Dorkgasm Gonzo Is God

            Hard-news magazines need to back the fuck off my Cheerios. This week, Newsweek Magazine, the august publication from The Washington Post, ran a feature they called “Fall Previews”. Pretty standard for People or Entertainment Weekly, but I doubt Newsweek had any reason to print this beyond filling up their page count. The proof is in the pudding.

            The first irritating aspect I noticed is that the mini-reviews are written in the voice of a vapid homosexual stereotype. Even the most flamingly gay people I know couldn’t have pounded this “Us Magazine style" drivel out of their keyboards. What was worse was, once again, a mainstream media outlet didn’t “get” dork-culture.

            First off, the TV reviews begin with a new show called Reaper, a series they describe as “like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Charmed"”. Yet it isn’t about a teenaged girl hunting vampires, or a group of siblings who happen to be witches, it’s about a guy who finds himself enlisted by Satan as a sort of bounty hunter. Wouldn’t Brimstone or GvsE be better comparisons? After pointing out that the CW network was created from the remnants of WB and UPN (year-old news, by the way), Newsweek wraps by saying, “…sounds like goofy teen fluff, but like "Buffy" before it, the show is stingingly funny and smarter than it appears.” Color me incensed, but if Buffy was “goofy teen fluff”, what in Hell’s name is Medium, or Ghost Whisperer? Just because a show has a supernatural element or two, doesn’t mean we should immediately discount its possible merits as a work of allegory. A dork only has to point out that The Twilight Zone covered more serious topics in the 1950s than most shows do today. Disgusted, I moved on to movies.

            Here is where they let all the vapidity hang out. Movies, apparently, need to make a lot of money in order to be good. Newsweek points out in it's review of No Country for Old Men, “[The Cohen Brothers’] last two films, "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers," both big-studio comedies, flopped.” I’m sorry, but the Cohen Brothers have NEVER made huge box-office films. In fact, the two films they mentioned both made over $30 Million, which is respectable considering that their highest grossing film only made $45 Million! But wait, there’s more! Just a few paragraphs later, they slam National Treasure: Book of Secrets because, get this, “Wanna know what's in that book of secrets? Paychecks. Very big paychecks.” Apparently, making money is now a poor reason to make a film and they go on to imply that Nicolas Cage’s Oscar is not as meaningful (or meaningless, depending on your view) as Helen Mirren’s. They even have the gall to ask why she, “is doing in this family-baiting scavenger hunt”. I’ll tell you why.

Because it’s fun!

            Oscar winners taking a break from “high-brow” fair aside, the worst transgression Newsweek makes against dork-kind is in it’s review of I Am Legend. They state that the story, “…has mutated almost as many times as the zombies that drive its plot.” Anyone who has ever read Richard Matheson’s story, seen Vincent Price in The Last Man on Earth or Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, can attest to the simple fact that this is not a zombie story. At best, one might call it a vampire story, but at its core, it is the story of a man. A man who is desperately alone, confronted not just by monsters, but also by his own solitude. The only way to make this mistake is to have not actually seen or read any of the story’s incarnations, and I expect more from a publication that has won as many awards as Newsweek.

            Don’t get me wrong; I like Newsweek for news. I read their political coverage week in and week out and I freely admit that the piece they ran a few months back about the last letters home from dead American soldiers moved me at my core. They should stay away from entertainment, however, unless they can apply to it the same standards of respect and integrity that they have to so-called “hard news”. In the meantime, this is EXACTLY why Dorkgasm exists, because our news needs to be reported by people who know what they are talking about. Next time, Newsweek, leave it to us. Leave it to the Dorks.