Aryan Shankar

Catherine Thomas

English I

2 November, 2015

Iron Man and its Role in Creating a ‘Positive Geek Culture’

Superheroes are everywhere these days. Although, the origin of superheroes can be traced back to the comic books of the 1930s and even earlier, they have been depicted in media like film, television shows, video games, radio broadcasts and graphic novels. They even find their place in apparels like t-shirts, sweatshirts, socks and underwear; stationery items like pencil boxes; accessories for electronic gadgets like cell phone covers and laptop skins; and various home furnishing items. Originally confined to a certain class of comic book fans, the popularity of superheroes has reached a wider audience with a lot of different people being happily associated with them. This phase of increasing infusion of superheroes into the mainstream culture started in the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century but it was only after the release of the film Iron Man that superheroes reached their present level of popularity. Therefore, it can be argued that Iron Man has led to the creation of what can be called, a ‘positive geek culture’.

‘Geek culture’, as it is popularly understood, has many different facets and it is not always associated with being a superhero fan. Geek culture includes interest in board games like Dungeons & Dragons, the film series Star Wars and martial arts films of the 1980s, and television series like Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Firefly among other things. Books like the Harry Potter series and many video games also form a part of the so called geek culture. Comic books and graphic novels too form an integral part of the ‘geek culture’. Aficionados of various streams of ‘geekdom’ have varying cultures which often bind them together with other like-minded people (Pustz 3). The creation and popularity of the