COLUMN: Movie fans should hit the books
For the most part, I love questions. I firmly believe that there are no dumb questions, only dumb people.
These dumb people ask questions like “Who would win in a fight, a pirate or a ninja?” and “How are geeks different from the rest of society?” For the sake of simplicity I’ll only answer the latter.
We’re not a normal group of people, us geeks. Obvious cracks about social status and personal hygiene aside, we aren’t from the same mold as most people for a thousand different reasons.
For example (actually the only example I could come up with after my previous eliminations) as a generally rule, we geeks are not complainers. It’s just not in our blood.
When we realized that we hadn’t been to the moon yet, we didn’t write letters to the editor whining about it. We put a man on the moon.
When we got sick of Internet Explorer allowing every pop up to interrupt our Web usage with offers of sexually enhancing drugs, the addresses of hot, lonely mothers and low mortgage rates, we didn’t cry to our own mothers about it. We wrote Firefox.
And mark my words, when we see the endless forces of the undead marching toward us we won’t sit around talking about our feelings and wondering about the zombies’ feelings. We’ll be blasting and smacking our way to our own new Utopia.
That’s why now that a new menace (not a phantom one, thank goodness) has risen over the land, I for one will not sit on the side lines playing with my X-Men action figures. I will rise up. I will fight the good fight. I will preach the word!
The word I’m talking about is about Mr. Douglas Adams. For those of you who think the Fantastic Four is referring to the four food groups, Adams is the man behind the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” five-part trilogy (don’t ask, I don’t know).
People out there may be wondering why I chose to tackle this issue with so many others of greater importance out there like recent lack of decent toy surprises in our cereal boxes or the fact that most animals that start with a “P” are endangered (pandas, pumas, poltergeists etc).
The reason is because with the new movie due out I fear that people will turn to watching the movies in place of reading the books. That kind of shenanigans didn’t fly with your sixth grade teacher and it sure won’t fly with me.
I’ve talked to too many people who think since they’ve watched “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter” it means they don’t need to read the book.
Can you imagine if we just stopped reading Spiderman because we had seen the movie? Life would have no meaning.
Watching the movie is a great way to be introduced to a world and its characters but you can’t expect to get as much out of something that only takes you around one-tenth of the time to get through as the books would. For those of you thinking you’re OK because “Return of the King” was long enough, you should really go at least look at the books.
This is a very personal issue for me because a few years from now, when “The Collected Geek Beat” is turned into a major motion picture staring Matthew Broderick as yours truly, I’m going to still want people to read the original version. The version that I pour my soul into. The version that is more convenient for use in the bathroom which, judging by the page I tend to find left turned open to my picture, is where most of you are probably reading this right now.
It’s disgusting, but I can live with it.
Geek on
Steve Shinney is a junior in computer science and is currently campaigning to have the New Jedi Order books added to his English class reading list. Comments can be sent to steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.