No Love for the Deschanels' Faux Social Pariahs

[akirlu]

Previously, the main thing* I'd ever seen Zooey Deschanel in was Big Trouble, a greatly underrated comedy classic, as far as I'm concerned, and a movie of which I am thoroughly fond. In it Deschanel plays the too-cool-to-emote teenage daughter of Rene Russo and Stanley Tucci, and acquits herself perfectly well in the role. So I was a bit baffled

Comments

[kalimac]

The only one of these I've seen is Napoleon Dynamite, which was one of those, "Why did I waste two hours of my life watching this?" movies.

[akirlu]

Yes I saw it on, I think, Vanessa Schnatmeier's strong liking for the film, and this turned out to be a case where mileage varied a lot.

[voidampersand]

I wasn't aware that anyone had so precisely categorized social outcasts into types.

[akirlu]

Oh, sure. It's hardly original to me, and there are various break-downs out there, differing somewhat on how and where they draw the lines. Sadly, I was unable to dig up the post/essay/article that gave the definitions that come closest to matching the usage as I observe it "in the field".

[lauradi7]

As annoying as Jess (the character), I was more annoyed by the characterization of Jess as "adorkable" in various reviews when the show first came out.
She was the main character's flight attendant sister in Almost Famous, I think.

[akirlu]

"Adorkable"? Yeeg. Bad, bad, ptui. But you may be right about Deschanel in Almost Famous.

[randy_byers]

I hadn't seen that taxonomy of social outcast types either. The distinction between "geek" and "nerd" as a usage seems arbitrary to me, although the types being distinguished make sense.

I myself like Bones okay, although I've only watched reruns, so who knows what I would make of the rest of these things. (I've seen a few episodes of Big Bang Theory, and I guess I like it okay too, but I'm not much of a fan of sitcoms in general.) I think I probably share your distaste for dork stories.

[akirlu]

Yeah, I see some people using "geek" and "nerd" somewhat interchangeably, but with the verb forms, "to geek" or "to geek out" being used specifically for that sort of intense, excited chatter about a fondly held and at least somewhat esoteric subject, I don't think the distinction of the terms is totally arbitrary. I'd be reasonably happy calling you a bit of a film geek, for instance, whereas I wouldn't call you a film nerd, so yeah, I think it's right to use "geek" for a focused speciality. In fact, I think when you call someone an "X geek" where X is whatever specialized hobby the person has, I think a lot of the sense of social awkwardness disappears, and the meaning tends to allude primarily to the depth of knowledge and degree of focus.

Or at least, that's what my linguistic field observations suggest. YMMV.

[randy_byers]

Good argument for your definition of "geek," but I think it still leaves this usage of "nerd" (as a smart generalist) a matter of the word being available. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

[daveon]

I am not a fan myself, for much the same reasons. Her character falls in the large category of TV show characters you'd like to smack on the head and order them to be less annoying... David Brent is there too.

[akirlu]

Yes, much of the frustration I feel undoubtedly stems from the thwarted desire to reach through the television screen and smack some righteous head.