The Ultimate Pop Culture Geeks – Part one

It’s time to really get your geek on! In case you ever wondered who are the greatest geeks from the worlds of fashion, film, music and TV look no further because we have gathered them all together in our Ultimate Pop Culture Geeks List! From Chloe Sevigny and Jarvis Cocker to Kanye West, Lisa Simpson and Erol Alkan - you will love this list. Then Kevin Braddock has written a slamdunk of an article (which makes him a bit of a geek too actually) detailing how the geeks have come out of the closet over the last four decades taking us up to where we are today, which is basically that it’s a nerd’s world – we just live in it.

The importance of the geek’s role in pop culture cannot be underestimated. Infamous fictional geek characters from the worlds of TV and film have always been around us as we have grown up. In the late eighties and nineties everyone knew that Clark Kent was the superhuman geek who could never tell Louis how he really felt or that Anthony Michael Hall would always play the awkward scrawny geek in films such as The Breakfast Club and that Carlton Banks was the unlucky-in-love nerd who would never be as cool as his cousin Wil - who was of course The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And so geeks pervaded the popular consciousness but were always portrayed as characters that were somehow a tad pitiful: they were unlucky, they were insecure, they didn’t ever get laid or get taken seriously by their peers. They were losers in the big game called life.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the stereo-typing of geeks stopped, but suddenly things definitely started to change. There were still geeks around, sure, major major geeks, but somehow public opinion was shifting. Instead of derision and pity, the public began to see geeks with a touch of admiration. Look at the Lisa Simpson character - she is a major nerd yet she is undeniably great and cool. Her deadpan handling of her dysfunctional family is hilarious. Surely her character was drawn for all those real-life geeky kids, who escape difficult home lives by diving into their books. Or perhaps it was confident and intelligent actress Chloe Sevigny, who has always worn what the damn hell she pleases - even if it has been sitting in the back of her grandmother’s closet for 50 years? No matter, suddenly that was the height of cool. Or was it Daft Punk? - Two music wizkids so nerdy they never appear without their robot heads. The hipsters roared with appreciation and made them superstars. Or was it Tarantino, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure film genres such as slasher horror and kung fu? The public stampeded to the cinemas and made them become blockbuster hits.

Who knows when we all got so geeky, but you only have to see how new films such as Juno handle the role of the geek so wonderfully (the Paulie character is basically the hero of the film) to realise that the geek has changed beyond all recognition from his eighties guise. Here is our list of the Ultimate Pop Culture Geeks (25 of them in no specific order) to help you see just how the geek has transformed. All Hail the Geek!

Steve Urkel

Steve Urkel is the god of nerd-style: high-water trousers yanked just a little too far up his butt, bright braces clashing with buttoned up shirts in glaring colours and multi-coloured cardigans and then, of course, the must-have windscreen-style glasses. This may now be the height of style and many a trend conscious fellow could glean fashion tips from Urkel, but remember that it was his embodiment of complete ridiculousness that became the main draw of the 1980s-1990s sitcom Family Matters. VP

Richie Hawtin

He might have a reputation for being a blonde-mopped techno troubadour these days, but minimal’s brightest talent wasn’t always the coolest kid in clubland. Throughout the nineties, Hawtin was the posterboy for the stereotypical techno baldie, sporting a shaven pinhead and black thick-rimmed glasses. He discovered techno not in a club but from his bedroom while listening to classic radio shows by techno’s other famous geek, Jeff Mills. It wasn’t until a break up with his long-time girlfriend inspired first a move to New York and then Berlin, that the rock star Richie Hawtin emerged, sporting first his infamous blonde combover and current shaggy stubble look. But Hawtin’s inner geek is still as strong as ever. Inspired by his technology-loving Dad, from 909s to Traktor Scratch, Hawtin has long been associated with dance music’s newest technologies. The latest of which, the Cube, if you believe the Minus PR blurb, is a Borg-like communications device that has inspired much derision in the techno community for the sci-fi inspired photoshoots that adorned advertisements. Shame then that the Cube is actually a glorified information server. BR