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> You can get perhaps the clearest insight into this by looking at geeky films from the 80s before they started to bury the unpalatable stuff. "The girl" is the
by api 7y ago
> You can get perhaps the clearest insight into this by looking at geeky films from the 80s before they started to bury the unpalatable stuff. "The girl" is the reward. The geeky hero (a boy/teen/manboy) gets to win by virtue of geeky skills. Often, humiliating one dimensional "jock" bullies through gained abilities is a payoff too (cf: the Neverending Story, scaring the bullies into a dumpster with a dragon).
Isn't this more or less the standard issue "hero's journey" plot template?
- CompanionCuuube 7y ago>Isn't this more or less the standard issue "hero's journey" plot template? I think the comment you've quoted says a lot about how a postmodern society views heroes. Those story themes date back to the Brothers Grimm.
- JulianMorrison 7y agoThe hero's journey is broad brush enough that what counts as heroic behaviour, what counts as growth in the face of adversity, what counts as victory, and what counts as a reward are entirely up for grabs. So it's THJ with a crude form of masculine power fantasy woven through it. Importantly, it's very similar in all but superficial form to the "jock" power fantasy that it is by subcultural convention held up against. Geek culture has been this since the beginning.
- CompanionCuuube 7y agoAnd your definition of "masculine power fantasy" is so broad enough that you could paint Aliens or The Empire Strikes Back with them.