Nerd, Overheard:“The [Stephen King] book Christine explains that the car is possessed by it’s former owner who was into the occult, but in the movie, the car is just evil when it comes off the assembly line; that’s just stupid!”

I have never read Christine, and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the speaker’s brief synopsis. I have seen John Carpenter’s adaptation, and can safely state that, yes, the speaker is correct, in the film, Christine is shown to be an evil car straight off the assembly line. The accuracy of the anonymous speaker’s quote is not why it is remembered, nor why it is opined on.

A sentient, killer car, no matter what the context, is silly. Despite what Transformers or Knight Rider would have you believe, cars do not have feelings. This speaks to a greater issue with nerd culture, the old cliché involving forests and trees. Science fiction, fantasy, and its pop culture off-shoots are silly. The greatest Batman story in the world is still about a ninja vampire. As smart and well-crafted as Alien may be, it is about a space monster with acid-blood . All the thematic allegory one can find in Lord of The Rings does not change the fact that it is the story of a wizard and little people with hairy feet. On the surface, all of these stories/character are dumb.

But that doesn’t make them bad. A great ninja vampire story is still great. Alien is about an acid-blooded space monster, but it is a great movie about an acid-blooded space monster. Lord of the Rings is a vaunted classic. Most nerd-media can be whittled down to a stupid/silly/farfetched concept. Why things endure is due partially in how the concept is sold to an audience, partially due to some primal attraction, and partially due to craft. Even if something is “bad”, you can enjoy whatever you want. I love an unreasonable amount of silliness without reservation, but I do not to lose sight of the fact that it is silly.

When you make up arbitrary reasons to support what or why something is “good”, the result is that you appear to be a maniac. Specific to Christine, to an average person, reasoning that a killer car is “possessed” does not equate to a “why, that’s a logical reason for an automobile to make the decision to kill people”, it equates to “the person who is speaking to me must not be allowed to breed”. Like what you like, folks, but don’t think your preferences make you a person of taste and erudition.