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Et Tu, Pop Culture?
A Protest Against Recent Portrayals Of Fans In Popular Media

Barb Lien-Cooper

I once saw a movie called While The City Sleeps, a noir film from the 1950’s, which was produced a few years before Seduction Of The Innocents was published. In the film, a serial killer was psychologically profiled. He had mother problems. He hated and feared women. He had below average intelligence. But, the aspect of his character that seemed most morally suspect to the psychologist in the film was the fact that READ COMICS, even though the murderer was an adult. I was rather shocked by this linking of a morally suspect person with reading comics, but I thought it was an aberration of a less enlightened age. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. I say that because, whenever I see male comic book fans portrayed on television or in films lately, they seem to all be either the villains of the piece or the butt of the joke.

This change is a subtle one that has its roots in the idea of the “fanboy” as a joke, perhaps coupled with the way the popular media made comic books and video games convenient scapegoats after the Columbine tragedy. To tell you the truth, I hated seeing my community portrayed as losers on television because it simply wasn’t true. While many professional people of all industries read comics, do we see any normal, well-adjusted characters on television or in movies actually read comic books? Yet, as a fan of comics, I usually just grit my teeth and say “they don’t get it” when I see such portrayals in the media. But, now that comic book fans are portrayed in popular media as villains that are disconnected with the real world, I feel increasingly uncomfortable. I’m especially annoyed by this idea of male fans as villains or the butt of the joke because it is obvious that the scripts are being written by people who DO get it---by people who like comics. We’re being stabbed in the back by our own.

And, it’s in all of our media. SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!!!! PLEASE DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE EPISODE OF STATIC SHOCK MENTIONED HERE (or don't care). For instance, an episode of Static Shock awhile back represented a young fanboy as a person that was coming disconnected to reality because of comic books. As a matter of fact, this love of comics, along with the bad example of the kid’s brother, was leading the child into a life of crime. The show made the young man "well again" by getting him involved with basketball and away from those nasty comics. Oh, cliche of cliches, the boy was “now” normal because he became instead of a reader. If one actually looks at the “real world”, athletes aren’t exactly people to admire right now. Recently on the news, I saw another athlete being charged with sexual assault. You don’t see comic book fans getting into the kind of mess, from what I can tell. Yet, even though this script was written for a superhero show, the young boy was represented as not only a nerd, but as a semi-dangerous character that had to be rescued from the world of comics and delivered into the world of sports.

Similarly, Unbreakable did exactly the same thing to the comic book reader. SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!!!! PLEASE DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE FILM (or don't care). When Unbreakable came out, the fanmen in my life praised it to the skies because it "realistically" portrayed the hero, who may or may not have been a superhero. What they missed and what made me livid about the film was the manner in which it portrayed the grown up comic book reader. In the film, an art dealer who specialized in comic book art became so disconnected with reality because of his life-long love of comics that he imagined himself to be a supervillain. The hero of the piece was a former jock who rejected the art dealer’s attempts to bring him into the unreality of the villain’s comic book world. What’s the message here? Heroes are stupid former jocks who don’t have imagination and who would never read comics. Villains are readers who become “disconnected from reality” because they read comics. When one watches the movie, one feels that the writer/director knows the comics world. One sees it in the accuracy of much of the writing. Yet, he chose to portray the one example of the fan community as a serious psychotic.

Another TV outrage I’ve seen was on the last season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. For those of you who don’t watch the show, the theme of that last season was self-reportedly "oh, grow up!". SPOILER ALERT AHEAD!!!!!! PLEASE DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE SERIES (or don't care). To this end, Xander, a sympathetically portrayed comic book fanboy, has grown up to not read comics. This fact isn’t stated in the series per se, but the absence of the comic book references that last season (especially from Xander) seemed to be saying that comic books are a phase one must grow out of if one is to become an emotionally healthy adult. Sadly, the absence of the fanboy/fanman in Xander has rendered him a far less interesting character with little to no personality left in him. Well, that’s sad, but hardly tragic, right?

Worse yet is what happened to a character named Jonathan. Jonathan was a Fanboy who had few friends and was treated badly in high school. He was portrayed in a highly sympathetic manner and you genuinely felt sympathy and pity for the character. Even in an episode where he casts a spell to become super-popular, you weren’t laughing at the character, even when you laughed at the situations he created for himself.

Last season, Jonathan and two other comic book fans decided to become "supervillains" (oh, lord, say I). The jokes last season were invitations to laugh AT a character who lives the fan lifestyle instead of having sympathy for him. This not so subtle put down of the fan community (at least an aspect of it) seemed to me to be a real betrayal of the series’ fans. The series became a success because we comic book fans took a liking to it. The creator, Joss Whedon, came to power partly because he showed our community in a fascinating light. He, as a fanman, knew our community and reflected it back to us (Kevin Smith also does the same thing, which may be why he has such a following). Yet, last season, the very show that gave the community something to be interested in seemed to be telling us all to grow up. Does a series whose most loyal fans are an aging fan community really think this is a GOOD idea?

The most disturbing development in the Jonathan and his pals supervillain storyline was that they killed a woman they had kidnapped for sexual purposes. They put her under her power using a “mind control” device. They degraded her for about 5 minutes, which was a real insult to the female viewers of Buffy, who partly watch the show because of its strong female characters. Then, the young woman came out of the spell and informed them that non-consensually sexual contact is considered to be rape. (She failed to mention that rape is a crime of violence and anger, not a crime of sexual passion). The guys looked genuinely shocked at the accusation of rape (guess they were too disconnected from reality and women in general to figure that out). In an attempt to keep her from getting away, the head villain busted open the victim's head with a bottle and killed her. At the end of the show, the fanboy villains’ reaction to getting away with murder was that it was “kinda cool”. So, the fanboys went gone from being the butt of the joke to being real villains because their disconnection from reality (that results from their interest in comic books and pop culture) lead to amoral, sociopathic behavior and an inability to tell good from evil.

Later on, I saw again how television dissed my community. My husband was watching an episode of The Chronicle on the Sci-Fi channel. It’s a show about reporters from a tabloid newspaper investigating weird but true stories (well, at least true for their version of our earth). On the episode in question, there was a real life superhero out there that may or may not have beeen staging his own heroic stunts. My husband told me that I had to see it because comics were being mentioned. Sure enough, they were. Frank Miller, Alan Moore, etc. were mentioned on the show. I liked that a lot. What’s more, the African American photographer on the show was a fanman and helped uncover the mystery because of his comic book loving ways. I was even more pleased with this idea. Then, the bad stuff happened. The villain of the piece was once again a fanman so disconnected to reality that he stages heroic stunts. Of course, the guy was skinny, geeky, and wore glasses. I was not happy with this idea, obviously.

But, the real corker came at the end. After the case was over, the photographer decided that he’d outgrown comics and sold his collection on e-bay. Now, I admit, sometimes adults get tired of comics and sell them on e-bay. That’s not the point. The point is that he decided he’s outgrown comics partly as a result of this case, where he saw comics as the reason a fan went over the edge. The message once again was: adults that read comics have a case of arrested development, some of them may become disconnected with reality, and some may eventually go psycho if they continue to read comics.

The ironic thing about this message is that the person who wrote the script probably wouldn’t be writing for a living if he or she hadn’t loved comics, pop culture, and sci-fi. What’s more, the person who was sending this message out to the public still reads comic books! How do I know? Because the script mentioned recent comics like Powers, which only a person still connected with our community would know about. Instead of the script being a “thank you” to comics for inspiring the person’s career, once again, the fans get shafted. And since the script writer also seems to be a fan, the person just shafted himself or herself.

So, why does any of this matter, you wonder. We know that these shows are works of fiction and aren’t really US. Well, you may know it, but don‘t stereotypes stick with an audience? If the only portrayals of comic book fans the public sees are negative, will the public think that all fans aren’t REALLY like that or will they believe the stereotype presented to them? My argument is that comics will never be taken seriously if the fans are portrayed as jokes, losers, sickos, cases of arrested development, and so forth. Comic book reading will not be seen as socially acceptable until the readers are seen as being normal, well-adjusted human beings. When I see non-comic book fans that fail to understand us, that’s one thing. I don’t like it, but I get it. If they don’t get it or get us, we need to educate them. But, any attempts we make to educate the public about comics and their readers will sink like a stone as long as the media (especially types of popular entertainment that are written by fans and former fans) portrays fans as being socially unacceptable or even morally suspect losers.

Comics are becoming "cool" again. Writers like Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis are now interviewed by mainstream media. A comic book related novel got the Pulitzer. Movies are being made every day based on comic book concepts. Spider-man was one of the biggest hits of 2002. The Road to Perdition was a popular and critical screen success. From Hell was adapted for the movie screen and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is being made into a movie. X-Men 2 is getting ready for a big summer release. And, no less of a film director than Ang Lee has directed a movie based on The Incredible Hulk. If comics are now mainstream entertainment when they're adapted as films, how can they still be seen as "geek" entertainment in their original form? I believe it comes down to the stereotypical portrayal of comic book fans in media.

I'm especially mad because fanmen are portrayed in this manner. A fanman is no less of a man than some beer slurping loud mouthed Monday morning quarterback or a swim with the sharks business man. In fact, I've seen more reasonable, mature, kind, smart, and just plain nice guys in our community than I have ever seen in the mainstream. I don't know if it's the catharsis of video games and comic book action, I don't know if its the imagination that reads speculative fiction that leads to tolerance and open-mindedness, or what. But, in the main, I have been better treated by comic book men than men in the outside world. I also think part of that is that comic fans look beyond gender at what a person is---and values what he or she KNOWS and BELIEVES. Your average fanman doesn't care about gender---but if you utter an inaccurate phrase concerning the history of his favorite comic book character, watch out.

The ability to be a gentlemen---the ability to be smart, kind, genuinely curious, and tolerant---are the true indicia of a man. And contrary to the media's portrayal of male comic book fans, I have met more REAL MEN in our comic book community than I EVER have encountered in the mainstream.

So, I propose a different take on the comic book fanbase. We are the readers, the thinkers, and the dreamers of this world. We have loyally read an artform that is now only being mined by movies. We knew about cool comics before the movie makers did. Therefore, we're hipper than the mainstream. Instead of having an inferiority complex based on portrayals of our community in popular media and in our media, maybe we should start seeing ourselves as cool people, too. Maybe we should embrace the fact that, unlike a lot of the mainstream, we buy reading materials every week. We read. We think. We're smart. We're ahead of the mainstream in terms of what's cool. Maybe we need to start feeling proud of ourselves and our identities as fans. After all, where would cool comics or cool comic book creators be without cool customers to buy and read the comics in the first place?

Nowheresville, daddy-o, nowheresville.