The problem with the song "The Geeks get the Girl"

[yendi]

I thought I'd blogged about this a few years ago, but I can't find any posts on it.

I love the idea behind "The Geeks Get the Girls," of course, seeing as I'm a lifelong geek.

But I hate the way the geek gets the girl. It's basically a song that's about pity sex or an incredibly not-picky female.

The titular guy goes to the bar, and is so flustered he can't even remember the stereotypical lines. So he clams up, but somehow attracts one of the titular girls. He uses the "your place or mine" line on her, and she waits for him by his car. Then, when he wakes up the next morning, she's there to serve him coffee.

At no point during the song does the guy's geekiness seem to seal the deal. We don't learn that she's also into Buffy, or that she's fascinated by the tales he tells of his RPGs, or is just as interested in the effects behind a movie as he is. We certainly get no indicators from the song that a woman might be a geek, too.

The key line of the song is, "even losers get lucky sometimes." We don't actually see any signs of geekiness on the guy's part, just him being socially inept. And since we don't see any redeeming factors (geeky or otherwise), it's clear that he's just lucky. That's it, end of story. Not exactly as redemptive of geeks as, say, The Big Bang Theory is.

But damn, it's a catchy song.

Comments

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

The mother in "1985" might be more of a geek than this guy! "She was gonna be an actress/ She was gonna be a star/ She was gonna shake her ass/ On the hood of Whitesnake's car..."

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

It's like this crappy romance I once picked up called Nerd in Shining Armor, where the guy wasn't really a nerd, except by Hollywood standards.

Sigh.

Also, geeks = male REALLY BUGS me.

[greylistening.livejournal.com]

Yeah, catchy songs that lack integrity are so annoying. :)

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

I have an MP3 called "The Geek Never Gets the Girl" if you want to hear a rebuttal. (Can't find it on YouTube)

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

Wait; did you just say that "The Big Bang Theory" was redemptive?

Granted, I've only seen a couple of episodes, but both made me cringe right down to my socks.

[yendi]

I think it's about the least funny show on tv, but I was deliberately setting the bar low.

[yendi]

I'd love it! The standard lj email should work fine.

[yendi]

Yeah, and so uncommon. :-)

[yendi]

Also, geeks = male REALLY BUGS me.

Yeah, that's a notion that's long ready to die.

[yendi]

I'm not sure she's a geek, either; in fact, since her husband is a CPA, and this seems to bother her, she might have her own issues with geeks.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I hedged my bets with the "might." She did seem to have the enthusiasm thing, is my main point...

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

Sent.

[yendi]

Got it. Thanks!

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

not to mention what it says about gender, and the way girls are innately non-geeky, and the fact that "getting a girl" is "being lucky", etc. etc.

I admit that "code monkey" is on the list of things that annoy me for precisely that reason but that I unfortunately love like a mad mad thing. I'll be listening to this song I 100% love about what it means to be a code monkey and about that stifled desire to tell manager to write goddamn login page himself, and then I get stuck in this place where the song thinks I don't exist.

[yendi]

I think one of the key differences between the songs is that, for all the folks who identify with "Code Monkey," it comes across as a song about a specific coder, whereas the lines "All around the world/The geeks get the girls" implies a universal dichotomy.

That said, the song does shift jarringly between verses, moving from the whole "this job sucks" first verse into the "I've got a crush" plot of the second (and which is a much less universal experience within the field, even if one neutralizes the gender issues in the song).