I’m no historian, but the following scene may have been a turning moment in culture.
This unassuming scene comes at approximately 8:12 into the movie Heathers, a dark comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, filmed in 1988. One second earlier, this group of obvious high school losers was referred to by a female character in the movie as “the geek squad.”
This reference occurred a full six years before it was adopted by the computer services company that eventually became a subsidiary of Best Buy and caused an uptick in the sales of oddly-painted VW Beetles. And, as far as I can tell through my extensive research on the subject (comprised of watching 10 minutes of the movie, doing a Google search, and reading a Wikipedia article) this was the first reference in the recorded history of mankind to the phrase “geek squad.”
Interestingly – amazingly, actually – the trivia page for Heathers at IMDB.com completely overlooks this cinematic achievement.
And they say bloggers have no legitimate journalistic credibility.