I had this creepy dream just before I woke up today, and I've decided to record it here while it is fresh. It contains several themes I've discussed on this blog before, notably Neo-Nerdism and James Holmes. It also involves larger themes of becoming obsessed with (in the case of this dream, pop-culture) nostalgia to the point of madness, themes showcased in the recent films "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Looper"; an examination of both movies will require a substantial amount of spoiler-alerts (another "neo-nerdist" term/concept that I think gets taken to too many extremes), so I'll do that in another post.
In the dream, a young man calmly walks into a generic work-space or store-space, hangs up a banner advertising his comics and toys sale, and just sets up his wares on the shelves. Completely with not asking the owners of said space for any permission to do so. It is immediately assumed he has some serious mental condition, and everybody, including me, are all on alert.
The image on the banner is supposed to be that of a sweet red-haired moppet like Raggedy Andy -- but looks more like Chucky from "Child's Play"!
The toys and other "collectibles" he's selling clearly look like memorabilia from his childhood -- action figures, comics, and whatnot, all with little tags hanging off of them with prices far more than any of these things are worth. Some of the objects are broken, and all have that sort of stale, slightly soot-encrusted look of things that have been stored in a basement or attic for a long time.
As for the man himself, I place him somewhere between mid-Twenties to mid-Thirties. Doesn't fit the pop-culture stereotype of the "Comic Book Guy" a la "The Simpsons," but rather is much more like a James Holmes type -- average weight, buttoned shirt, sort of boy-next-door. But the clean-cut look is all rather superficial the closer you look at him: then you notice he's a little "dirty," subtly disheveled, and kind of "off."
The most vivid detail I remember of this character was, though, his smell. If "crazy" had a specific odor, he had it. He smelled like formaldehyde.
The boss/owner -- who in the dream looks more like an older, Perry White sort of guy -- tells us to quietly file out of the space, as to not set-off this strange man who has set up shop out of nowhere and looks sort of quietly insane.
In the next scene, the cops are raiding this guy's house. It looks like the Dahmer house. Bones everywhere, filling the bathtub. But creepiest of all, are these little "ritual" packets he's made with the names of well-known figures in both the comics industry and media. The packets are made of something translucent that looks like rice-paper, and contains bones, feathers, and other crap.
At this point I wake up and am totally skeeved out.
Biggest impression I got about the dream was James Holmes, but a far more "in fandom" comics aficionado than Holmes. This was a person who placed far more worth on the pop-culture icons of his childhood than they deserved, and in the process was sort of stuck in time -- a baby-faced adult, but not in a cute way. All the names on his "hit list" were public figures in comics that he might have "blamed" for changing his characters into ways that he didn't agree with.
Do crazy people in comics fandom who are potentially like the person I've described in my dream really exist? Yes, they do. They send multiple death threats over things like changing the racial identity of a certain superhero, or "breaking up" a prominent comic book couple, and etc. Some have stalked females in the industry and fandom over years, threatening death and rape. Some, on the Internet, offer to rape the wives of editors who allow "travesties" in the comics; offering to cut off the editor's eyelids so he can watch his wife suffer.
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| fans got violently upset after a storyline where Spider-Man "broke up" with his wife |
These obsessed fans seem, at the core, to have a very deep fear of CHANGE. They want to keep their fandoms, whether it be comics or whatnot, very pristine and untouched. Movies like "Wreck-It Ralph" and "Looper" feature characters literally driven insane in their attempts to bring back the past (although, of course, in "Looper" the idea of the past is relative).
This, coupled with what I feel was more of a James Holmes motivation -- to "be somebody" -- I think is a very dangerous combination. This is something I've been talking about for years, with very few people taking it seriously. "Death threats are common in comics," they tell me. It's like "Internet threats." They're not real.
Well, I hope nothing like what I saw in my dream really does happen. But even if it doesn't, this obsession with nostalgia -- something I've detailed in posts like "Jurassic Park Thoughts: How Dennis Nedry Ruined Entertainment" and "Twilight of the Action Movie Gods" -- strangles creativity and new ideas, the Old literally cannibalizing the Young like Cronus devouring his godlings.
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| ahhh...NOSTALGIA! |
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