Kevin used a fake ID to get into that strip club (”He is McLovin”)
In the latest editions of the feminist magazines Bitch and Bust, there are articles railing against the lack of movies celebrating gal geeks.
As the item in Bitch by Sarah Seltzer claims, a nerdy chick must leave her geekiness (and independence) behind before she can win the heart and other body parts of some handsome guy:
The female dork chooses her own narrative over the narrative of a conformist society and demands to be accepted for who she is. And as punishment, pop culture robs her of her sex appeal.
Think you’ll ever see a movie in which the lead character resembles that woman from Trekkies who wore a Trekkie uniform to court, and she gets to date the cutest and nicest boy in school (possibly even the cutest, nicest jock).
Think you’ll ever see a movie in which the Trekkie girl doesn’t have to take her uniform off or get a makeover to look like a modern version of Sandy from Grease to do it.   Â
Both the articles refer to the work of Judd Apatow, the dorky dude who has become mega-famous in recent years thanks to such hilarious hits as The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad.
In the latter film, a group of three teenage boys consisting of a rotund and angry Seth (Jonah Hill), the sweet and shy Evan (Michael Sera), and oh-so-nerdy Fogell/McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) respectively end up winning over a sexy and smart girl, a sexy and nice girl and a sexy girl.
Indeed, Fogell/McLovin gets to have sex with the sexy girl, although in the midst of entering said girl he’s interrupted by a pair of dumb cops.  Â
Click on this YouTube link for further details of Fogell/McLovin’s behaviour. Â
Of course, movies have always allowed people to indulge in fantasies, although why a geek boy can’t find getting together with a geek girl a suitable fancy is a question that hasn’t been answered.
It should be pointed out that the main male characters in the aforementioned Apatow films end up rejecting masculine geekdom in varying degrees: Andy (Steve Carell) chooses marriage over action figurines, Ben (Seth Rogen) moves out of the house he shared with other dweebs to provide an appropriate home for his child and Superbad ends with Seth and Evan going in different directions at the shopping centre with their new girlfriends.
Thus, it could be argued that in Apatow’s films traditional feminine non-geek values ultimately prevail.
After all, without the women the boys are just geeks, albeit geeks who have lots of dumb fun.
When do geek girls get to have dumb fun in movies?Â
As Seltzer argues:
A pop culture that rewards guy geeks and leaves their female counterparts isolated – and often asexual – reflects a wider culture where men are still judged on their cerebral achievements and women on their looks. Hollywood’s expansive embrace of the geek is just an extension of a classic sexist fantasy.
I think it was “snow day” where geek boy and girl hooked up after geek boy mooned over hot girl. Admittedly it was from the boy’s perspective, so you have a point re: main characters but not about the geeks getting together.
Your hurdle’s too high - those women are beyond salvation. They should count themselves lucky to land a tubby Klingon. Or an engineering REMF.
Besides which: Janeane Garofalo [schwing] in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.
Also: pretty much any moofy containing Molly Ringwald.
For you, Darlene, The First Time I Turned Twenty. It’s been on SBS at least once, I’m fairly sure that’s where I saw it.
You’re really taking to that acronym, aren’t you Graf von Bazarov?
what’s the “classic sexist fantasy”?
I give credit where it’s due.
Or don’t. You know what I mean.
But Geek boys DO have all the fun….
Although, I work with a geek girl who took 6 weeks holidays before xmas to follow a Finnish Goth rock group on it’s tour through Europe. That would have been fun.
That’s a long long name (is that you, FDB?).
Finnish Goth rock group? Eww, that’s a bit emo (sorry, I don’t know what that means but it sounded cool).
Thanks, Liam. Will check with the local video store.
Classic sexist fantasy: ugly dude gets beautiful woman.
“Classic sexist fantasy: ugly dude gets beautiful woman.”
The prevalence of sexism becomes more obvious when you try to imagine this scenario reversed, and said reversal being the subject of a Hollywood film.
…’non-geek values’ is a classy turn of phrase all right. Great post.
In my experience the ratio of female geeks to male geeks has been rising the last few years. Hopefully that will translate into more representation in pop culture. Then again, it could just be me getting older — girl geeks do seem to come out of the geek closet later in their teenage years than the guys.
Ugly dude sees good-looking but attached chick in a gratuitous shower scene.
Ugly dude uses his intellectual and social powers to have the good-looking chick’s attachment eliminated from the main plotline.
Through a bit of hardship, but only that kind of hardship that affects other people but allows for melodramatic exposition, the ugly dude eventually makes his peace with his own sense of identity and morality, and wins over the good-looking chick, who retains no further part in the story.
I’ll tell you, King David has a lot to answer for.
Not sure King D was meant to be ugly liam
Pop culture? Whaddya mean pop culture? That implies a contemporary meme.
That sort of crap has been around for aeons. We called it the “double standard.” It’s still as repugnant as it always was.
What do you have? Socially inept and hygienically challenged boy geeks who have little in common with teen queen airheads.
What on earth would they talk about if it were real life…oh sorry, I forgot, the aim of the exercise is the penultimate bedroom scene. Gawd I hope he remembers to wash! I hope she remembers….
Well, you’ve only got his word to take for his looks. I’ll read between the lines, ta.
Not sure if Kind David made peace with his sense of identity and morality either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ff_kaylee.jpg
Forgive me, but i’m gonna have to argue against King David being an ugly Geek, even a powerful and charming one. THe biblical tradition portrays him as a hottie, who has pretty much always been interpreted as such in subsequent artistic tradition (Michelangelo anyone?).
Samuel chap 12.
11 So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?”
“There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered, “but he is tending the sheep.” Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down [a] until he arrives.”
12 So he sent and had him brought in. He was ruddy, with a fine appearance and handsome features.
….
17 So Saul said to his attendants, “Find someone who plays well and bring him to me.” 18 One of the servants answered, “I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the LORD is with him.”
Literal or not, the narrative is one of a charming, powerful AND handsome guy.
More Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes than Charles and Diana.
Just googled an interesting take on the dynamics of David and Bathsheba’s relationship here:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/religion/2008/01/25/bathsheba-is-one-of-the-most-beguiling-characters-in-the-bible.html?PageNr=1Sorry to be contrary
The other side of the equation in your traditional teen comedy is that a geek girl character is traditionally played by some stunningly beautiful young actress, who puts on a pair of glasses and has her hair done in some sort of severe librarian-style hairdo.
Everyone in the movie then treats her as hideously ugly, and she just can’t get a date, poor dear. But at some point the magical transformation happens: the glasses come off and the hair comes down, and all the male characters do a double take and go, I never realised, what a babe!
Teen comedies are not renowned for the veracity of their portrayal of adolescent life.
In the real world, geek boys don’t get sexy girls, or indeed girls of any variety.
The greek girls and greek boys i know do alright.
“But at some point the magical transformation happens: the glasses come off and the hair comes down, and all the male characters do a double take and go, I never realised, what a babe!”
You say that like it only happens in the movies.
Now excuse me, I have to go take my contact lenses out and don my hairnet.
Kid’s movies.
Usually a smart, sassy girl winning the day with the mild help of a doofus boy. Think Golden Compass etc.
I had a bit of a think about this, and there are plenty of examples of so-called ‘ugly duckling’ comedies of this sort - geek girl metamorphoses into beauteous goddess-like creature (if not an actual goddess). Or, in some cases, changes from a statue into radiant real-life girl (One Touch of Venus), or Mannequin to girl (what’s that Olivia Newton John thingo?)
One of my fave movies, ‘10 Things I Hate About You’ (I think it got a mention in a previous thread) goes about as far as Hollywood wants to go down the ‘celebrating girl geek’ line. Julia Stiles plays a sort of geek character who ends up with Heath Ledger. She reads poetry and feminist tracts, and deliberately uses long words (’do you want us to write this assignment in iambic pentameter?’) And in one memorable scene:
TEACHER: The trouble is, Kat, people see you as being somewhat…
KAT: Tempestuous?
TEACHER: Heinous bitch is the term most often used.
This doesn’t make her a geek, though her character is more independent than some Hollywood starlets.
What about Shrek? Boy ogre meets princess. Princess turns out to be girl ogre. Warty love ensues.
And Hackers? (OK, there the girl-geek was Angelina Jolie, but it *was* in her teen-androgyne phase and her outfits *were* hideous and she *was* a ball-breaking code-phreak who left the geek-boys in her dust.)
*sigh*
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film where a plain girl gets the good looking guy, Klaus.
Thanks, Tim T. I intend to use that phrase as much as possible.
Leon, I think you’re right, and it also depends on girl geeks getting their geeky scripts out there.
sorcerer, I take your point. The author of the article was referring to some particular modern pop culture moments.
Oh my gosh, yes Paulus that theme has been used time and time again.
‘10 Things I Hate About You’ is mentioned in the Bitch article. Apparently (never seen the movie), Heath Ledger brings her in from geekdom.
I could never see Ms Jolie as a geek.
Hermione (definitely a geek) in the Harry Potter books has bushy hair and big teeth, but first the teeth get magicked down to normal and then the hair gets tamed with Product, and she goes to the ball, transformed by the Product and a nice frock, on the arm of the international sports hero. Is the message that you can be a geek and cute too?
Or there’s Ugly Betty (not a geek, but relevant to the discussion) (and how’s that for a truly heinous title?), which probably goes further than any other American TV show ever has in casting as the any kind of heroine someone who is, you know, normal-looking. But I bet you any money you like she never, ever gets the rich cute boss. On the other hand, he is a weak, hopeless dweeb and lightweight and she deserves better.
Grapple, grapple.
What worries me about these discussions is that there’s always some smartarse ready to leap in and say it ‘proves’ that ‘feminism has failed’, as though feminism were some superheroine whose fatal flaw had prevented her from leaping the tall building. Personally I think feminism’s task is to dismantle the tall building brick by brick with its bare hands, which is what posts and discussions like these help to do.
Have a look at ‘Ghost World’, directed by super-geek Terry Swigoff.
Scarlett Johanson and someone else play classic geek girls. Steve Buscemi is the much older bizaare love interest. Of course Scarlett is gorgeous, but the film avoids playing off her looks. She never changes and all three characters remain resolutely weird and geeky all the way through.
I haven’t seen any of the Apatow films and I plainly need to.
FXH @ 19
efaristou!
Sublime Cowgirl, I reluctantly concede that you’re right. Interesting link, too. Next time, gadget!
Leon at #15, certainly David reconciled himself to himself.
2 Samuel 12:20:
A timely moral resolution with a lesson, and a gratuitous laying-with scene. It’s good to be the king.
I recall the trailer of some American movie on DVD about a fat, ugly girl apparrently getting the handsome hero. But as I find the majority of American comedies inane to say the least I didn’t take much notice of it. What about Muriel’s Wedding? Now there was a masterpiece, where the geek really triumnphed. Presumably Hollywood has ripped it off at least once, but if they have, I haven’t noticed.
The first 3 American Pie movies anyone???
The 2 main male characters Jim (Jason Briggs) and Oz (Chris Klien) both end up with geeks, Michelle, the band geek (Alyson Hannigan) and the choir priss Heather (Mena Suvari -admittedly quite attractive).
Jim rejects the beautiful Nadia (Shannon Elizabeth) after discovering his inner geek.
Oz finds there is more to be found in a relationship than there is to be found in trying to score with hot chicks and the obviously shallow “Stifler” (Seann William Scott) is repeatedly humiliated throughout the movies.
Jim ends up marrying Michelle by the 3rd one with Michelle not shedding one bit of her geek persona.
Misery
Toni Collette is hardly plain Jane, even with a bad hairdo and fat clothes. It would have been more outside the box if her movie mum or sis had scored a hunk.
Besides, Toni had a mini makeover as the movie progressed so was looking quite herself towards the end.
If you recall, she also ended up rejecting the hunk. Does not normally happen in Hollywood.
Jane Eyre’s another plain, intelligent girl who gets the rich, handsome husband. Though I don’t recall her having much dumb fun. Perhaps the next adaptation can rectify that—”My Big Fat Governess Wedding”?
No, sorry, I’m getting my patriarchs mixed up again. I must be thinking of a different Rochester.
,blockquote cite=> Jane Eyre’s another plain, intelligent girl who gets the rich, handsome husband.
Difference is the original book was written by a woman who did not have some fat balding Hollywood exec with unfulfilled masturbation fantasies dictating the terms to her.
Was Rochester handsome?…don’t think he was meant to be. Even Jane commented that he wasn’t.
However he could have shed his cloak and breeches beside my bed any time…
“I must be thinking of a different Rochester.”
A pretty common problem, in my experience.
Sorcerer,
Muriel rejecting the hunk is what I meant when I said the geek really triumphed. Besides, she got the girl, (I think.)
i followed my geek girl wife to Los Angeles, while she did her post doc at one of the holy sites of geekdom, Caltech. the gender ratio was its usual parlous state, tho the more entrenched inhabitents that i talked to assured me that the number of girls was on the rise. the yankee geek girls i got to know were almost all writting something, fan fiction, role playing modules some film scripts. There was some resentment of the film and tv world ’cause classes kept on getting disrupted by filming of one sort or another “Numbers” and Legally Blonde spring to mind.
I guess my point is that this new generation of geek girls are bevering away and their stories will eventually come out in their own voices rather than mediated by the likes of Joss Whedon, GB Trudeau etc.
I have long thought of Elizabeth Bennett as a proto geek, Jane Eyre as well. They were/are acomplished, strong willed and plain, and they got their men. Geekdom can be a narrowly defined place but that isn’t what people are.
I wonder, was/is Athena a geek?
The problem with both the book and the movie is that the Kathy Bates character looked like every female inmate’s nightmare prison guard. There was no happy ending where the protagonist galloped (or limped) into the sunset with his formidable inamorata She was a cruel sadistic psycho. He had to kill her to escape, and he did so with a doorstop shaped like a pig.
Subtext=”All large strong plain women are dangerous psychopathic pigs”
So there’s the problem…and would a makeover have magically reformed the character perhaps?
The FBI techie in Criminal Minds, Garcia, is a girl geek with an interesting characterisation. She had some romantic type storylines in the last episodes before the strike, although they constitute spoilers for unaired eps in Australia so I can’t talk about them here ….
Dylwah at #38, you are getting me mixed up with my pretty but flighty sister Lizzie.
Now move over and let me get at that piano stool.
Perhaps no movies about female geeks can be explained by the dearth of female geeks.
But what of female dweebs?
Abbey from NCIS is a total nerdlinger, albeit a “cool” goth as well.
OK Mazza the piano is yours.
1. Yeah, there’s a real shortage of girl-centric romance stories. /sarcasm.
2. http://www.tvtropes.org/
Only if she bites the heads off chickens.
1. Yeah, there’s a real shortage of girl-centric romance stories. /sarcasm.
Yeah, that’s totally relevant to what the post is even about. /sarcasm.
Good link though Jacques.
“Yeah, there’s a real shortage of girl-centric romance stories. /sarcasm.
Yeah, that’s totally relevant to what the post is even about. /sarcasm.”
Amanda’s right, it’s not what the post was about. It was about the dearth of films with girl geek leads etc There mightn’t be a lack of girl-centric romance stories, but there sure as heck is a lack of girl geek centric romance stories. no sarcasm/
Does Amelie count?
“Hermione (definitely a geek) in the Harry Potter books has bushy hair and big teeth, but first the teeth get magicked down to normal and then the hair gets tamed with Product, and she goes to the ball, transformed by the Product and a nice frock, on the arm of the international sports hero. Is the message that you can be a geek and cute too?”
But in fairness, it’s made quite clear that she only did this once, for a special occasion, but not usually because she “couldn’t be bothered going to all that trouble every day”
Fine - it was Thora Birch in Ghost World, she was great and definitely a geek/misfit. Napoleon Dynamite ended up with quite a “geeky” girl in the end didn’t he?
Bien entendu mon vieux
Audrey Tautou as grungy, chronically shy (Aspie?) and obsessive? Yes
Audrey Tautou as plain, ugly or unattractive? Don’t think so….
I know the solution to that.
>
Write one.
Yep, fair enough, Adrien.
Of course, one has to get one’s script about geek girls approved by the people who approve such things.
So what the heck am I, chopped liver?
My computer book says I never had a love interest, so I guess I don’t count.
“Come on over here Brain. I’ve got the peeeanut buterrrr”
Well these days it gets cheaper and cheaper. You could also try graphic novels and animation. Seriously, it’s a kind of character that isn’t seen much. There’s an audience out there somewhere.
>
You don’t really need permission to be creative.
the real reason girl geeks don’t have any fun:
http://ralph.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=375418
(don’t know which muscle this supposed research was strengthing, but it wasn’t the brain muscle)
Lisa’s the queen. Lisa has crushes on cute and/or dangerous boys. That kid in the movie who wasn’t Bono’s son wasn’t a dork.
Penny from Inspector Gadget is probably a geek, but she’s not the star of a big movie or nothin’.
Like a good graphic novel (so much easier with all those pictures). There’s heap of DIY stuff among what is loosely described as the third-wave of feminism. Indeed, these feminists use blogs, zines, art etc as a dominant way of expressing their political beliefs. But the big boys and girls in the studios are the ones with real clout.
“Have a look at ‘Ghost World’, directed by super-geek Terry Swigoff. Scarlett Johanson and someone else play classic geek girls. … Of course Scarlett is gorgeous, but the film avoids playing off her looks.”
Fine at #26, you have unintentionally proved the point of this thread!
That anonymous “someone else” was Thora Birch. And she was actually the star of the movie! Johansson was just her friend.
As you say, the movie didn’t overtly play off Scarlett’s looks (there wasn’t even one shower scene, goddammit, I want my money back!). But whenever she walks into a movie, she has a visual presence that someone like poor ordinary-looking unmemorable Thora Birch could never achieve.
Utter crap.
This has got to be a joke.
Stilettos are the Western world’s equivalent to Chinese foot-binding..except they are voluntary. The pelvis is actually tilted in a way it was never meant to be, tendons and muscles in the back and buttocks are abnormally stretched and the feet and knees are permanently damaged.
The only people who need stilettos to get their rocks off are some men.
Paulus, I think you’re right in one sense, but you maybe wrong in another.
Scarlett has gone on to be a “star”, Thora has gone nowhere - t’is true.
What is hard for me to unpick is the following. The camera just seems to love some people and not be interested in others. Part of this is to with conventional concepts of beauty, but not all.
For instance, Bette Davis was a major star, but could never be called beautiful. But she had this tremendous intensity which worked for the camera. Sometimes tthey glammed her up for a film, but it was never really worked.
There have been other women who have been stunningly beautiful, but the camera never liked them much.
Is Scarlett a star because she’s beautiful, or is there something else going on, as well? If she lasts for any length of time, we’ll know it’s the latter.
Does the University of Verona receive much by way of grants from the fashion houses in Milan?
Jo at #59 and sorcerer at #62, Lauredhel at Hoyden About Town has a fabulous post on this idiocy about stilettos here.
sorcerer,
just a small reminder of the never-ending deluge of utter crap, as you rightly say, that clogs up the frontal lobes of the populace - it will take a generation or two, composed entirely of lisa simpsons and hermione grangers to overcome this type of pernicious sexism, in this case, dressed up as “health fact�. And let’s not go to the supposed science – it is more than likely, a ‘joke’…
it was however, featured on the front page of msn. yesterday, which opens directly after I logout from my hotmail account – like a million other account holders in oz. - so, it seems that even a growing band of much admired geek girls are still no match for the realsexualpolitik of the mainstream media, in its present form.
But onwards and upwards – one brick at a time isn’t …..Dr Cat.
The stiletto research is as fucked-up as it is possible to be. From conception through conclusions, it doesn’t even deserve the moniker “junk science”. (Pulled apart in some detail on Hoyden.)
The Telegraph dropped a beauty on it:
It’s been up all day without correction. In the face of this sort of writing, I suspect it really would be too much to ask that “science journalists” read and evaluate the original research.
One perfectly rational reason why there are no “girl geek” films is the same reason there are no male ‘Sex and the City” or “Cashmere mafia” films. Men and women are different creatures.
Men and women are different creatures.
>
Yes but they’re not <i.That different nor are they all alike. There are ‘geek girls’ given the huge space for cultural consumption out there, the global(regional) market and the relative inexpense of production it could be viable to make this sort of niche thing.
>
Just needs to be made.
“Men and women are different creatures.”
Wise words. Very insightful.
Different and the same and different and the same.
Hardly scientific, but at the moment I’m downloading some songs onto my iPod. Minnie Ripperton singing Lovin’ You is such a sweet girly experience, but the Jimmy Webb songs I downloaded a moment ago are also incredibly sensitive.
I agree with Adrien’s last comment.
HH @ 66.
What about Maupin’s Tales from the City. ?
They existed in earlier days. They were the ones who surged into universities and later the workforce in the 60s and 70s. From them came the leaders of the feminist movement and the women who cracked the glass ceilings. Because of them Julia Gillard is the Deputy Prime Minister, Julie Bishop is Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and other women are moving into senior and CEO positions in business and academia.
But they are wondering why they are still having to fight many of the same battles some 30 years later.
So have I been having interspecies sex for the past ahem number of years? And my second child is an alien?
Strip off the superficiality of the flesh and the skeletons are much the same. So are the blood and the component cells. There is only one chromosome (actually half a chromosome because a Y is a mutated X) difference.
So no substantial difference…but for me sex would be so boring if we were all one gender.
What about Thora Birch’s previous movie, “American Beauty”? There she, as the geeky girl, gets the handsome (if whacko!) boy. Also, no-one’s yet mentioned “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” with Janeane Garofolo, Uma Thurman, and Ben Chaplin which is all about this exact question: will the handsome hunk fall for the short, chubby-faced, introverted and intellectual vet? Granted, it’s a gender-reversal of the classic Cyrano de Bergerac story, but it works.
And in those movies none of the female geeks have to become beauty queens to get their menfolk?
It’s been so long since I saw American Beauty, I can’t remember a thing about it.
Lots of DVD watching to do.
Dylwah @ [38]
Interesting recollections. Did you say that “this new generation of geek girls are bevering away” because you dared not say they were beavering away?
Ah, the hard work (and muscle) that Dare Not Speak Its Name. (sigh)