I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture

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A. D. Jameson celebrates the triumph of geekdom in I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing, an insightful and irreverent journey through the science fiction, fantasy, and superhero pop-culture cinematic icons whose legions of fans have put them at the top of the box office over and over. Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, The Lord of the Rings-properties that were once supposedly the domain of socially maladroit youth have become mainstream entertainment, enjoyed by enormous audiences and by more than a few film critics too. But there are those commentators who have decried the way in which serious adult cinema has seemingly vanished, with Hollywood dominated by mindless kiddie fare such as tent-pole-event movies, franchises, and endless remakes and reboots. As a lifelong geek, A. D. Jameson blasts through the clichs that have always surrounded pop-culture phenomena: that fans are mindless followers who will embrace all things Spider-Man, regardless of quality; or that the popularity and financial success of nerd cinema represents the death of ambitious film-making. Instead, he makes a case for why genre films are worthy of serious critical attention-and shares his thoughts on where their true flaws lie. Shining a new light on beloved classics, and exploding misconceptions as to their historical and intellectual value, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing explores how the geek inherited the earth.

Reviews

"Who is the audience for this book I'm going to say everybody. . . . Jameson writes with an easy, welcoming prose style, as though you and he are friends, sitting around chatting about Wookiees and Spock, Josh Whedon, Kermit the Frog, and the One Ring." --Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

"A thoroughly engaging and enjoyable look at the evolution of geek culture over the past four decades." --Kristine Huntley, Booklist

"As a huge Star Wars fan and all-around nerd, I knew I had to have this as soon as I read about it. Being a nerd/geek wasn't always cool, and this is a funny, well-researched memoir/case study of geekdom. I'm loving every page and trying not to read it too fast, because I want to savor it." --Jaime Herndon, Bookriot

"[I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing] explores a broad range of geekish enthusiasms, from comic books to the inescapable comic book movie adaptations to SFF movies of all types, and it's all deeply refreshing for two main reasons: Jameson always respects the intelligence of his readers, and he always keeps the geekdom phenomenon firmly in its broader social context." --Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review

Author Bio

A. D. Jameson is the author of five books, including Cinemaps, a collaboration with the artist Andrew DeGraff. A former blogger for HTML Giant, his fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Unstuck, and elsewhere. He is a PhD candidate in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois in Chicago.