Warning: this post contains links to third party blogs, the contents of which I cannot guarantee are suitable for all audiences.
I have an admission to make - I was a geek long before it was cool to be a geek. Here's my badge. It's okay though, really, my wife loves me and supports me, and I have found meaningful employment, so it's not so bad. I have friends, because I can make their home wireless networks not only work, I can also deny their neighbours free Internet access.
An indicator of my degree of geekiness, on a scale of one to ten, with one being "high school sports captain" and ten being Sheldon Cooper, is about "Dick Smith in his dorky stage" (with absolute respect and kudos to our champion of geekery, Lord Richard).
As a product of the flowers and beads generation, I have a fascination with posters, and their cultural significance. This may be because I grew up with a very striking matador poster on my wall, similar to this one (click it for the source).
These were popular and fashionable when I was a kid, as were velociraptors and other Cretaceous lifeforms.
As the poorest kid in town (we lived in a hole in the road), and having no concept that such a poster would become so politically incorrect, I grew to love this poster because it was a window into an alien world, and it was vivid, and bright and charming, although possibly not to el torro.
I grew up to become a scientist, all very respectable and socially acceptable, and I have learned to hide my stronger geek tendencies from the public eye. I do have a bipedal robot hiding in my study, and my wife and I keep both wet and dry Roombas (to the cat's terror, and my delight), but in the main I can fake a reasonable 'normal world' conversation over dinner.
But I have never lost my fascination for posters and what they represent. We collect fine art - because that's smart and acceptable and normal - but what I'd really like is a four-foot framed print of the characters from the DC universe. You know the one I mean! I've resisted the urge to collect posters, but now that I'm middle-aged I'm permitted to do a lot of stuff just because I want to.
As I look back I see a progression of posters even during my life time, and it goes a little like this: posters that are now considered genuinely retro > 'reinvented' retro posters > current geek culture posters > pastiche posters. Allow me to illustrate.
Genuinely retro posters
This will 'frame' my generation a little better than my hilarious reference to dinosaurs. I grew up with the following as the dominant social force - my church pastors warned that this was the beginning of the end, sociologists pondered what it all meant, and me... well, I spent many, many hours in movie cinemas (watching the fillum, as the old folks would say) because my folks owned a greengrocer and needed somewhere to put me while they were purchasing at the market. I digress, here we go:
Once again, click the thumbnails for the source(s).
Familiar to anyone? These posters are now being reprinted in the millions (well, in the 'tens', at least) as genuine retro posters. I feel old, but then I remember my mother rode a horse to school, and feel better. And school only went to Year 9 then, so progress, right? Now, I are a scientist!
'Reinvented' retro posters
I'm fascinated by the use of 'reinvented' retro posters, which I guess are really a form of pastiche however for the sake of padding my post out a little and showing a linear progression of more than two points, I categorise on their own. As a founding member of the The Big Bang Theory cult, I can tell you far too much about the details in the sets of this fine CBS docu-drama, and I can attest to Penny's status as an empowered postmodern feminine goddess (ahem).
On the walls of Leonard and Sheldon's apartment are two posters that are now known to true geeks as iconic representations (is that a tautology?) of the highest level of geekery, observe:
(Yes, yes, click the image for the source - you're quite passionate about this, you know?)
The first is - obviously - Captain Future, "Wizard of Science", a reinvention of a TV series from the 1940s and '50s, and the second is a reinvented product ad from the 1930s for Petre Devos Beer (incidentally, that poster has spawned it's own font, of the same name, look it up!).
So, while it's strictly pastiche, it's retro reinvention... I'm sticking to that. Here's another example of the old made new, and returning to Empire vs Republic for a moment:
(Source, click, yeah yeah)
This is "Beat the Empire with a Red Squadron (Vintage Edition)" by Eozen, a talented postmodern artist. This is definitely pastiche, and certainly a mashup of genres, but it's a great example of 'reinvented' retro.
Geek culture posters
And now closer to home. Current geek culture, aimed squarely at geeks. If I need to explain the following posters, I'm afraid you're simply not the target audience. But take it from me, the target audience now has spending power and a greater willingness to express our individuality:
Pastiche posters
A genre of posters I'm totally captivated (like, totally) with is mashups, or pastiche, but in the geek world the mashups are often from two very tightly defined niches, such that if you're not fully aware of both worlds, the reference is lost, and somehow, that's just okay too. Take, for example, People's Exhibit A:
This is a mashup between Calvin and Hobbes, and Firefly - and it's immediately obvious that unless you are familiar with both 'world's, the humour is lost. Kind of an 'in joke' among geeks, only this time the last-laughers who didn't get it are non-geeks! Cool, huh?
And lastly, something a little harder to classify, but certainly pastiche at multiple levels. I give you Nuka-Cola:
This little beauty is pastiche2 (yes, that's right, pastiche squared, wild ones!), as it is pastiche not only on its obvious play on a certain world-favourite beverage, but because Nuka-Cola exists in an online world that is itself pastiche of genres that represents a post-apocalyptic world that centres around the refreshing ale that will have you glowing in the dark in no time.
Thanks for journeying with me to this point, I know those of us from the grandfather era tend to ramble a little. Now, let's see how much Moodle* can mess with my, like, links, and stuff, innit.
* Moodle is the university Learning Management System, it's notorious for messing up formatting of long posts and not allowing enough time for edits
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