Opinion: Why We Do This

For the past several weeks my Netflix queue has been dominated by DC’s famous Justice League animated series and its direct sequel, Justice League Unlimited. By no coincidence, my “real life” has spent the last several weeks in a state of flux. I work in politics for my “day job”, and the tail end of election season is nerve-jangling for a number of reasons. And, for me anyway, the results of that election have been fairly devastating. It would be easy at this point to play a blame game, to feel bitter, to point accusatory fingers. Easiest of all would be to shake an angry fist at the victory of those you’ve fought so hard to oppose. Aren’t we the heroes, and they the villains?

But instead of all this, most of all in the past few days my thoughts have kept returning to a line spoken by Amanda Waller in an episode of Justice League Unlimited: “Your enemies are never as bad as you think they are, and you’re never as good as you think you are.” Life goes on. That Kryptonite bomb often turns out just to be a peaceful energy generator, and even in the unlikely event that it’s all a plot by Lex Luthor to destroy you, you’re only in trouble if you let it get you down. None of us are Superman, but even if we were, we’d still have plenty of issues. Journalism isn’t exactly a stable career path these days, after all, and it costs a fortune to dry clean that cape.

Geeks are often accused of obsessing over things that manifestly do not matter. You do not really have to Google very hard to find folks on the internet who care deeply about the color shading used on Star Wars figurines, who sent hundreds of packages of nuts to CBS in a temporarily successful attempt to save the post-apocalyptic drama Jericho, or who trek to the same Civil War battlefield each July to wear a full dress uniform in the hot sun and pretend to fight a war… for the losing side. You will even find political geeks who act surprised by Mark Kirk’s Senate win in Illinois because they had calculated his victory chances at only 38 percent.

One might assume that these people (and by “these people” I mean us) are stuck in a delusion. They’re living in a fantasy world when there are such gigantic problems out here in reality. And we’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a level of escapism inherent in buying three Grant Morrison comic books every month. But I don’t think that’s why I do it, and as Tyler Durden taught me, I am not a snowflake. If anything, the things I geek out about help me deal with a reality that otherwise would overwhelm me. Rather than succumbing to anger, bitterness, and despair, I can hear the words of Amanda Waller (as performed by CCH Pounder).

When I graduated high school, the only school that would give me a full ride scholarship was Arizona State, most of the way across the country. I thought of this as an advantage, as I had hated high school with a fiery passion that allowed me to heavily identify with Buffy’s adventures in Sunnydale and wanted to get as far away as possible. What happened after I arrived was… complex, but suffice to say that I never made a single friend and stopped going to class. I lost my scholarship.

The one thing I’d had going for me was my academic prowess, I thought, and where had it gotten me. The day I called my parents and told them about all of this I remember staring in the bathroom mirror of my dorm and wanting to scream, to punch myself in the face, really not knowing what I wanted to do. Then I went back to my room and watched a new episode of Angel called “Underneath”. It’s not particularly well known as a classic or anything, and it didn’t particularly relate to my situation, but afterwards, somehow, I was ready to get back on my feet and build my life back up again.

I remember in particular one scene where a very depressed Wesley gives this reply when asked to tell a joke: “Two men walk into a bar. The first man orders a scotch and soda. The second man remembers something he’d forgotten, and it doubles him over with pain. He falls to the floor shaking…. and then through the floor and into the Earth. He looks back up at the first man, but he doesn’t call out to him. They’re not that close.” I applied for a bunch of student loans and managed a transfer to a small school within driving distance of my parents’ house. And I finally figured out how to make my own life something I wanted to live in.

The world has its moments of awfulness, and perhaps, as on the Discworld, the Gods here deserve be not so much worshiped as blamed. And I don’t want to escape from that. I want to deal with it. And because of how my brain works, I have a feeling that comic books and Doctor Who are going to be just as important to that “dealing” process as my resume-writing  and networking skills. It may not be logical, but it’s why I do this.

About Dan

Dan Joslyn grew up in Ohio but now lives in Las Vegas, NV with his lovely ginger girlfriend, Tiarra, where he works as an office monkey. He enjoys reviewing movies and television for the site, and over-analyzing such things. He may be the Chosen One… but he probably isn’t.

• View all posts by Dan →
• Blog