September 18th, 2006
Welcome to week two of "Ask The A.V. Club," a weekly column in which the pop-culture experts at The A.V. Club attempt to answer your questions. Thanks for all your questions last week. Some of them stumped us, so we're going to throw them out to the readers at the end in a section we call "Stumped." Meanwhile, let's get to the non-stumpy questions. We'll start off with one on a philosophical bent:
How Geeky Is Too Geeky?
Essentially, my question revolves around what you guys think is an acceptable level of displaying pop-culture knowledge. Quick story: I was recently up at a cottage with a bunch of pals, and on the way to a fire pit, a bunch of people fell into this fairly big gopher hole, resulting in scraped knees and spilled beers. Later, I jokingly made reference to it as "The Pit Of Sarlak," to which a friend replied, "I'm so ashamed I get that reference." So what's your opinion? At what point do you cross the line into Comic Book Guy territory? I realize that it's a little different when you make a fairly geeky reference like Star Wars anyway (and is it even correct? Is it Sarlak or Sarnak?) But what's the acceptability on busting out the references?
The Cure Of Keon
Here, we're going to turn things over to A.V. Club associate editor Tasha Robinson, our token geek, whose philosophy on the entire subject may itself be too geeky:
Technically, Keon, it's "the pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlaac." (Isn't the Internet useful? Though how exactly is a fangy hole in the ground "all-powerful"?) Admittedly, knowing that off the top of your head would make you pretty geeky.
But too geeky? Well, who's to say? A hardcore Star Wars fan is going to give you a different answer on that than someone who saw that movie once when it came out, and only vaguely recollects that it takes place in space and involves some dudes with laser swords or something. "Geeky" is easy to determine—anyone who has a lot of dedicated interest or specialized knowledge in a given area (sports, computers, MMORPGs, collectible fantasy-sword reproductions, Star Wars monsters) can be considered a geek, particularly if they have more knowledge of that area than you personally care to have. But "too geeky" is an entirely subjective question.
To my mind, the bright line between "geeky" and "too geeky" is mostly determined by two things: context and attitude. Context is all about being aware of your environment: Chanting off 20 numbers from the Fibonacci sequence is acceptable at math camp, too geeky at band camp. Knowing whether a ghoul is tougher than a ghast is useful if you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, but way too geeky if you're trying to pick someone up in a bar. Being able to recite entire scenes from Wall Street is great in-group male-bonding fun if you happen to be a day-trader in The Boiler Room, but walking around doing it at an art-gallery opening will just get you funny looks. Basically, you aren't too geeky until you're geeky in an inappropriate situation, especially if you're proudly displaying your specialized knowledge in front of people who think it's a badge of shame rather than honor.
Which is where your attitude comes in. When do you cross the line into Comic Book Guy territory? When you start acting like the Comic Book Guy, treating people with contempt because they don't get your references. "That thing's as deep as the Sarlacc Pit!" isn't too geeky, as long as it amuses you and your friends. "The Sarlacc Pit? Duh! Star Wars? A little movie called Return Of The Jedi? Maybe you saw it? Hell-ooo!" is too geeky for any crowd, and by any standard.
And then there's your own comfort level, which only you can determine. If making a Star Wars reference makes you feel so unclean that you need to seek A.V. Club counseling, maybe that's just too geeky for you, and you should leave that sort of thing to the professionals from now on. But if you're only feeling creeped-out about it because your friend called you on it, then you should probably just can the Sarlaac-pit allusions around him.
The Melody Lingers On
I remember watching MTV over the summer sometime around 1990 (give or take three to five years) and seeing some fairly avant-garde video (people wearing weird costumes on a weird landscape) for an instrumental song. It wasn't by any group I'd heard of (not Enigma or Dave Stewart or anything—didn't sound like them at all). Any clues?
TB
For this answer we turn to Donna Bowman, who used your few details to battle through decades of haze for an answer:
While that's a pretty vague description, we're willing to bet that your mystery video is "Close (To The Edit)" by The Art Of Noise. This mid-'80s artifact was in heavy rotation not only on MTV, but on network video shows like "Friday Night Videos" and on piddly UHF stations that set themselves up as non-cable MTV alternatives. If you've seen it, you probably remember it. A waifish little girl, made up like an anorexic Cyndi Lauper, roams spastically around industrial settings beating on musical instruments—a violin, a piano, a double bass, a bass saxophone. She calls over three black-suited, goggled, wild-haired men wielding power tools, and they set about dismantling the instruments to a metallic andante beat. At one point, one of the men intones poetry while holding a sausage, and a dachshund joins the demolition team. Is this it?
Probably the most memorable characteristic of the video is the humans' weirdly choppy movements. The film appears to be slightly undercranked, speeding up the action. At the same time, the actors have been encouraged to move slowly except when punctuating the beat or rushing in and out of the frame. The result is a combination of fluid, apparently normal-speed movement with preternaturally accurate, lightning-fast gestures pounding out the backbeat.
Other than this iconic video, The Art Of Noise is probably best known for a few popular remixes and deconstructions of TV themes like "Peter Gunn" and "Dragnet," and for being the band behind Tom Jones on his hit remake of Prince's "Kiss." There's a reason they feel so very '80s; they were members of Trevor Horn's team of studio musicians. So when you hear that metal-on-metal, full-spectrum screech on every other beat of "Close (To The Edit)," think of the impossibly rich synthesized sound of Asia and Yes circa 90125—same pedigree, slightly more avant-garde (though undeniably pop-friendly) direction.
- Comments