Maybe you think the Beatles are overrated. Does your wardrobe consist entirely of 1980s hair-band concert T-shirts? Perhaps you’re addicted to going to breakfast-cereal themed cafés.
What is your secret pop-culture shame?
(This is similar to a question I asked early this year — “What’s something that, as a film nerd, you’re embarrassed to admit?” — but I’m going broader here, and also testing to see if the Net algorithms on the social media I post this question to like the word shame better than the word embarrassed. Maybe that should be my pop-culture shame…)
I have lots of pop-culture shames, some around indisputably classic films that I have never seen, many of which I hope to get to in my Classic Film Virgin strand, as well as the shame of not having gotten back to that strand in a while! But I’ll go with this one: I have never seen the acclaimed TV series The Wire. A fact of which I am very ashamed.
Your turn…
(You can also discuss this at Substack or Patreon, if you prefer. You don’t need to be a paying subscriber to comment, but you will need to register with either site to do so.)
This is embarrassing. I…like The Big Bang Theory. I know it’s racist and sexist and homophobic. I know it’s a mediocre show. But the characters are so well-drawn I don’t even mind that most of them are based on stereotypes. It’s the TV equivalent of comfort food. I am, proudly, a geek, and it’s nice to see people kind of like me on television and to know that, for a little while, we were the subject of a hit TV show.
In college, one of my friends shared a four-bedroom apartment with three other nerds, and some weekends I’d visit and all five of us along with three of their girlfriends would sit around and play Dreamcast games, watch anime Fansubs, and crack jokes while eating delivered pizza and Thai food.
The first time I visited, I remember thinking “Wow, I never knew nerds could coexist and be so social, well-adjusted, and… happy” It was like finding an oasis full of people who shared my language and culture—almost as if I was returning to a long lost home country that I never knew existed.
In its best moments, BBT gives me that same feeling. I also felt that Bernadette and Amy Farrah Fowler did a great job at advancing the complexity of female nerd characters in mainstream media at the time, although the sexism of the creators and writers definitely pops up a lot in their dialogue and character traits.
I’ve never made it through more than a couple minutes of Friends; however, although the quality of the writing and overall structure of BBT is very similar, that feeling of representation was enough to hold my interest, especially in the early seasons, so I’m right there with you on this one. It was nice to see “our people” on screen as the main characters and not just the comic relief lab guy/gal in a chair.
In general, it’s been very weird to see all the activities that marked me as a social outcast and weirdo shift to the mainstream, especially during and after Corona. So many professional athletes, singers, celebrities, and “cool” people of all ages play games, watch anime, and read comics/manga/fantasy/sci-fi now and are willing to geek out over fine details. I credit BBT with a lot of this progress along with nerdy Gen Xers reaching positions of power in creative fields.