Sci-fi movies are infantilizing us, says Star Trek's Simon Pegg

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.

A little self-examination never hurt. Unless you're at the doctor's office, that is.

Sometimes, you need to look at what you're doing and contemplate what you're really doing.

This may have occurred to Simon Pegg, one of the wiser, more lovable alleged geeks on this earth.

Indeed, in an interview with the UK's Radio Times, Pegg bared his soul to a touching degree. He said: "I'm very much a self-confessed fan of science-fiction and genre cinema. But part of me looks at society as it is now and just thinks we've been infantilized by our own taste."

I find myself nodding involuntarily.

Just in recent times, I've seen women in bars sipping Manhattans and reading comic books. I've seen supposedly grown men twaddle on and on about Ultron, Iron Man and other names of which I've never heard -- but they sounded like rejected names for detergents.

You might imagine that Pegg would be a little more, well, judicious, given that he's writing and appearing in "Star Trek 3" and has previously appeared in "Star Trek Into Darkness."

Instead, this: "Now we're essentially all consuming very childish things -- comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff and taking it seriously!"

It is a tragedy. But it's surely only one small element in a vast infantilization program sponsored by Hollywood and the tech industry.

Pegg bemoaned the fact that sci-fi and other blockbustery affairs aren't "challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about...whatever," as were movies long ago.

I am still nodding involuntarily, remembering Pegg from really good movies like "Run Fatboy Run."

And I read with a deep pleasure another quote from his interview: "I honestly thought the other day that I'm gonna retire from geekdom. I've become the poster child for that generation, and it's not necessarily something I particularly want to be."

He has seen the light? This is uplifting.

Then I see that today he took to his own blog in an attempt to pour scorn upon his sincere good sense. He suddenly came over all politically reasonable.

He insisted that he'd been a bit "trollish." He claimed he could be something of a "Contrary Man" in interviews. He claimed that "the idea of our prolonged youth is something I've been interested in for a very long time."

Oh, we're all interested in prolonging our youth. But not all of us do it through sci-fi movies. Instead, we wear baggy pants, date impossibly younger lovers and say "man" and "like" a lot.

Still, Pegg added: "The 'dumbing down' comment came off as a huge generalization by an A-grade asshorn. I did not mean that science fiction or fantasy are dumb, far from it. How could I say that? In the words of Han Solo, 'Hey, it's me!'"

Yes, yes, yes. It is you, Simon. I know that you see. I know that you know. I know that you feel.

You are, at heart, human.