I have not sat behind the helm of teaching for very long but I already have a few tricks up my sleeve. One of them is that I assign some of my favorite readings at the end of the semester so as to counter the downtrodden and tepid spirit and mood (not to mention attention) of my students, which drops precipitously with each passing day. Let’s face it post Thanksgiving, we are all a little tired and I try to find the readings, which uplift, intrigue, and challenge cherished assumptions about marriage and sex.
So far it seems to pay off and I often can tell because the conversational pitch and excitement in class is high and the student writings are good, great, even exceptional, which, again, is hard to produce/induce this late in the semester. Readers of this blog would probably be most interested in one of these lively readings, Ben Nugent’s American Nerd (and it might be interesting to hear how the European Nerd story would diverge or converge with this one).
One of my students, an audio geek and Free Culture President/Free Software junkie, by the name of John Randall produced a very nice little response (not research) paper on the Nugent reading as well as a short piece by Sarah Seltzer from Bitch Magazine
The(Girl) Geek Stands Alone (and thanks to Joe> for cluing me into this piece). Seltzer piece basically argues, in her own words, the following:
Imagine this scene from a comedy: a group of female friends sit around smoking a bowl and working on the Wikipedia page for Lord of the Rings. Their fashion sense is decidedly iconoclastic and several sport thick-rimmed glasses. Without a trace of self-consciousness, they have a hilariously ribald discussion on the relative traits of elves and orcs.
Awesome as it is, you’ll never see this scene onscreen. No mainstream movie or TV series would dare group so many female nerds together, or celebrate them so unabashedly
So John’s whole response paper is here and here is the pdf. In the paper, he makes a number of excellent points but what I loved most about it was his very geeky move at the end of the paper to prove Sarah (somewhat wrong) by listing all the girl geeks that do and have appeared in mainstream (and not-so mainstream) entertainment venues/shows, etc. They are as follows and in his own words:
I will now showcase my own geekiness through my knowledge of geeky female characters. Why? Because I can. But also because I want to demonstrate that if you look hard enough for representations of female geekyiness in pop culture, you will find plenty. Moreover, if you pick the right ones, you can make them support your argument about gender relations, whatever that argument might be.
Some of these charters and personalities are hardly gendered, some are hyper-sexual. Some are incredibly attractive but completely asexual. Some undergo a transformation into/out of geekiness, while others to not. Some are powerful, while some are powerless. Some (most?) celebrate their geekiness, others are tortured by it. They are all geeks– take your pick:
Aeon Flux, a sexy geek who’s technological gadgets give her super powers (Comic drawings then Charlize TheronAeon Flux)
Wonder Woman, attractive pilot of an invisible plane
Lara Croft, a female Indiana Jones in short shorts, wielding guns and cracking computer codes (CGI and then Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider)
She-Ra, who was way smarter than He-Man (Masters of the Universe cartoons)
Gadget Hackwrench, beautiful chipmonk technician for Chip and Dale (Rescue Rangers cartoon)
Velma, featuring eyeglasses, awkwardness and brains (Scooby Doo),
Hermonie Granger, a geek who is temporarily rejected because she is a geek, remains a geek, and finds love and happiness (Harry Potter)
Barbarella, who, through comic strips and a 1968 film, helped introduce science fiction and sex to young women (Barbarella)
La Femme Nikita, a skillful, savvy, and very feminine girl who doubles as a covert spy
Kate Libby, aka ‘Acid Burn’, uber-sexualized hacker (played by Angelina Jolie in Hackers)
Kathryn Janeway, smart and powerful captain of the USS Voyager (Star Trek Voyager)
Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica),
Dana Scully, FBI agent with encyclopedic media knowledge. The bizzare subtex of non-realized sexual tension was part of the magic The X-Files.
Willow Rosenberg, geeky sidekick turned geeky supervillian (Alyson Hannigan in buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Michelle Flaherty, hyper-sexual band geek (Alyson Hannigan in American Pie series)
Dr Ellie Sattler, heroniene scientist (Jurrasic Park)
Ellie, scientis hero (played by both Jenna Malone and Jodi Foster in Carl Sagan’s Contact)
Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo in Welcome to the Dollhouse
Enid and Rebecca (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johanson in Ghost World)
just about every charater ever played by Jenna Malone (Donie Darko, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The United States of Leland, Saved!, etc)
half of the charaters played within the last decade by Jodi Foster (Panic Room, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Flightplan, The Addams Family
half of the charaters played by Christina Ricci (Mermaids, The Addams Family, Little Red Riding Hood, The Ice Storm, Buffalo ’66, Prozac Nation, Pumpkin, Speed Racer)
half of the characters played by Natalie Portman (The Professional, Mars Attacks!, Star Wars, V for Vendette, The Darjeeling Limited, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Garden State)
Molly Ringwald. characters played by Molly Ringwald.
Rock musician Ani DiFranco and geeky Riot Grrls everywhere.
Sarah Vowell, NPR commentator celebrating her geeky life. Voiceover for geeky cartoon characters.
Rachel Maddow, for being Rachel Maddow.
First, awesome list, though he forgot a few (like one of my favorites, Bionic Woman and a more recent one, Juno) and it is nice to have it in one compact place. But, I have to say, I still agree to some degree with Sarah Setlzer, though I also agree with John. On the one hand there are representations and it is as important just to strut this stuff publicly as it is to claim that there is not enough female geeky representations in mainstream media. This is what John has done quite nicely.
One the other hand, as he himself says ” if you look hard enough for representations of female geekyiness in pop culture, you will find plenty.” I think those words, “if you look hard enough” also speaks volumes of the continued disparity that does exist. One should not have to look “hard,” and the only blockbusters, so to speak, which feature a female geek, is Tomb Raider, which for being so hyper-sexualized is not so geeky to me, no matter how good she is with the gadgets.
That said, what I find so important, and have emphasized in different contexts, is the need for what I think of simultaneous positive and negative form of critique, the former being about pointing to already exisitng examples to get people jazzed and excited and to put things in perspective. The later form of critique, negative critique, identifies a lack, a void to fill, just the type of excellent commentary in the Seltzer piece…
But now for the most important question, who has John overlooked?
Your student’s list is a good one, and I can’t say he’s missing any particular characters on the list… but I can’t help but feeling that instead of refuting the Ms. Seltzer’s point, his list proves it. The issue isn’t “are there girl geeks?”, but rather that “[n]o mainstream movie or TV series would dare group so many female nerds together, or celebrate them so unabashedly.”
Each of the geeks in the example list are solitary individuals, either working on their own or with a group of men (or male chipmunks). The point is that you seek geek males traveling in packs all the time, but where are the groupings of geek females? Where are the girls playing D&D together, or “hacking the mainframe”? Why is it that geek girls can only exist as loners or embedded into a male dominated group?
Comment by probonogeek — December 7, 2008 @ 11:01 am
Gadget was a mouse, not a chipmunk!
Comment by Jo Shields — December 7, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
I would say that the glaring omission is every reoccurring female character in both the Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis series with the exception of Teyla Emmagen (Rachel Luttrell’s character) and, in later SG-1 years, Vala (Claudia Black). Dr./Colonel Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) is regarded throughout both series to be the most intelligent person in two galaxies. Jewel Staite plays Dr. Jennifer Keller in later Stargate Atlantis episodes and, if I recall correctly, she played the head engineer on Firefly…uhh, Kaylee was her character’s name.
I have two problems with his argument in addition to the ones already mentioned.
1) I don’t know how many people consider these sorts of things to be mainstream culture. Sure, they may have been on broadcast television but they suffer from social stigmatization and, I would argue largely rightfully so in the most part. I think scifi, especially considering its politics and character interaction, is extremely ridiculous. I just happen to like space ships. It’s social position is nothing like that of professional or NCAA sports or so-called reality shows.
2) These are fantastical representations of fantastical things. None of these people are real or correlaries to real people, including the women. So, it really should tell you something that these representations only exist in the most fantastical of fantasy.
I could be very wrong on point 2 though. Maybe there are really smart women on the multitude of crime/cop drama related shows. I don’t know. I’ve never seen any of them. Then again, even if there are, maybe that sort of thing gets balanced out by stuff like Desperate Housewives (once again, I’m guessing here as I’ve never seen the show, only the commercials they run during football which suggest that these women have more dollars than sense). Also, remember Beauty and the Geek? Is that still on?
What’s up with that Big Bang Theory sitcom? I know the guys are supposed to be science geeks. Are the women portrayed as brainless meat or just not super geeky?
Comment by Richard Edward Horner — December 7, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
[...] Vote Nerds, Geeks, and Nerd/Geek Grrrls [...]
Pingback by half orc | Digg hot tags — December 7, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
One glaring omission is Lisa Simpson. Others that come to mind are, Trinity and others from The Matrix, Sandra Bullock’s character in The Net and Nicky (played by Julia Stiles) from the Bourne movies.
Comment by Andy Price — December 7, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
Then there is Inspector Gadget’s daughter Penny who was the real smarty pants.
And more comments soon.
Comment by Biella — December 7, 2008 @ 1:24 pm
The one person laboratory staff: Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) in NCIS comes to mind…
Comment by Åke — December 7, 2008 @ 1:46 pm
Also:
Chloe O’Brian from 24
Aspergers hacker / hero
Comment by John Randall — December 7, 2008 @ 1:56 pm
@probonogeek
Of all of Sarah Seltzer’s arguments, this is one that I actually agree with. It is rare to see more than one ‘girl geek’ at a time in works of fiction.
I wonder how much of this is are imitating life and how much is life imitating art… Has anyone has done any research on the social mapping of geeks/nerds?
Comment by John Randall — December 7, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Well to take my life as an example, I was nerd for sure and had nerd friends, quite a handful of them, so yes, we do roam in packs
Biella
Comment by Biella — December 7, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
[...] Vote Nerds, Geeks, and Nerd/Geek Grrrls [...]
Pingback by orcs and elves | Digg hot tags — December 7, 2008 @ 2:46 pm
I think I have to take issue with the definition of Geek used by Randall; his list of fictional geek girls seems to be composed largely using ‘above-average intelligence’ as the main criterium.
While I appreciate that the meaning of the label ‘geek’ seems to be in a state of flux in American culture, and that my own thinking on the matter isn’t particularly well-informed, I’d like to take a stab at refining the definition to ‘someone who is not conventionally successful, or at least not that interested in (pursuing) the conventional definition of success’.
Let me also say at the outset that I don’t really know that many geek girls; to be honest, I’ve never encountered a group of them.
That, to me, seems to isolate the drive that causes a high-school student to spend his time programming computer software until early in the morning, that causes college students to re-enact medieval battles in silly outfits, that causes the girls wearing horn-rimmed glasses in Sarah Seltzer’s example to amuse themselves editing wikipedia, all at the expense of activities that, conceivably, might improve their social standing and/or reproductive success.
By which I don’t mean that geeks are anti-social asexual failures, but ‘geekiness’ as an identity, to me, is very much defined by playing the game by one’s own rules.
Looking again at Randall’s list with the new criteria, it becomes clear that many of the fictional characters, being products of, ahem, a very male fantasy, satisfy a very narrow and conformist definition of success.
Which is where we get to the point made by probonogeek; few of these fictional characters have geek-girl friends. In fact, very few of them have girl friends, period. From Kate Libby to Dr. Ellie Arroway, from Hermione Granger to Lara Croft, they all seem to be loners, or at least appear to prefer friendships with men to friendships with women.
Some of the geek girls I’ve known were (physically) beautiful, some of them seemed to relate very well to men, but none of them had an all-male circle of friends.
While the portrayal of geek men in fiction can often be almost painfully accurate and recognisable, I get the impression that the depiction of geek girls leaves more than a little to be desired. Maybe geek girls and guys alike should stop looking for recognition in fiction.
Comment by michiel — December 7, 2008 @ 3:22 pm
The link entitled “uplift” points to a “download pdf” image on the Prickly Paradigm website. I visited the site’s catalog and found a number of their titles to be available in PDF form, so I’m not sure which one the link was supposed to point to.
I very much enjoyed The Trouble with Normal, so I suspect that I might be interested in whichever link this points to as well. Help!
Comment by Matt Kraai — December 7, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
Matt, it Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. It is one of my favorite books of all time. So funny, so accessible and so thought provoking. I can’t recommend it enough. I was hoping to post a few thoughts about it, but I get so swamped just reading and grading and all that other jazz. You can get it here and I will fix the link:
http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm14.pdf
Comment by Biella — December 7, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
John forgets one very important girl geek – Anne Hathaway’s character in Princess Diaries. She turns beautiful (on the outside!) but still stays a geek, and her best friend is another girl.
Comment by Aditi — December 7, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
Officer Lenina Huxley — Sandra Bullock as a history nerd and student of old slang in “Demolition Man.”
Comment by Don Marti — December 7, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
Missing from the list:
Penelope Garcia, Linux wielding IT geek for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit in the show Criminal Minds.
Criminal Minds at Wikipedia
Maggie Chascarrillo, professional super-science mechanic and comic book geek from the criminally under-read Love and Rockets comics.
——
Maggie is the only character I can think of that actually has a circle of geeky friends she spends time with. Her friends Penny and Angel are also comic book geeks and wannabe super heroes. Her on again off again lover, Hopey is more of a terror then a geek, but can also be seen reading comics in the pages of the comic book. Her friend Daffy becomes a scientist in the pages of the comic as well.
Unfortunately, though Love and Rockets has won Eisner Awards and is lauded by critics it remains a little known underground comic.
Comment by Andrew — December 8, 2008 @ 7:02 am
Some more items for the list (yes, they’re hard to find):
In the category of “geek girl with friends in film”:
Roxanne
Don’t Tell Her it’s Me
Say Anything
In comics, there’s Chynna Clugston-Major’s series “Blue
Monday”.
In music, there’s Rasputina (the heavy metal cellists equivalent of They Might Be Giants).
And, lifting the “with friends” restriction, there’s Ed in Cowboy Bebop.
In books, it’s much easier: c.f. Laura J. Mixon’s cyberpunk novels (Glass Houses, Proxies, etc.), Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series, Vonda MyIntyre’s Starfarers series, Corey Doctorow’s Little Brother, …
Comment by persky — December 8, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
[...] many (great) additions/clarifications have been made the Geek Girl list in the comments about geek representations in mainstream media. Two of the most important additions/comments were 1) “One glaring omission is Lisa [...]
Pingback by Interprete » Geek girl list — December 9, 2008 @ 8:22 pm
While it is certainly the case that there might: MAINSTREAM Culture vs. mainstream culture
vs. less mainstream vs. down right underground, below the radar culture, it does seem that, especially in the last ten year, geekiness has invaded MAINSTREAM culture to some degree. From Harry Potter to the Lord of the Rings, to the fact that geek is now cool (maybe too cool), the geek figure is not as marginal as when the nerd figure was splatted all over network television. In fact, the very transition from nerd to geek (sadly not covered in the Nugent book) signals the positive revaluation of the nerd/the geek etc and I think it has a more visible, positive value than ever before.
Richard also makes the point that
While it is true that most representation are fantastical (though not all are, which is why I think I liked Juno so much. She was geeky but pretty realistic), I still think the fantastical matters, both in representing the realm of the possible and forging a path for the possible. That is, it does not surprise me that the great explosion of stand-alone Superwomen heroes (Wonder Women, the Bionic Woman) came after the Second Wave of feminism. It in fact helped reflect the changes that this wave helped usher in. And while Wonder Woman is not very realistic, I do see her as a sign of the times and it helps reflect the fact that major changes were underway.
Comment by Biella — December 9, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
Oh, and Penny is Inspector Gadget’s niece, not daughter.
Someone here spent too much time watching cartoons as a child.
Comment by Jo Shields — December 10, 2008 @ 2:24 am
I didn’t read Daria and her painter’s friend. I think they are geek girls and main caracters of this cartoon.
Comment by David — December 10, 2008 @ 6:50 am
From Dan Pritikin via Facebook:
Sarah Gilbert’s character in Rosanne [Darlene Conner] and in High Fidelity [Anaugh].
Comment by John Randall — December 10, 2008 @ 9:18 am
Comment by Phoebe North — December 10, 2008 @ 11:30 am
Agh, didn’t mean to put that all in a quote box. I fail xhtml.
Comment by Phoebe North — December 10, 2008 @ 11:31 am
Seltzer, rather. And that shouldn’t have all been in a quote box. Apparently I fail xhtml.
Comment by Phoebe North — December 10, 2008 @ 11:34 am
I may be misunderstanding the operative use of the work “geek” here, but this seems more like a list of women that male geeks might be into, rather than a list of female geeks. Many of these women are simply professionals, and Wonder Woman and Starbuck in particular fall more clearly into the “jock” category (which would seem to be at odds with the “geek” classification). There are some standouts that fit the mold very well, though–Willow Rosenberg and Hermione Granger are both alienated and empowered by their esoteric knowledge and skills, too outsider to be mainstream professionals, and avoiding being simple objects of desire. Again, apologies if my definition of “geek” is too narrow for this discussion.
Comment by Mr. Pony — December 10, 2008 @ 5:21 pm
Dr. Susan Calvin, in Isaac Asimov’s Robot series.
Comment by Abhishek Dasgupta — December 10, 2008 @ 6:30 pm
[...] of the transformation of the negative nerd into the positive geek (oh and the list keeps the list of girl geeks growing ), signaling the spread of the computer into mainstream [...]
Pingback by Interprete » The Only Winning Move is Not To Play — December 10, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
There are lots of nice geeky girls in comics also. For instance almost all female characters in the Tank Girl comics (Tank Girl herself, Jet Girl, Sub Girl … all of whom fly/drive/pilot highly customised vehicles of some sort which they built/customised/maintain themselves.)
Comment by Meike Reichle — December 11, 2008 @ 5:03 am
Daria’s painter friend is Jane.
There are also lots of Star Trek characters that could be on that list, including (in no particular order) Nyota (U)penda, B’elanna Torres, Beverly Crusher, Ro Laren, Kira Nerys, Jadzia and Ezri Dax, Leah Brahms, Karen Farris, Ishka, Keiko O’Brien, Melora Pazlar, Katherine Pulaski, Saavik, Robin Lefler, Carol Marcus, and many more (especially minor characters or characters who only appear in a single episode). (And, yes, I did look through a character list on Wikipedia, although many of the characters I listed are among my favorites from the various shows.)
Comment by Claire — December 14, 2008 @ 11:08 pm
And, being reminded of Real Genius by another of Biella’s articles, we also have Jordan Cochrane, who even has some of the issues male geeks tend to be associated with.
Comment by Claire — December 14, 2008 @ 11:15 pm
I have to agree with michiel and Mr. Pony that many of the characters on the list are not geeks, but rather women that a geek would want. Author’s intent was to create an attractive character and being smart makes her more attractive or even attractive just because of it. And while I think it’s OK, it does not make the characters geeks.
Second, many of the atrworks mentioned do not celebrate the geekiness of the characters, but quite contrary. In many of the stories the heroine “gets a life” and stops being a geek, so those don’t count.
Only stories where romance or family affairs are not involved or the geekiness positively affects them really celebrate the geekiness of the heroine. That reduces the list quite some, though some items still stand. I would pick Ellie in Contact and Hermione in Harry Potter as examples.
Note, that even these don’t have any geek girl friends and in fact there are not many other women characters at all, which seems to suggest geekiness in women is percieved as something rare by the authors.
I would like to make one more comment. Many of the examples presented are sci-fi. While being quite mainstream nowadays, it’s somewhat targeted at geeks and also the setting calls for smart characters, so more geek characters, both male and female, is expected there. After all, space ship with dumb crew would not get anywhere. I however can’t decide, whether increasing number of heroines — compare that women were limited to assistants in miniskirts in first Star Trek series with Star Trek Voyager basically dominated by three geek women (Cpt. Janeway, Seven of Nine and B’Elana Tores — is a result of change in author’s desires (that more women be involved in advanced undertakings, which would be great) or geneder correctness.
Comment by Jan Hudec — December 15, 2008 @ 11:47 am
I think Neal Stephenson has had several good female geeks — Juanita, from Snow Crash, also YT, and Eliza in the Baroque Cycle.
Comment by Kat — December 17, 2008 @ 2:26 am
As #22 mentioned, the Daria cartoon depicts two geeky girls as the main characters with a lot of personality and brain. I learn about this show today thanks to The coilhouse, and you can watch them online in youtube.
Comment by Tincho — December 18, 2008 @ 9:24 am
Lex Murphy, the granddaughter from Jurassic Park. She was able use her mad skill to restore the Park’s computer systems so they could call for help (even if the line “This is Unix! I know this!” was pretty bad… actually, it was pretty geeky)
Comment by pleia2 — December 18, 2008 @ 9:36 am
@pleia2 The 3D file browser that Lex is using when she says “This is Unix! I know this!” is fsn, which really did ship with some SGI Irix systems (we used to play with it on our Indigos in grad school). It looks like SGI’s finally taken the fsn link down from their “Serious Fun” page, but here’s a description:
http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/movies/jpark.php
Comment by persky — December 21, 2008 @ 4:20 pm
Olive in Little Miss Sunshine is one that i just thought of
Comment by Biella — April 21, 2010 @ 9:40 am