The Revenge of the Nerds and The Big Bang Theory’s Revolution. A look shifting through media and lifestyle

Fashion has become an essential element of television tales, both as object of narrative and when it acts as an accessory element in defining characters, situations, contexts, supporting the audience in decoding texts. However, its role does not cease with the fruition of a TV content: the protagonists’ outfits, accessories, apparel become symbolic material to be collected through fandom-like practices and used in daily self-representation and performativity. The text poaching phenomenon results in a constant detection activity aimed at fashion brands seen on the TV screen and in the ensuing outfit rebuilding by the audience. Fashion brands, then, act as catalysts of audience attention and encourage their loyalty and participation, becoming their fetish and allowing its appropriation. It is rather evident, in this process, the aspirational dimension of this relationship between audience and characters ("want to be like her/him”), even when the style is quite ordinary and the cult characters are those subjects conventionally stigmatised by society as "different". The aim of this article is precisely to investigate a specific prototype of youth culture, the nerd or geek, highlighting his style evolution through media representations. More specifically our discussion will focus on The Big Bang Theory, the CBS sitcom, now (2015) in its ninth season, in which different types of nerds are crowning the nerd of nerds, Sheldon Cooper. The evolution of the television imagery built around the geek – also in its female version – have allowed us to tell the transformation of the geek style into a fashion trend: in this process we highlighted the fans’ role in terms of appropriation, imitation and reworking on geek clothing and lifestyle within social media environment. More specifically we collected and analysed The Big Bang Theory’s outfits on Pinterest, demonstrating how they are constantly rebuilt by fans in their everyday life.