Film images L to R: 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, Liberty Films, Cineguild. Mashup: Kate Miller
It’s Cabin Fever week over at GeekMom, and we’ve got a slew of suggestions on how to weather the weary days geek style. First up is Kate Miller’s post on “Spot the Geek!”
Recently my family endured a week of cabin fever brought on by snow, weblessness, and our general proximity to one another. We survived by watching movies together each night after dinner, but were limited to our rental cabin’s movie collection. This included only dusty classics that every adult Homo Sapien has seen at least fourteen times. The movies were on “videotapes,” which we played in a big machine called a “VCR.”
The films we saw were made long before high-tech gadgetry, Dungeons & Dragons, or the rise of nerdy-cool. The word “geek” had not even arrived to brighten our world. Yet as I watched each movie, a proto-geeky character emerged, someone who embodied a certain early, nascent geekness.
(For all you definition hawks out there: I take a geek to be a smart person with an intense interest in something — as opposed to a nerd, who may have more trouble with social interaction. Here, this Venn diagram explains the whole thing. Come on back when you’re done.)
So without further ado, I present you with the four great classic films that we watched, along with my votes for their ur-geeky characters.
[Read the full post over at GeekMom!]
