I'm not sure how I missed this the first time around, but CNN has an interview with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon that discusses their respective new (at the time) movies MirrorMask and Serenity. They spend considerable time talking about geek culture and its intersections (and occasional absorption by) the mainstream.

Here's an excerpt, where they talk about their fans self-identifying as geeks and nerds:

Neil Gaiman: I think the fan base is literate. You need to be reasonably bright to get the jokes and to really follow what's going on. That, by definition, is going to exclude a lot of people who will then get rather irritated at us for being pretentious and silly and putting in things they didn't quite get. But it's also going to mean that some of the people who do get the stuff will probably be fairly bright.

Joss Whedon: Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read. So yes, I think it's kind of the same thing.

But I also think there's a bit of misconception with that. Everybody who labels themselves a nerd isn't some giant person locked in a cubbyhole who's never seen the opposite sex. Especially with the way the Internet is now, I think that definition is getting a little more diffuse.

They go on to talk about how it feels to have the mainstream venturing into their comic book gutters, which in some ways echoes the conversations we've been having about mainstreaming geekdom over at Uncle Bear. They also speculate on Kitty Pryde as the proto-Buffy, wonder if any Gaiman book will ever be turned into a movie, and consider the blank slate iconography of Wonder Woman.