If you stay offline or away from comment sections, you might not have seen the building and breaking of a tidal wave of pure nerd fury. "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," the latest comic book flick, has been released in theaters. The reactions were divergent and surprisingly full of insights into human nature and current events.
The critics loathed the movie. At present, only 29 percent of the reviews Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated are positive. This is a lower average than some films that have become synonymous with “bad comic book movies,” such as "Iron Man 2," "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer." Even one of the film’s stars seems to be aware it was garbage.
You wouldn’t know that from the nerd and geek reaction. As I write this, 73 percent of filmgoers have approved of the movie, but that’s been declining as more regular people come in to see it after the hard-core fans who viewed the movie as early as possible. The comment sections of critical reviews have become filled with rants that the critical consensus is invalid because, among other things, they’re all Marvel fanboys, can’t appreciate a dark comic movie, hate director Zack Snyder or just don’t get the comics.
None of these arguments hold up well. We’ve reached a point where some of the top critics are comic book fans, and they still thought it was awful. The only other film in the DC cinematic universe got almost twice as many positive reactions, showing that the low performance isn’t entirely due to Marvel bias. The “critics hate Snyder” argument also doesn’t work as only one of his movies has ever been worse regarded. Finally, "The Dark Knight," an indisputably dark film, is loved by critics and audiences alike.
The underlying reason for the divergent reactions of the die-hard comic fans refusal to accept that the film might be bad, and their hostility towards those who say it is, seems to be rooted in groupthink. The critics are outsiders; they don’t understand and their opinion doesn’t matter. It wasn’t made for them, so they can’t comment.
That line of thought has caused real harm before in more relevant situations. To start with, it assumes that geek and nerd cultures are small, isolated, marginalized and maligned. While perhaps once true, when a Batman film has a quarter-billion dollar production budget it’s safe to say that at least some of nerd culture has broken into the mainstream. We also live in a world where multiple people have made billions of dollars and created business juggernauts on computer and software knowledge. The glorified entrepreneurs of the present are the nerds.
If Peter Parker ever was the underdog, in 2016, he’s a straight white male interested in a STEM field with the potential to make a ton of money through legitimate means. The nerds have real power now — which, of course, comes with responsibility.
The problem is, some particular communities don’t seem to understand how powerful they actually are. While rejecting the arguments of film critics as baseless outsider criticism doesn’t really hurt anyone, the same thick skin has done terrible things in the past. Among other things, some commenters have suggested it’s been used to rebuff criticism of gender imbalances in Silicon Valley. Perhaps worst of all was the saga of death threats, doxxing and other misdeeds the gaming community piled on anyone who pointed out sexism in the industry.
If it were really just a small and maligned subculture being criticized, maybe those reactions would be less hideous. But nerd and geek culture are now real and powerful systems. The television, film and video game industries they’ve spawned or changed reach millions of young people and shape their worldviews. Tech companies wield incredible power, at least theoretically, and some make profits that eclipse the largest banks. If they continue to depict race and gender in harmful ways or keep the path to success in a major industry open to only white men, they become bullies who pretend to be victims when they get called out.
Those same attitudes and responses have become increasingly problematic in very different cultures. Our neighboring states, North Carolina and Georgia, have made headlines in the last week for bills that would make life significantly harder for their LGBT residents.
North Carolina passed a law that forbids cities from banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The law also restricts trans people to using the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth.
The Georgia bill, if it becomes law, would allow “faith-based” organizations that receive taxpayer money to discriminate against LGBT people. In effect, Georgians could pay taxes to maintain a hospital or charter school that could then refuse to provide them the services they helped pay for.
Most of the support for these bills is from conservative Christians who feel oppressed because they can’t lead prayer in public schools, refuse service to whoever they want to or ban same-sex marriage in their country. Using the language of the oppressed, they call for bills ostensibly designed to protect Christian women or business owners. The cries are uncannily similar both to the Gamergate backlash and the hatred of an earlier era when white Southerners claimed bathroom integration would be unfair to white women.
The irony is that while they claim to be truly oppressed, the conservative Christians actually have enough political power to pass laws like this or make life miserable for LGBT people as it is. Even though almost every United States president has been Christian, over 90 percent of congressmen are Christian, a majority of Supreme Court justices are Christian and the majority of the population are Christians — they are the real oppressed group.
And that’s the real problem. Some groups consistently refuse to take responsibility for their actions by claiming they have no power to begin with and that they are the real underdog heroes in a world out to get them. After all, the critics are all Marvel fanboys or feminists or gay. Who cares about those people?