Much has been written about the effect and character of the genius boy trope–largely in cartoons. Dexter’s Lab and Jimmy Neutron both, in their own cartoonish ways, depict the “boy genius” as someone who is maladjusted but both, in their labyrinthian ways, are able to navigate both school and an institution we can vaguely call society. Young Sheldon also follows this pattern; the most obvious difference being that it is not a cartoon. This paper will analyze the ways in which Young Sheldon does and does not conform to the “boy genius” trope.
Before proceeding, it is necessary, for philosophical and cultural reasons, to dismantle and define the “boy genius” trope. We understand the “boy genius” to be socially maladjusted. We understand the “boy genius” to be someone who enjoys academia, much to the vocal dismay of his peers. When Dexter claims “Science is my life!”, we are neither shocked nor rattled. We place Dexter in a cultural box named “Loves to learn”, a box that intertwines itself with anger and invites scorn. The bully who targets Dexter is proof of both the cultural expectations and scorn that the “boy genius” trope invites.
For evidence of the cultural hatred for the “boy genius” trope, we look no further than “Dexter Dodgeball”, in which a slew of bullies, assuming, because of the cultural expectations placed upon the bully when confronted with the “boy genius”, assume Dexter neither plays nor likes to play dodgeball. As a result, they throw repeated dodgeballs on Dexter, at one point going so far as to throw a ball directly at his privates. At the end of their bullying, we see Dexter doubled down on the floor, clutching at his body and maybe subconsciously trying to “wish away” the “boy genius” trope in a way that he, because of the extent of his physical pain, cannot verbalize. As a result, we, as viewers are left to vocalize the pain that Dexter feels and look to his performance in the role of “boy genius” as a way of pacifying the situation.
Before continuing, I feel it is necessary to understand the role of peace as it relates to our cultural understanding of the “boy genius”. We understand the “boy genius” to be peaceful. We understand the “boy genius” to avoid conflict. We understand the “boy genius” to fall in love but become, when it comes to violence, sexually impotent. Etymonline claims that the root definition for violence is to use “physical force to inflict injury or damage”. It is no wonder, then, that the “boy genius”, a social misfit, both fails to understand and fails to participate in violent acts except when provoked. This behavior both magnifies and makes visible a situation where Dexter can only behave in a way that reveals a dynamic where the colonized win by repeating the act of the colonizer. In a response to this idea of the colonized winning by repeating the act of the colonizer, Frantz Fanon writes: “Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is clearly an agenda for social disorder” (Fanon 2). The assaults that Dexter suffers in the act of playing dodgeball places him in a space where he internalizes the feeling and the trauma of being the assaulted. It is that trauma which psychologically harms Dexter and allows him to take on the role of what Fanon calls “decolonization”.
