Geeks to Mainstream: We have your culture surrounded

Well. Nominally at least. OK, more like we're all up in your culture's shit and are fiddling with it to our liking. Somewhat.
Regardless of that fairly hyperbolic opening statement and it's fairly tacky powder coat of not-exactly-unbridled optimism, I gotta say, things are looking up in the geek world.
Throughout my life, I've been an avid fan of sci-fi novels, video games, heavy metal and shlocky B-movies. It was never considered cool by society at large, and I think that is what drew me to it. It was a whole world of amazing stories and endless possibilities (how many hours in a row can I play Final Fantasy?) that it seemed no one else wanted and I was more than happy to claim. Over time, I would meet others just like me, guys and girls who would spend hours sitting around, their minds completely blown, talking about how two comic book story lines had just crossed over and what that meant for the universe (Marvel Universe, natch) at large. It was a quiet existence and perhaps we all didn't get laid quite as much as we would have liked, but we were happy. Or at least content.

Smash Cut to 2002. The towers are down, the country has a brand new bouncing baby war with another on the way and, like it or not, the terrorists were winning. They may not have been winning militarily, but on a psychological level they were kicking our ass. I think we can safely say they beat us to the whole "Shock and Awe" punch by a couple of years. Everywhere you looked there was a shoe bombing over here or anthrax junk mail over there. Botch and Fugazi broke up while Fear Factory and Phish got back together.

Truly,  terrifying times.

And then May 3rd rolled around. A certified geek director was bringing his vision of a beloved comic book property to life on the big screen. Someone at Columbia Pictures had delved into the depths of the fanboy underworld and, for his troubles, returned triumphantly wielding a Sam Raimi. The comic book movie genre at this point in time could best be summed up by those first four Batman movies: "fun but flawed" to "Ice to meet you".

What can I say about this movie that this picture doesn't already?

Oh. Yeah.

Quick geek side note: I am fully aware that The Fellowship of the Ring came out late 2001 and was directed by Peter Jackson, one of the few people who could conceivably out-geek Raimi. The reason I chose Spider Man as ground zero for the geek movement hinges mainly on the fact that, despite Tolkien's magnum opus being firmly in the fantasy genre, it's really more of a literary classic than a geek property. So take that you nerdy, dorking geeeeeeeks.

The "It takes a geek to reach a geek" strategy ended up working far better than expected. It went on to become one of the highest grossing films of all time(24th actually, just above ID4 and below Transformers: Revenge of the Schumacher-Style Eye Rape). But what had happened? Why was something that society at large had, until now, shunned running away with the box office? One answer is technology finally caught up with Stan Lee's imagination, allowing for what once would have looked like hokum to appear in a quasi-realistic light.
The other, and one that I much prefer, is that we needed out. Out of all of it. We desperately needed to TEFT ourselves away from the ongoing collective shitshow that was about to define us as a nation for the rest of the foreseeable future.  Escapism is nothing new in times of crisis (see Energy/Iran Crisis; Star Wars) but this time, when the nation turned to Hollywood for it's usual dose of Schwartzycontin, they found that we were already living in a shitty action movie. Only this time the lead was Woody Allen channeling Bruce Willis.

Box Office Poison

And went screaming back to our childhoods. Comic books, sci-fi, fantasy; these became the rising force in the battle to forget how quickly a handbasket can travel to hell. Over the course of the next few years, we saw adaptations of nearly every major (and quite a few minor) comic book character that had ever been inked.
Suddenly, like a dam breaking, all the things I had loved in my formative years burst forth into the public consciousness. Comic book and fantasy movies were headlining the box office. I mean hell, freaking Stoner Metal even made a comeback, and Stoner Metal is the dorkiest music genre ever, barring Fantasy Speed Metal! For those unfamiliar with both genres, the former is pretty much lyrically about smoking weed and wizards and witches while the latter is the same with less weed and more dragons.
Pop culture was rapidly beginning to resemble a Jack Kirby/Frank Frazetta opium dream. For the briefest of moments I and many like me, thought we were on the verge of a total coup. The mainstream had attempted it's usual co-opting of a counterculture, only to find itself being the co-optee. The difference lay in the nature of what it was attempting to exploit. Punk had yielded nothing but anger and untenable political theories. Grunge gave nothing back but nihilism second-hand clothes. The geek culture however, is built around creativity and imagination. For decades, it's adherents had labored in obscurity to craft the things that they loved and the moment Hollywood swooped down with it's Scrooge McDuck-level Money Bin, we dug ourselves in deeper than an Alabama tick.

Credit where credit's due.

Nearly a decade later and, while not exactly king of all we see, the changes we have instigated seem to have stuck. It's been said that you can get a pretty good bead on where America's head is at based on their cinema. Consider this last weekend's box office winners: The American (sleeper indy-lite), Machete (mexploitation), The Expendables (B-movie action throwback), The Last Exorcism (genre horror) and Inception (big budget indy mindfuck). True, we'll probably never experience the level of success that can be had from playing to the lowest common denominator, but then again, that bar is markedly higher than it was 20 years ago.  Don't believe me? Labor Day weekend 1990 saw Ghost at the number one spot with Presumed Innocent, Young Guns 2 and fucking Men at Work  not far behind. Notable exception? Sam Raimi's Darkman coming in second place.

You've come a long way, baby.

And now I leave you with what is, in my opinion, a perfect example of  where we've been  and where we're going.