes this year at the San Diego Comic Con. If there is, I'm going to try my best to get in line to ask a question of the writers during the usual Q&A portion of the show. If I can manage this, I will ask them something along the lines of the following:
"How dare you show yourselves here? How do you have the audacity to show your faces here at a convention about comic books, that is attended by comic book fans, when you have so blatantly insulted us in your show? The scene in which Claire interviewed for the job in the comic book shop was disgraceful. You portrayed every man in this room as a pimply faced social reject who becomes a leering sexual deviant simply at the sight of a pretty girl, and you insulted every woman in this room by perpetuation the false belief that women do not read comic books or enjoy other geeky pursuits. Look around you, please. And tell me if the fine folks you see around you are the same type of people you have shown us to be on your pathetic excuse for an X-Men ripoff TV show?"
I was underwhelmed by Season 1, missed Season 2 and completely put off by Season 3. All your points are quite valid, but the whole comic book store subplot that I heard about confirmed another problem with the show: it was too, too self-reflexive to be taken seriously.
ReplyDeleteAnd Tim Kring is a douchebag posing as a comic fan when in fact he is just a general showrunner trying to jump on a zeitgeist bandwagon.
Yes Pat, your hate makes you stronger! Feel it flow through you. Now remember that G4 TV did the EXACT same thing when they covered Con from the floor but HIRED people to come and act like geeks on camera for the entertainment of people. Hired actors acting like geeks ON THE CONVENTION FLOOR OF THE WORLDS LARGEST COMIC BOOK CONVENTION!!! HATE!!!
ReplyDeleteTo Robert:
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. Heroes (and specifically Tim Kring) are generic corporate tools that are only hopping on the comic book bandwagon because it's the current hot thing in Hollywood to do. Superheroes are big business at the box office, and serialized shows like Lost or BSG are huge hits for other networks, so Heroes was developed to take advantage of both of those current hot topics. The result, however, is like the TV show equivalent of a Boy Band. It's hyped up corporate trash that is pretending to be a real show when it is in reality a pitiful waste of time.
To Wes:
Yes! I feel the hate flowing through me. It makes me stronger, faster, better than I was before. And as for G4, I think we have two options that we can execute this year. The polite way would be to make picket signs in protest of their pretending geek ways and actively picket their booth during the con. The other, more fun way would be to...well, let's just say that if you bring the torches, I'll bring the pitchforks. We'll take over that booth angry villager style just as if we were trying to storm Castle Frankenstein.
I'm a chick gamer/comic geek that began hanging out in a comic shop in the mid-90s. I am extremely insulted by this stereotype. On one side it insults my male comic geek friends. On the other side it insults female comic geeks as if we somehow don't exist or don't belong in the comic fandom.
ReplyDeleteI almost want to say to the writers "Why don't you just have the comic store manager her parade around in a costume? She doesn't seem smart enough to run a cash register or do a comic inventory and make sure she keeps the comics in order. If you're going to go for the huge insult, be more obvious." The show lost me after the first season because of the nonsense season finale. I watched the first episode from second season and just decided it wasn't worth the aggravation.
Don't go to the Dark Side, Pat. This rant and having other fans boycott this series is more powerful than a one on one confrontation. Hit them in the pocketbook, obviously that's all that matters with this show. If you decide the angry mob method have some fangirls lead the charge, we can be scary. (Hell hath no fury and all that.)
I'm afraid I have to call you out on this being a valid point to quit watching HEROES over. Why? Because they've been pushing negative stereotypes of geeks since the pilot.
ReplyDeleteThree words: Hiro and Ando.
Hiro spends most of his time completely out of touch with reality. He thinks of everything in terms of comic books and makes sci-fi references that are rarely appropriate and even more rarely understood.
Ando is a creepy fanboy who watches porn on the Internet thinking that he'd really have a chance with the woman on the web-cam if he could meet her IRL... and then tries to track down his favorite web-cam stripper, even though he stammers and blushes whenever a pretty woman looks at him.
I'll admit that this may not be quite as obvious as the joke with the comic readers in Claire's new place of employment, but the implications are no less offensive in these terms.
"Oh... silly fanboys can't tell reality from comics!" "Ewww... pervert stalker fanboys look at porn because they can't deal with real women..."
Maybe we don't rally against those portrayals because we see more of Hiro and Ando outside of teleporting into women's bathrooms and ill-advised side-trips to Las Vegas casinos. Maybe it's because, naive as Hiro is, we like his idealism and his eagerness to try and help others. And maybe we forgive Ando for his perverted tendencies because he is a good friend whose heart is in the right place, who would never dream of hurting a woman.
Maybe this kind of thing doesn't bother me because I used to work in a comic book store and - as much as it saddens me to admit it - there is some truth to all of the stereotyping here.
* I saw several female employees (not all of them, but a few) get hired purely based on their looks and the fact that The Powers That Be thought that attractive women would be better able to sell product to our mostly male customer base. But I've also seen this happen in other retail jobs outside of the Comic Book Store arena.
* The same PTB also encouraged us to try and direct any woman who entered the store toward the Hello Kitty merchandise and the fairy statues and other products that were purchased purely because they didn't think any woman would ever come into our store to buy comics.
* We had several customers whose presence - it was agreed - would require our female employees "needing to take their coffee break NOW".
* Having gone to conventions with several female friends who cosplayed, I can vouch that there ARE cosplay stalkers who will follow women around and just stare...
I can understand being upset because this is being played for laughs, re: Claire's being uncomfortable and scared. But based on the scene - as I recall it - Claire was pretty oblivious to the reaction she inspired until it was pointed out to her and she wasn't the least bit uncomfortable with the "geeks". So give it props for that and not giving into the "ewww.. Nerds! Ick!" stereotype.
Hey Starman Matt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for a great comment. You make a number of excellent points. Heroes has consistently progagated negative stereotypes of geeks and comic book fans since season one. You're dead on about Hiro and Ando. At the beginning I guess I was willing to overlook those points just because I was happy to see a comic book based TV show on prime time TV, but as the show has gone on these kinds of things have become less and less forgivable. If the only problem I had with the show was the scene with Claire the other week, I'd get over it and keep watching. But that's not the only thing. Overall, the show is just plain bad. While the first season was amusing, the show has spent the last two seasons being completely horrible. I am so sick of re-used plot devices on this show like paintings of the future, or big paintings of atom bombs on floors, or the never ending story of distrust between Claire and her father, or Peter being completely naive again and again and again about his brother. The writing is bad. There have been moments when characters' motivations change drasticly from episode to episode. Entire plot points are left unresolved. You have no idea how much the thing about Peter's Irish girlfriend continues to bother me.
The has show has been consistently bad and unimaginative since the end of season one. Add to that the incident a while back when Tim Kring himself referred to everyone who watched the show without a DVR as "saps and dipshits" and then include moments like the Claire scene and the Hiro and Ando stuff and it all becomes just too much for me. The Claire scene was just the final straw. It's not the only thing that bothers me.
And yes, there are nerds out there like those being portrayed on television. Stereotypes are usually stereotypes for a reason, it generally means that there's a nugget of truth in it. I've been to many cons over the years. I've seen the fanboys that they are portraying. I know they exist, but they are a small minority of geek culture yet somehow they are ALWAYS the element that is portrayed on TV and in movies. When a show like Heroes makes the scene they did, they portray ALL geeks that way and thus they perpetuate the negative stereotype geeks have always had in society. I would expect that from mainstream shows like CSI or House or something, but from a geek-centric show like Heroes to mock those who have made their show a success is just a straight up insult to their own core fanbase. I refuse to watch a show that does that. It would be like American Idol saying to everyone watching it that they are all losers who need to get a life and stop living vicariously through the lives of people they watch on TV.