Film and television are powerful mediums, generation after generation
distinguish themselves and create archetypes that embody their era's
ethos. The fifties had The Rocker, the sixties had The Hippy, the
eighties had The Goth, and the noughties had The Geek. The download
has not been easy though - there were technical difficulties,
incompatible files and wrong regions. Now though the Geek is
permanently on our hard drive - lets face it we love Geeks.
‘Loving’ geeks is not just about tolerating their diminutive
muscle-free frames and allowing them to hang out with us, Geek
love is about wanting to lick their acne ridden faces and kneel
before their joysticks in sexual ecstasy at the prospect of
becoming the subject of their undivided attention even if it
is just for the length of the advert break.

Geeks are not just good, geeks are gods; The meek inheriting
the earth, the ultimate twist in the sci-fi movie of evolution,
the final episode where the speccy guy wins and the chiselled
bully repents or dies all played out on a floating microclimate
headed towards a black-hole.

What this reflects is a society in which ‘skills’ are no longer
considered to be splitting logs and wrestling bears - unless
of course you are playing ‘Woodland copse carnage III’ available
only on Nintendo. We are now entering cyber-space; worlds within
worlds within worlds created and mastered by men who couldn't
crush a coke can. Bill Gates heralded the dawning of Nerd world,
with him has reigning monarch - Geek land is Nerd worlds Greenwich
village - the arty district. In Nerd world people know how to
build computers, In Geek land you are more likely to have an
encyclopaedic knowledge of sci-fi an unhealthy obsession with
pop-culture and an obscure back catalogue of horror/cult sex films
and comics, one or more of the above makes you a geek - all of
them and you are a Geek god, a giant among men a fountain of
knowledge a purveyor of rabid opinion and these days a bit of
a hot ticket. But it was not always so, and the story begins
long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

In the sci-fi world there is Before Star Wars and After Star
Wars. (BSW and ASW) It was to sci-fi what the New testament
was to Christianity - the dawning of a new era and with
that came a generation of disciples - a generation of boys;
encyclopaedias of fantasy knowledge who grew into people
who knew Leia's second name and weather it was Yavin's third
or fourth moon that the rebel's were based (answers on a postcard).

Films, television and music were the tools of the cultural
revolutionaries and what they produced was grasped upon by
the fertile minds of a generation, but like all good counter
cultures there were those that leaped into this new world
(Jedi knights) and those that eyed it with suspicion (evil
Storm troopers). There was no internet to bolster the growing
number of Geeks back then, they had to make do loitering
by the counter in comic shops and attending conventions
in disguise. They were laughed at, pushed about, portrayed
on television as figures of fun - the butt of everyone's
jokes; Enter Samuel ‘Screech’ Powers through the cafeteria
doors with pin-head, jew-fro and sloping shoulders - a
cartoon Geek if you will, but as much as we couldn't bear
to look we couldn't look away, and with beautiful irony
and poetic justice it was Screech who out-stripped his
fellow ‘students’ becoming far more successful than any
of them, perhaps it was because he was the most memorable
perhaps it was because he brought the alleged ‘humour’
to the show but either way he was on to something. It was
Screech in the end who was ‘Saved by the bell...’
I had to do it I'm sorry.

Soon every studio comedy show from America had one. Steve
Urkel - the clown-like geek of colour from ‘Family Matters’
still has a fan club on MySpace. Paul Pfeffer from ‘The
wonder years’, the classic geek complete with black rimmed
specks, and not forgetting Professor Frink from The
Simpsons inventor of The Hamburger Earmuffs and House
That Runs Away From Thieves. These television caricatures
cemented the Geeks place in our cultural landscape, but
they were unsophisticated rough parodies of what would
follow, an attempt by T.V. exec's to portray people
they actually did not know or truly understand. ‘Revenge
of the Nerds’ was a comedy hit, hinting at an untapped
cinema market but the nerds were still nerds, it was
only when Geeks started portraying themselves that
they became sexy - funny that.

Kevin Smith is a Geek poster boy. He was only 24 when
he wrote Klerks - a film about his friends and his
world - in Geek film history it is seminal, the
first time Geeks are portrayed on film with sensitivity
and ultimately love. He himself plays Bob from the
infamous duo Jay and Silent Bob, Star wars obsessives
who are like oracles, elusive figures of profound
knowledge and insight. The film was about a group
of shop workers who sit around and chat. It became
a cult hit - the children of the revolution had found
a voice - the voice of Silent Bob. He followed up
‘Klerks’ with ‘Mallrats’, ‘Chasing Amy’ and ‘Dogma’ ;
films about Geeks, for Geeks, by Geeks.

A couple of years later, in the U.K it was Spaced
that tuned in to this zeitgeist. I wrote the
treatment when I was also 24, on a cheap electric
typewriter on the floor of my sisters living room
where I was living at the time. Simon already had
the U.S in his sites and was just back from L.A
when I showed him the first treatment for Spaced.
I wrote Tim for Simon as a comic-book artist,
skate-boarding sci-fi Geek, because I knew he
would bring his world-class knowledge of all
things fi to it. He gave me a master class in the
Simpsons - ‘The film parody must be equal to the
sum of believability and the story..’ and we were off...

My references ranged from Pulp Fiction to The Preacher,
while Simon's seemed to follow his various endearing
crushes on sci-fi pin ups; Buffy, Scully, Skywalker.
Our interests and film knowledge complimented one
another and we became dedicated to making something
unparalleled in ambition and laughs. When Edgar
‘Fried Gold’ Wright agreed to direct, we knew we had
a hit on our hands, and incredibly Spaced has become
a massive cult, about geeks by geeks for the love of
geeks, skip to the end.....

These days a ‘Vote for Pedro’ t-shirt pretty much
lets you know if someone is going to be your type
or not. In ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ the geek became
politicised in exquisite effortless metaphor
reminding us that if we geeks stick together - any
thing is possible like a better world or something
Sweet. There are even faux fashion geeks - good
looking ‘normal’ people who try and look like geeks
but actually aren't because they think it makes them
more attractive to the opposite sex. I sometimes
wonder if it is more than a cultural trend - if
the biological imperative subconsciously dictates
our choices could it be that our concept of what it
means to be an Alpha male has shifted? If being in
expert control of your world makes you Alpha and
your world is virtual then it could be said that the
Geek has finally inherited the earth or at the very
least illegally downloaded it before its release date.
Not finished...............finished.