At the urging of not one, but two close friends since childhood, I put aside the turning Japanese fixation to rediscover my inner geek. It’s a lateral shift.

So here’s the thing. It turns out that I say things and then do other, potentially antithetical, things. For example, I say that I’m going to be hikikomori, and then I go out to karaoke with fifteen friends and have a ridiculously good time. Or, I sit around and tout the wonders of sharing experiences and the various products of others’ creativity and then ignore the fact that people have been trying to get me to watch something for what is now approaching two years. Now, I’m not the worst about this by any means. Hell, I have friends (who know that their names are Kate and are actually only one person and thus needn’t be pluralized) who have been sitting on a borrowed copy of one of my all-time favorite movies for the better part of what has so far been my eight-year tenure as a New York City resident. But, my father always used to encourage me to compare myself to the people who accomplished tasks better or more efficiently than I did, rather than those who made me look good. He never encouraged me to make attempts at publicly shaming anyone, though, so I don’t know where that came from.

Spaced is a British comedy series from the folks that made Shaun of the Dead. It’s very, very funny. Instead of talking about the oft-beleaguered point that people on British television and movies look more like “real” people (read: not pretty) and how that is somehow positive (which my posts about anything featuring Nakama Yukie obviously debunk), or about how difficult it is for me to ignore the resemblance between the guy who plays Brian and Jason Newsted, I’ll discuss why this show works for me. The complete series on DVD was given to me over a year ago by the aforementioned Kate, and recommended before that by the afore-alluded-to Steve. Both have mentioned that watching the show puts me in their thoughts. While I’m flattered ever to be in anyone’s thoughts, it is because the show is about a bunch of obsessive comic book/sci-fi dorks. Now, while I’m happier to be lumped in with this particular crew than, say, the three guys from season six of Buffy, the truth is that there’s little distinction to be made. Warning: Ahead lies me being all defensive and shit. Now, just because I’ve been told with increasing regularity that such a worldview is distorted, unrealistic and flat-out sad, I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s a bad thing. See, it turns out that the world isn’t so great. I’m not going to go into it here, but if you pick up a newspaper, you will have taken more steps toward doing any serious reading than most people I’ve observed. Don’t think that, because I’m critical of illiteracy, I’m the bastion of book-learning that I purport to be. Fact is; I read so little that I don’t entirely know what a bastion is. I learned ninety-seven point four percent of everything I know from movies and metal lyrics.

Has anyone figured out the code behind when I break for a new paragraph? Because if you have, be kind enough to leave a comment and give me a hint. I’m dying to figure it out. The point that I had some fleeting hope of making above is that I am unsatisfied with reality. I find virtue in those who are unwilling to limit their understanding of the world to what is concretely tangible and accepted. I like fiction because it explores possibilities despite often being labeled or interpreted as impossibility. I think Spaced treats this point of view with a certain amount of respect, despite its being a comedy at its core, and foremost successful in that pursuit. It takes some fairly benign, commonplace situations and litters them with pop-culture parallels and references that, for its characters, seems to make living in the everyday world a little more fun. At the same time, it creates a basic, internal acknowledgement in the viewer (especially if the viewer has the exact same reactions as my own,) that while the occurrence of a full-scale zombie infestation may seem outlandish, one’s emotional reactions to such an event are quite sympathetic and easily accessible. 

Have you noticed that I do these little posts (little is not the right word here) without having seen the entire series? I mean, is it kind of silly to do that? I feel like something could change partway through that invalidates everything I’ve written. That is why I try to keep these posts lean on substance of any kind. Or that is what I will say if anyone notices. I’ve had conversations with Andy where he tells me that academics (the “people,” not the field) tend not to write about anyone who is still alive, because there’s always still the chance that the subject might go bat-shit crazy (or see the light, depending on your point of view) and renounce everything they’ve said up to any given point in their lives. A girl I know did that once, and rendered an entire three-year run of a sub-mediocre college newspaper comic strip even less worthwhile than when it had gone to print. I had a conversation yesterday with Kate about the fact that people who walk out on movies shouldn’t be allowed to review them. So what the hell am I doing posting after I’ve seen five out of fourteen episodes of material here? Well, I’m not really writing a review. Never mind relevance, I’m not even making coherent points, here, man. No, think of these posts like you might think of the notebooks in John Doe’s apartment in Se7en, but more space-efficient and hopefully more legible, depending on your browser-related preferences. And think of this paragraph as a tangent floating free in the absence of any reasonable editorial voice.

I think that there is a fine, sometimes undetectable line between escapism and the maintenance of hope. Especially in jail, I guess. And while I’m not going to start in on a whole “we’re all in a jail,” rage-against-the-machine metaphor, I think that it sometimes takes strength to resist and even reject being told to accept how things have to be, and to look for alternatives, even if they appear to be completely ridiculous and proselytized by someone wearing underpants on the outside. While it used to be easier for me to find this strength, I’m making some attempt to continue this fight as a sidekick who’s lost his hero. When I’m not too self-conscious about the fact that everyone can see that I’m just another geeky otaku, I still like to find a place in my head where I am a Mulder, I am a Neo or I am a Haruhi.

Thanks again to Kate and Steve for the recommendation and the encouragement.

This entry was posted by eugene on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 8:24 am and is filed under british, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.