The Adolescent Quest

Abstract

This essay explores how 'The Big Bang Theory' situates the traditional notion of the quest in a millennial context. The quest as a search for an unattainable and objectified patroness is reinscribed by the chivalrous knights being nerds, or characters who present a renegotiated contemporary image of adulthood and masculinity, and the patroness being an equally problematized "kidult" female. In this way, 'The Big Bang Theory' is one of a number of contemporary television programs and films that challenges the notion of adulthood by interrogating the current social trend of young adults adopting "practices and attitudes associated with adolescence" (Blatterer 777). The television series depicts a set of young adults who, in confounding the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, conform to the terms "kidults" and "adultescents" as used in contemporary media. In the process the series examines a model of masculinity in television and film that generates stereotypes of gendered behavior. The Big Bang Theory contributes to a popular fictional genre that endorses conformity while it exploits it, consistent with Rebecca Feasey's claims about masculinity as it is constructed by popular television, that "contemporary programming forms a consensus as it investigates, negotiates and challenges the power, authority and patriarchal control of the hegemonic male" (Masculinity 4).