September 13, 2021, 10:33 am
Nerd rage: it’s not just for nerds anymore.
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Lots of people got their proverbial undergarments in a twist over the forthcoming She-Hulk series on Disney+, and took to social media to vent their indignation over there being a (GASP!) “girl version” of The Hulk.
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After all, women can legally vote and have jobs and they can even wear pants to work. Do we really ALSO need literary and cinematic heroes that represent us as part of a complex, conflicted, courageous, and noble-as-often-as-it-is-despicable human race? Can’t we be kept out of at least SOME of the good stuff forever? Isn’t #havingitall supposed to be a myth?
There are a few obvious problems with the She-Hulk outrage. There’s the gross misogyny—stuff like this is never really about things like a movie.
There’s the whole concept of having nothing better to do than rant about casting decisions in high-budget films about fictional characters.
But less readily apparent and even more problematic is that the complaints are historically inaccurate.
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The angriest people are uneducated about the very thing they claim is making them so upset. Among the most eloquent to point this out was author and illustrator Terry Blas:
Or, to frame it in an analogy straight from the nerdiverse: seems like lots of self-proclaimed nerds out there grow up thinking that they’re Luke Skywalker. But what is the Empire, really? What is its parallel in our society? The racist, classist, queer-bashing, ableist, classist, misogynistic and sexist af patriarchy. That’s the power structure we were born into, that many have been #resist-ing for a long time now.
So, lots of nerds, one way or another, have actually spent most of their existences, respectively, living in complicity with the Empire. Which is to say, the dark side. Which is maybe why girls being heroes seems to turn them into Jabba the Hutt on social media—slimy and gross and oppressive. But remember what happened to Jabba in the end, boys?
*First Published: September 13, 2021, 10:33 am
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