Karl Klockars

Last night, I dedicated about 4 hours of my ever-shortening life to spending time in the presence of the planet’s favorite boy wizard and all of his magical friends.  That would be a little over 2 hours observing a visualized version of his tales, a prior 45 minutes or so gathering tickets and waiting in line (popcorn in hand), another 20 minutes ratcheting up the anticipation while watching about a dozen different previews, and then a post-show recap of the inevitable “they couldn’t fit this in” portions of story.

I’m not alone in my activities – all across the country, thousands of people were influenced to get off their couches, put down the 20-sided dice and throw on their favorite Goblet of Fire shirt, and get their asses to the local movie theater to go see the new Harry Potter outing, involving some Half-Blood Prince guy who – despite having the movie named after him, only got about 20 seconds of screen discussion.

(I don’t remember a damn thing about the book, which I only read once:  Apparently it had something to do with potions but the whole movie was basically about getting Harry and Ron to snog with their collective interests, or all about not snogging those who they should be.  Or something.  Oh, and Dumbledore gets his ass killed.  Fin.)

As we awaited the show I took a moment to look around and observe the mania that we were taking part in.  Midnight shows were sold out, our 7pm showing sold out days before, and as we left the lines were snaking around the lobby for the 9:30 shows.  And as all of this took place for a film strip about a boy who can do interesting things, I thought to myself:  This is the Power of the Dork.

Or more accurately – if you can draw a dork audience to your piece of art or fiction, you can pretty much write your own check.  Before we start damning me for the flagrant use of the term “dork,” allow me to remind you that I am a role-playing dork from way back, owner of many sided dice and Star Wars afficionado as well.  Allow me to present a piece of evidence:  When the rest of the city was seeing eggs with faces on them, I saw Stormtroopers.  Case closed.  I am Lord of the Dorks.

No, I use “dork” with the utmost respect.  Because more dorks exist than you think.  It’s not just the braces-wearing, scrawny, stringy-haired acne-plagued among us that wear the title “dork” (and those were just the girls in line!) that rule the world. There’s a scary truth out there that some of us might not want to address, but the numbers bear it out.

We are all dorks.

Let’s look at the cold, hard facts.  All of these things that “dorks” are so interested in – fantasy novels, magic and wizards, comic books and heroes, and so on – are all of the things that are making up the true blockbusters.  What are people lining up for these days?  Harry Potter movies.  Batman movies last year.  The billions that Star Wars has made didn’t just come from a handful of supernerds going 50,000 times a piece, people.

Here comes some mildly anecdotal evidence, but you tell me if it stands up:  When I was in grade school there were about 30 people in each of two classes.  Of those 60 people, I’d say about 4 or 5 of us were the real dorks.  (As one of those dorks, I doubt that any other dorks flew under the dork radar.)  That’s about 1/12th of the class population.

As we grew up, is it more likely that a tiny little subset of population like that is making up all of the piles of cash that are flying in to movie studios?  Or could it be that all the folks that spent so much time deriding all things dorky in grade school now have crossed over to the dark side of dorkdom?  (If you sense any subtext of bitterness in the previous sentence, well…you know.)

Okay, so it’s not entirely scientific, but my point remains.  There are more dorks out there than we truly know.  Almost half of the audience last night looked mostly normal with only a few total anime freaks and true Potter addicts about.  And I don’t think I saw anyone dressed in robes, but I could have missed them.

Movies like this don’t thrive on a small group of die-hards alone, let alone get all of us motivated to leave the house in the middle of the week.  I’m the guy that was first in line to see the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, but I’m an outlier – all the rest of you out there, you’re the mainstream.  And you’re all dorks.

I’ll be passing out retainers at the door, and you can get fitted for your dragon-printed t-shirts past there.  I’ll get the Dungeons and Dragons paperwork ready for us all as well.