Beyond Jocks and Nerds

Hollywood's fixation on innate talent creates unrealistic expectations and resentment

This is a guest post by Joseph Holmes.

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Back in December, Vivek Ramaswamy unleashed a firestorm by suggesting that America had a cultural problem: we venerate the jock over the nerd.

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

This immediately drew anger from many on the right who saw this as minimizing the structural problems of immigration that were hurting working-class families and the real reasons so many Americans were having trouble succeeding economically. Others found some of the outrage from conservatives a tad hypocritical, given that this is their favored explanation for the lack of black success in America.

I’m not an expert in the areas of immigration policy. However, as a film critic, I think I have the expertise to contribute a different layer to the discussion: Vivek is right there’s a cultural problem that Hollywood encourages that retards growth. But he’s wrong about which one it is. We don’t have a “jock veneration” problem. We have a “gifted” veneration problem.

First, let’s take the “America venerates the jock over the nerd” thesis. Anyone who thinks that simply hasn't watched many movies or TV shows. Think of any high school movie. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? It’s pretty much always the nerds who are the good guys and jocks who are the bullies. Or think of the iconic movies like Back to the Future. Karate Kid. Spider-Man. Mean Girls. Wicked, A Beautiful Mind, Oppenheimer, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, Little Women, Princess Diaries, Sherlock Holmes in all his iterations, most protagonists of a Bonnet movie (e.g., Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters). The list goes on and on.

Superhero stories in particular have long had an interesting relationship with the nerd/jock dynamic. Because the hero is typically a nerd that becomes a jock while retaining the best of his nerd powers. Spider-Man, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, and Hulk, are all nerds. Superman’s Clark Kent persona is an archetypal nerd with glasses and writes for a living.

You could argue that superheroes only reinforce the idea that jocks get all the veneration in society because these stories are about nerds who eventually become venerated because they become nerd-jock hybrids. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walt Hickey noted in his book We Are What We Watch that “those with the strongest affinity for fictional heroes can also be those who most lack agency and prestige–nerds, children, nerdy children–so heroic stories are a way to borrow some of that cultural esteem”.

But one might also push back that the superhero represents what Americans actually think: a man should be a combination of jock and nerd. You see this in the villains the heroes fight, who usually are only brains (like Lex Luthor) or only brawn (like Bizzaro). And there’s something to be said for that. The ideal man is someone who maximizes himself to his full potential–brain and brawn–and doesn’t neglect either.

Another great example of this is Reacher from the popular books and Amazon show. His a giant mountain of a man who also is always the smartest man in the room. When he faces a bad guy who’s smarter than him, he beats him with his fists. When he faces a bad guy who’s stronger than him (as he does in the just-released 3rd season) he uses his brain. He’s, in other words, well-rounded.

That said, there is something about American culture in TV and movies that I suspect does retard work ethic. It’s the idea that raw talent and privilege matter to the near exclusion of work ethic. If you're a genius, like Spider-Man or Screech, it's because you're naturally gifted in that area. If you're a jock, like Thor, you're that way without having to try. Rarely do we see these characters struggle to grow their gifts. And if we do, it's in montage.

You can see numerous examples of this. Remember how in High School Musical an essential part of the story was that Troy and Gabriella were instantly better than their theater group peers at singing in the musical even though they'd never done it before? Troy was a jock, and Gabriella was a nerd. But both of them had never sung before. They were just naturally talented at theater without ever having to try.

Charlie Houpert of Charisma on Command makes this point when observing how James Bond is portrayed.

The first thing you notice about James Bond is he’s extremely capable. He’s an expert in hand-to-hand combat, Texas Holdum, sailing, parkour, holding his breath, hacking a computer, driving–kind of–and he’s also in fantastic shape without seeming to need regular exercise. And that’s just what we see in Casino Royale. In other films he can fly a plane, drive a tank, dance the tango, speak eight languages… you get the point. The underlying message is that men should just know how to do stuff. Which may seem like an empowering message until you realize that none of Bond’s skills seem to require any practice or learning. So even though we know it’s just a movie, part of us believes that we should just be good at stuff; that’s not how the world works though. To master any one of Bond’s skills would take a lot of unsexy practice time.

Alan Ritchson, who plays Reacher recently made similar comments about his character, laughing about how his character has the physique he does even though we never see him work out.

You see this a lot in faith-based media as well. As I discussed in my piece on the movie Reagan, faith-based films portray life change from God as coming instantly in a flash of repentance - and God’s power. When they struggle, it’s only in montage. This actually makes it harder for us to succeed, because it creates a dopamine addiction in us for instant gratification.

Houpert makes the same point when commenting on Arthur Fleck in the Joker film. Arthur fantasizes about being loved and popular in his standup and romantic relationships. But he never gets there. Why? Because he’s fantasizing about the results but not the process.

Vividly envisioning a desired outcome can make you more likely to achieve it. But … visualizations include the work necessary to achieve the goal, whereas fantasies focus merely on the crowning moment of glory. Arthur doesn’t visualize practicing his standup with improved timing. He doesn’t visualize introducing himself to his neighbor or asking her on a date. He skips right to the unearned payoff.

Worse, there's a belief that using "hard work" to overcome these natural differences means you're probably a bad guy. Hence why heroes like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne were born into wealth while Lex Luthor and Doctor Doom worked their way up.

We see this most recently in Wicked, where Elphaba has raw talent for magic that no one else can bridge the gap no matter how they try. And those who try to simulate that power with science like the Wizard "have no real power". His incredible mechanical achievements that he used his brain to develop mean nothing; what matters is Elphaba’s innate gifts.

Youtuber “Matt Patt” noted this in his episode of Film Theory on High School Musical. Sharpay is supposed to be the villain because she’s standing in the way of Troy and Gabriella being the stars of the musical. But she rarely does anything truly bad in the stories. In the real world, her expectation that she will get the leads in the shows when she’s a fully committed theater kid and Gabrielle and Troy a) have never done a musical before, and b) have other commitments (to science, basketball and each other) would be completely right. And yet, the film sets up the expectation that Gabrielle and Troy being able to swoop in and do it better than her is totally reasonable, and that the only thing standing in the way of that happening is petty entitlement by a spoiled rich kid.

This sets people up not only for failure but envy and resentment. When we see “giftedness” as something that trumps everything else, it’s hard to see inequality as anything other than injustice.

If Troy and Gabriella can waltz into being the stars of the show with no prior experience and be better than someone who’s committed their whole lives to it, then the fact that you or I are not as rich or famous as Hollywood actors or actresses feels like it must be due to a conspiracy of Sharpays to keep us out. It encourages resentment toward those who have more than us. “Eat the Rich” movies like Glass Onion, The Menu, and Blink Twice work on this premise: rich people are only rich because of luck and wickedness, and retain it via oppression and exploitation.

How do we fix this? It starts by telling more stories that glorify the grind, that assume it takes hard work to get somewhere, and celebrates the process as well as the end result. Obviously, too many scenes of Reacher exercising might get boring. But there should be a way to do this that gets across the value of hard work over pure giftedness.

Anime actually often does that better than American stories. Characters like Goku and Naruto spend a long time in their stories at the bottom, only growing their strength and power after long, long journeys of sweat and work. This point was made by the YouTube series Death Battle in their classic breakdown of a theoretical fight between Superman and Goku.

They’re both ultimate heroes, solutions to daunting problems, and achievers of the impossible. The difference is at the core of their character. Goku has never been invincible. He has very clear limits and must overcome those limits to solve the problems at hand. That’s the whole point. On the other hand Superman’s story is not about the fight to become the best, but of an immigrant facing the challenges of home vs heritage. After accepting his alien side Superman has reached his full potential, which, under the power of the yellow sun is essentially limitless. In short, Superman is as strong as he needs to be.

People on the right talk about their wish for a renaissance of conservative art and artists. If that happens, I hope one of its results is a renewed culture that “glorifies the grind” as a pathway to achievement over mere raw talent.