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If you have to ask, you won't understand
I have been moving furniture all day. My muscles are stiff and I'm rather cross because of it. An excellent late supper at the Elephant Walk (Cambodian food, yum) and a really lovely Auslese Riesling improved my mood, but now I'm cranky again. And in my crankiness, I'm going to pen (well, type) a diatribe that really is rather shaky. So: First I will rant, then I will undermine my own comments. I will delve a yard below my mines, and be hoist by my own petard.
I admitted in my second set of comments on Tolkien that I a had a problem with Tolkien fans. Well, that's not exactly true.
Sometimes it is. But this particular gripe isn't confined to Tolkien, and it's not even really a gripe about Fandom. Not all Tolkien fans do it; not all fans do it.
In this case it's a very specific gripe about a certain kind of conversational element: the In-Joke.
Fans use a lot of In-Jokes - hey, they have to prove they're fans - but they're hardly the only culprits. Hackers do too. Many professions have them. No one is entirely immune.
An In-Joke is designed to show off one's knowledge. It is designed to weed out Those Who Know from Those Who Don't. In other words, it has no constructive purpose.
Ever since Sasha Miller gave me a tongue-lashing for putting one in a story, I have avoided using them in written works - because she was absolutely right. The Novel (not the Aedie novel, the other one) used to be full of them. I was younger and crasser when I began that thing. They're all gone now. It wasn't too much later that I realized it was a good thing to avoid them in spoken conversation also.
I don't want to embarrass the person who asked this - that's all I need, more people angry with me - so I'll make it as vague as possible: The other day, in an online forum, someone asked if a certain real-world food product (okay, fine, it was PowerBars) was better classified as cram or lembas.
Now, I apologize sincerely to whoever said it, but that just makes my teeth hurt. My reaction to that is not fair to the person who said it - I admit it; it's visceral and I can't quite control it. It makes me fidget uncomfortably the way I fidgeted in several of Ben Stiller's scenes in Mystery Men - the phrase which best describes it is, "I can't bear to watch this person making himself look this foolish."
The fact that I know what cram and lembas are, and that I secretly have sometimes classified nutritious but uninteresting gorp designed to travel well as "cram" myself, in my head, is not germane. The fact that I think PowerBars are actually a good example of latter-day cram is not germane. I'd never say any of that unless I was around exactly the right group of people - i.e. one where I knew in advance that everyone would get the joke.
You don't hear people making fressen-bar jokes either - although if I went to enough SF conventions I probably would.
Consider that last sentence. It is designed to show that I know something about a particular book - Child of Fortune by Norman Spinrad. If I had made a reference to that book as kind of a footnote to something else I was saying (as I often do here), that would be okay ... but using the information like this is just me showing off.
The least you can do, when trying to flaunt your obscura, is to pose them as trivia, as I did with the title of the previous entry. (ahem)
Okay - now, having said that, I need to eat crow. Big time.
I do use film quotes a lot in my conversation - mostly among certain other people who have the same lexicon. Because they are useful shorthand. It is simpler to say, "I am not cute! Baby ducks are cute!" to someone who's seen and remembers Bull Durham than to explain the whole emotional state that goes into why you don't feel pleased that someone has just said you're cute because you believe that "cute" is the consolation prize for not being able to achieve "sexy."
On the other hand, if you say it to someone who doesn't know Bull Durham all that well, you'll get a blank look. Then that person will assume you're geeky, snotty, or tedious. So this game is not without its risks.
But I take them anyway - sometimes firing film quotes at people who aren't in the market for them - so I am not the shining example the section above would have you believe.
Furthermore, I have been known to throw various cultural references into entries here, like the "Hamlet" nod at the top - things I wouldn't say in a conversation, but which I obviously consider fair game for the written word.
So I'm not sure what my own personal standards are. I guess I approve of an In-Joke if it doesn't make me uncomfortable and I disapprove of it if it does.
Somehow I don't think that's good enough.
On the other hand, I don't believe my film jokes and Shakespeare jokes are meant to be exclusionary, like a test to see if you get it or not. And given how my hackles rise the minute anyone whispers "elitist," that distinction's obviously very important to me.
On the third hand, some people would say the "Hamlet" reference is elitist (What, you mean everyone hasn't read "Hamlet" a zillion times?)
So, if nothing else, I'm woefully inconsistent.
After rereading the above, it strikes me that the Ben Stiller remark is the most important part. No, really. You can add Allyson Hannigan's character in American Pie and the example is complete.
One of them is frequently making himself look like a jerk and doesn't realize it. The other is a nice person but relates every single thing in her life to a single profound interest she holds.
I don't want to be either type of example. I dread looking like an idiot or a geek. And that makes me hypersensitive about In-Jokes, which frequently (in my experience) produce that effect. Hell, it makes me reluctant to start a conversation sometimes. I am so nervous about this stuff that I get itchy when someone else looks like an idiot. Even a character in a movie.
You probably think Ben Stiller's mangled conversations with the waitress were oddly lovable, the mark of a character who is frightened of admitting any kind of vulnerability but who is quite likable inside.
Well, they made me squirm. I wanted to shout to him, "Just tell her you like her! Or at least shut up!"
Basically, I learned to shut up. Except when it's safe company and the doors are locked.
© Columbine
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We've got a blind date with Destiny, and she's ordered the lobster.
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