How good were the things we loved?

Opinions change, even among ancient geeks like us.

When Steven and I started the Ancient Geeks podcast, we had a mission:

1. Describe what it was like to experience geek culture for the first time, when we were young.

2. Explain why we loved them.

3. Explore how we feel about them now.

Naturally, with decades having passed between #2 and #3, our opinions will have changed. Some books, movies, TV shows, or comics will give us as much enjoyment as they did when we were much younger. For example, I’m as much of a Batman fan as I ever was. The first couple of versions of Dungeons & Dragons are still fun games, which not surprisingly have inspired modern game designers to try to re-create and refine what D&D started (the “Old School Renaissance”).

Some will seem even better, having grown to appreciate them even more. During our Godzilla episode, I described what it was like to re-discover the first Gojira/Godzilla movie, ditching the Americanized version with Raymond Burr, and watching the Japanese original, drenched in political meaning, moral quandaries, and terrifying moments of death and destruction. Every time I’ve re-read Lord Of The Rings, I’ve always enjoyed something new about that saga. I even started finding all the songs less annoying.

And others will seem worse than we remember them. When I was in my teens, I could enjoy an occasional episode of Wonder Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man, in one of those “turn off your brain and enjoy,” especially since they were the only superhero shows on TV. Now, after re-watching them, I’m mortified at how lazily they were written and produced. It’s hard to get past the cynicism the lack of imagination behind these re-creations of one of an extremely imaginative form of literature, comic books. Star Trek The Motion Picture also exceeded my memory of its badness.

Our opinions change over time. We read or watch new things, making comparisons to the old stuff inevitable. Andor, for example, raises one’s expectations of what a Star Wars story can be. We also change as people. I’m less willing to waste time on mediocre comics than I was as a youngster. And our tastes change. These days, I’m way more into film noir than monster movies (but I still greatly enjoy them, as my enthusiasm in our monster movie episodes showed).

Our opinions may also change, for better and worse, about the same works. I just finished re-reading Michael Moorcock’s Elric series, in preparation for an upcoming episode. I’ll save the details for later, but there were some things I liked more this time around, and a few things (mostly on the margins) I liked a little less. Ditto for The Hobbit, which I re-read for our Tolkien episode, early in the podcast line-up.

There are also things for which our fondness doesn’t fade, books, movies, TV shows, or comics that will always have a special place in our hearts, even though we’re aware that they don’t hold up magnificently over time. I grew up in Southern California, where Jack In The Box was a go-to fast food place. As I kid, I liked their tacos, as weird as they were (deep fried, laced with what can be best called “cheese food”). I don’t eat fast food at all these days, and I definitely expect more out of the tacos I eat, after that staple of Mexican food has gone through a culinary renaissance. But every once in a blue moon, I might eat a couple of Jack In The Box tacos, for old times sake. And then I don’t eat them again for years, until the whim strikes me again.

Everyone who’s a fan of geek culture has their version of the Jack In The Box taco, the guilty pleasure they occasionally indulge. The umami of nostalgia is still strong enough to make them occasionally appetizing. If you put a Gold Key Star Trek comic in front of me, I’ll probably read it, even though they’re objectively terrible. (But they’re also astonishingly goofy, in an oddly endearing way.)

There’s no harm in guilty pleasures, especially if you’re aware of the valid reasons for feeling guilty. Someone near and dear to me once described a science fiction TV show we were watching, Falling Skies, as the equivalent of the two day old calzone in the refrigerator: you know it’s not the best thing to consume, but you can’t help yourself. Ditto for people who are wildly enthusiastic about the old Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons. By all means, enjoy them — but they’re still calzones. Or weird tacos.