Stereotype and Genius

Here's the thing about stereotypes: they are both true and not true. They are true for some people, which is why they strike a nerve when brought up. But they also assume that everyone has the capacity to attach themselves to a fictionalized and reduced construct.

In other words, stereotypes are words without context. Words would reduce a concept or a person to a fixed, immutable entity if it weren't for contexts. But even in different contexts within a certain culture at any given time, stereotypes remain the same. If they change, they change gradually and seamlessly with every small change in culture, so as to not raise any alarms if their meanings are suddenly discovered to have changed completely.

The word genius is a stereotype in that regard. But what complicates matters is the fact that, fictionally, contexts can be construed and manipulated to mean various things, all or none of which may be true to culture. So a genius becomes, in one fell swoop, both word and stereotype. In the fictional sense it is a word; in the cultural sense, a stereotype. In other words, it is both mutable and unchanging, both dynamic and contained.