I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture

By: A. D. Jameson

Narrated by: A. D. Jameson, Holter Graham

A. D. Jameson celebrates the triumph of geekdom in I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing, an insightful and irreverent journey through the science fiction, fantasy, and superhero pop-culture cinematic icons whose legions of fans have put them at the top of the box office over and over.

Star Wars, Marvel superheroes, The Lord of the Rings—properties that were once supposedly the domain of socially maladroit youth have become mainstream entertainment, enjoyed by enormous audiences and by more than a few film critics too. But there are those commentators who have decried the way in which serious adult cinema has seemingly vanished, with Hollywood dominated by mindless kiddie fare such as tent-pole-event movies, franchises, and endless remakes and reboots.

As a lifelong geek, A. D. Jameson blasts through the clichés that have always surrounded pop-culture phenomena: that fans are mindless followers who will embrace all things Spider-Man, regardless of quality; or that the popularity and financial success of nerd cinema represents the death of ambitious film-making. Instead, he makes a case for why genre films are worthy of serious critical attention—and shares his thoughts on where their true flaws lie.

Shining a new light on beloved classics, and exploding misconceptions as to their historical and intellectual value, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing explores how the geek inherited the earth.

Long Winded Diatribe about what Should be a Fun Subject

When I saw this book while browsing, I was looking forward to it. A book about geeks and geek culture. Be careful what you wish for. While this book does indeed discuss geeks and geek culture, it also managed to reference a number of non geek films. It also managed to be a long winded doctoral dissertation about what should be a fun subject. The Big Picture was a book about new Hollywood that was more fun than this. A great many elements are broken down and discussed and referenced to film critics and artists who hate geek culture. While several good points are made, others miss the boat. Good points include why Transformers fans aren't wild about Michael Bay. Missed points, most notably is the comparison of the films Solo vs Rogue One. This was written before Solo came out. Rogue One was brilliant, perfectly fitting the Star Wars universe, while being new and different, yet familiar. It was a great story. The author thought Solo would be more successful due to the more familiar subject matter. That couldn't have been further from the truth. While Solo was a fun film, it was not what most geeks wanted. Had Lucasfilm made a film about Grand Admiral Thrawn or the Old Republic, it would've been much different. A good book for non geeks to learn about the culture. It just wasn't fun like it should've been. I read this book using immersion reading while listening to the audiobook. Narration was ok, not great. Overall a disappointment.

Interesting, but a bit too generalizing at times.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing is, in many ways, a primer on "geek culture" and fandom. It is a nice introduction into this part of our culture.

However, by the end of the book, I found that the author glossed over very important points when it comes to different views geeks have on various franchises, and how the fandoms work in relation to these. This might not bother other readers, but having researched and written about fandom and geek culture myself, I found the book, at times, too subjective, generalizing and somewhat shallow.
I sometimes found myself thinking stuff like "Why didn't you mention this? It is important!" :)

But as an introduction to geek culture, it works well.