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The Rise of the Nerd?

Cosmic Variance
By cjohnson
May 9, 2006 9:20 AMNov 5, 2019 8:08 AM

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For years, action movies stuck to a very specific division of labour. Your action hero did the "action" stuff...you know, shooting and hitting and the getting of the girl (yes, the action hero was most often male). Meanwhile, from time to time there would be a point in the plot where some technical knowledge was needed. Then the socially awkward technical person (Geek, Nerd, whatever) would be on the set for a while, and they would hack into the computer, make the modifications to the car, shut down the reactor, etc. Then several years ago things began to change. Did you notice it? Action heroes began to start learning [strike] our skills[/strike] the skills of the nerd. It became ok - cool even- for the muscle-bound hero to know some technical stuff! I remember one key movie that for me at least represented the high-visibility turning point. It was the 1996 movie "Eraser", starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. At the time he was sort of the CEO of Action Heroes, Inc, right? There's some scene in which he's fresh from shooting up everything in sight, with a cannon on each arm, etc, etc, and then at a climatic moment (I forgot the plot details which led to this), he sits down at a computer to do some crucial task or other! My friend Samantha, who was at the cinema with me, spotted this. She laughed out loud at that point, and explained afterwards why she thought that was significant, and she was right. Of course, several of you are thinking "what's the big deal?". Perhaps you're too young to remember how it was. That's because now everybody in the movies uses computers routinely, sending email, surfing the web, checking message boards, grabbing files from other remote computers.... and, just as in society at large, Hollywood caught on to the fact that everybody is much more comfortable with the computer. A little technical knowledge in computers is no longer the province of the nerd. We're all nerds now. And so nerdiness is a little diminished, as a result. Of course it then just gets redefined, since there must always be an outsider, to allow the insiders to better define themselves. So even the biggest action stars started using computers alongside their guns. Well, I saw another significant moment last night, I think. Maybe the next step. I was working on a paper during the evening and had the urge to see Mission Impossible III at the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight. I love seeing action movies in the Dome, and thought that it could be fun. So I booked a seat for a late-night show and took some time out from my paper-writing (best not to tell my collaborators...it was supposed to be ready in time for the morning) to nip down to see it at 11:10pm. There was a great late-night crowd there, and it was a lot of fun down at the Arclight, as always. Did not even matter that the movie was... ok, at best. I was not as impressed with it as I was prepared to be. Too many long scenes with Tom Cruise staring into the eyes of whateverhernameis in slow motion from endless different angles. I went there to see things blow up for goodness sake! And see some clever deceptions, double-crossings, hoodwinkings, bamboozlings....etc. This is Mission Impossible!

Well, where was I? At some point, Tom Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, is in Shanghai with some of the rest of his Impossible Mission Force buddies, and they are trying to figure out how to get into some super-secure building (part of the skyline to the right) in about 30 minutes. Cruise is hell-bent on doing it (for reasons I won't go into in case you want to see the film) and starts planning a daring approach. He starts drawing the various buildings, noting the distances between them and their heights, and then he starts writing equations! He's trying to figure out something or other to do with swinging from one building to another, and he's -I repeat- writing equations. And mumbling to himself a bit as he calculates, if I recall correctly! I've no idea what the equations were (you don't get much of a look), but I thought it was hilarious, since in my Physics 151 class, I'm always joking with them that I'm teaching them important skills they will use out there in the field, when called upon to save the day..."draw the diagram"...."pick your coordinates"...."write the equations", etc. The usual drill. There was even a Chloe O'Brien question on on the second Midterm this year.....(Chloe is a standard old-fashioned geek - you know, really smart, socially awkward, etc- the one that everyone really should be rooting for on the show "24", by the way.) Now come on. You have to admit this is a turning point. Tom Cruise is riding as high as an action hero as Arnie was a decade ago. Him writing equations now is just as significant as Arnie sitting down to scan the hard drive on the PC back then. Who knows what will happen over the next ten years, then? Action heroes might be doing linear algebra, differential calculus, applying theorems in number theory, all to save the world of course..... between explosions and shoot-em-ups of course. Or not. -cvj (P.S. I got home and got back to work at 2:00am, and worked on the paper until it was done, getting to sleep at 4:30am... so I was not slacking, in case any of my collaborators are keeping count!)

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