The Shrine

Simon Pegg: Nerd Culture Won, and Now It’s Dumbing Us Down

"Obviously I’m very much a self-confessed fan of science fiction and genre cinema, but part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we’ve been infantilized by our own taste," Pegg said in an interview with Radio Times this week. "Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things — comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously. It is a kind of dumbing down, in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues." It's all enough, Pegg concluded, to make him potentially "retire from geekdom" for good.

Recent developments in popular culture were arguably predicted by the French philosopher and cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard in his book, ‘America’, in which he talks about the infantilization of society. Put simply, this is the idea that as a society, we are kept in a state of arrested development by dominant forces in order to keep us more pliant. We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc.

Interesting thoughts from the Sean of the Dead creator. However, I think such concerns are overblown. If it wasn't sci/fi, comics, anime, & video games occupying our time, we'd just find some other distraction (sports, celebrities, reality TV, etc). People have so much more free time nowadays. I'd wager that the average human spends about as much time on political issues as he did a century ago. It's just that now menial tasks have largely been automated. Now we can spend our free time how we wish! Most people realize that they have very little control over politics even though we live in "democracies". In elections we're just one vote against thousands or millions. Sure, we could protest things but usually protests are tolerated and ignored.

I edited your title for the spelling error...cuz I am OCD like that.

As for what Pegg said...sounds like pretentious nonsense. What makes anything nerd related infantile in and of itself? What makes the notion of a superhero childish? Can't play videogames, but chess is still elitist enough? That's all fucking retarded.

If his argument was a categorical notch up, and discussed how the increased media and entertainment centric aspects of our society may dumbing us all down...well, I'd think maybe he has a point, albeit a superficial one.

I've read that book too!