![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastFor those who are not aware of the 1980s classic, "Revenge of the Nerds" is the story of Lambda Lambda Lambda's quest for revenge against their abusers.
The stage is quickly set. Using the 80s tropes, Lambda Lambda Lambda is a fraternity peopled by those who would be labeled "nerds", "dorks", and "geeks" interchangeably. For the most part, they're intelligent, technically minded, with interests in science, chess, and the less socially desired musical instruments. They also included a gay member, an immigrant with a thick accent, and one nicknamed "Booger". They interact among themselves quite well, but face social censure for who they are, despite causing no harm.
Their rival fraternity, the Alpha-Betas, are made up of the athletically accomplished. Or, in simpler terms, they're "jocks". Early in the movie, the Alpha-Betas burn down their building, quickly blaming that on faulty wiring, and are given the Lambda house. This isn't enough, they continue to humiliate the Lambda fraternity to the point of a mass-physical assault, which prompts an important question.
Louis Skolnick, the leader of the Nerds throughout the movie, asks the question. "What did we ever do to you?"
The response was "You were born."
You can see why this movie didn't have to be all that deep to strike a cord. I was alive in the 80s, and in school. I was alive to see how schools responded to bullying, even ones that liked to believe they had this morality thing covered. In a previous post, a long while back, I told a story that included the time when I went to my teacher for help with the harassment I'd been suffering only to be told "you should learn to accept constructive criticism."
"Revenge of the Nerds" depicted a group that took abuse. It depicted authority figures and a system that should have been on their side instead making excuses and giving preference to the more socially advantaged. It depicted every reason why we should want these nerds to have their revenge.
It also had big problems.
One of the problems has been identified time and again, already. It's a big one, one that taints the memory of the movie for good reason.
That lead character, Louis Skolnick, commits rape. It's not like how the 80s or the 90s saw rape. Heck, it's not how many people today think of rape. But, Louis Skolnick has oral sex with a woman who is under the impression, at the moment, that he is someone else. Yes, she had enthusiastically consented to sex, but not with him.
That's the most blatant example, but the movie is rife with that problem. The YouTube channel "Pop Culture Detective" gave it a name in its exploration of "The Big Bang Theory"; Adorkable Misogyny.
The Alpha-Beta fraternity sets the curve in its presentation of Toxic Masculinity in its most blatant form. They present a view of manhood as only expressible through anger, hatred, and violent aggression. The Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity is, then, treated as good by simply not achieving that level of blatant violence. The members still treat women as things, prizes to be won and showed off for prestige. But, because the alternative shown is more blatant and the bad guys, we accept it.
It needs to be understood and addressed.
Another problem... I'm sure this is going to meet with some resistance. The nerds need to get far more violent. The story needs to find that line between laughing at the comeuppance of the Alpha-Betas and feeling sick about what's being done to them... and cross it. At least a couple Alpha-Betas need to suffer to such a degree that this can't help but be a dark comedy.
The reason is that our bullying narratives, as a country, tend to run down a line of options.
1. Go to the authorities. When that fails...
2. Make friends with the bullies in some way. When that fails...
3. Combat them on their own terms and with proportionate response. When that fails or is impossible on the face of it...
4. Just endure it, it'll be over in time.
"Revenge of the Nerds" goes for number three, combating the bullies on their own terms. In this case, that of "fraternity pranks".
But, if there's anything I know about bullies, it's that they act from a point where number three retaliation is impossible. People who harass and play pranks do so from a position of social advantage. People who physically assault do so from a position of physical advantage. Sometimes it mixes, but the key is always an advantage.
Due to that advantage, a proportionate response gets a more than proportionate response in turn. Or the attempt, itself, is used to justify continuing harassment and physical assault, while not having achieved anything like proportionate effect.
The story has to go to a dark place because the alternative is telling people that option three can work.
We can have a similar start to the story. The Alpha-Betas, in their display of traditional toxic-masculinity, burn down their building due to a party-trick gone awry. In a scene to establish the social matters, we see the Alpha-Betas and the Lambas, before the dean and each making their case. The dean is obviously on the side of the Alpha-Betas, even as the Alpha-Betas belittle the Lambdas with barely veiled insults.
This initially puts the Lambdas in the University's gym, where they are subject to more harassment any time they don't get up and out in time to convenience the Alpha-Beta athletes and where they are subject to property damage if they leave anything available to be destroyed. Obviously, taking (or finding some way to pressure the Lambdas into giving up) their home wasn't enough appeasement to stop the abuse.
Option number two didn't work.
Around the point where the Lambdas find a new house and move in, there may be an expected moment of peace. After all, when not on school grounds, the Alpha-Betas have no cause to come to them... but they do anyway, damaging the house in a "fraternity prank".
At this point, we show the failure of option one. The dean, much as in the original movie, claims that it just isn't his jurisdiction. The cops won't take this seriously because, after all, this is just fraternity pranks. And, the Lambda member who goes to their Christian pastor or priest for guidance is only told to forgive. Of course, most of them will offer option two as the ideal solution. The cop will offer up option three.
And, if pressed, eventually, they all go to option four.
Out of desperation and hope, the Lambdas try option three, proportionate response on the bully's own chosen field. It can also be much like the movie, wherein the conflict came from making a show that people would watch and cheer.
Note that, in the movie, the biggest case of physical assault happened after the Lambdas won a contest on the bully's own terms. And, that matches up to cases of bullying. Defeat on their own terms doesn't stop bullies, doesn't gain their even grudging respect. That's not something they're prepared to even consider.
Here we move the conflict over to fraternity pranks. In the movie we have, the pranks included inducing acne via chemical additions to the Alpha-Beta cleanliness efforts and treating their jockstraps to induce a strong burning sensation. The point has been made that either of those, and other similar pranks, would readily get the Lambdas arrested. And, that's true.
What's also true is that the same behavior that would readily get the Lambdas arrested had already been accepted of the Alpha-Betas. Another note of truth is that what would readily get the Lambdas arrested is exactly what had been suggested by anybody who suggested standing up to them on their own terms, AKA option three.
That means that the next stage of the story has to be the consequences imposed by the very people who refused to back up any claims of the value of option one. The dean will take them to task, impose consequences and threaten more. The police will threaten arrest. The one who went to the pastor will hear about how they were wrong to retaliate and are required to forgive.
It will be important that this is done and, within the story, recorded. This will be an established pattern for the sequel... but we're not done with this one, yet.
At this point, what started out as show-craft accomplishment and pranks need escalation. Options one through three have shown to be failures and option four is has limits. It's time for option five, cross moral boundaries, AKA go nuclear.
This is where the story goes dark. Where the goal has always been to get some peace from the abuse, all the other methods either fail or don't even make the attempt. Now, the method needs to be achieving a status in which the Alpha-Betas know that any abuse will be met with disproportionate suffering. At this point, it'll be agreed, among the Lambdas, that more needs to be done even though everybody else seems to believe they've crossed a boundary even by making the effort that they'd been told to make.
This boundary crossing will lead to expulsions, injuries, and, towards the end, at least one death.
The first story ends with the indication of a trial forthcoming.
For the sequel, we look to the character of Ogre. Ogre, in the first movie that we have, is the epitome of all that is disliked about the Hollywood portrayal of jocks. He's big, muscled, growls, and seems to revel in a lack of any kind of intellectual sophistication. He rejects even his given name, "Frederick W. Palowakski", calling the Dean of the college an asshole for using it.
In that franchise's first sequel, "Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise", "Ogre", late in the movie, falls into the ocean and cannot swim. He is saved not by his fellow Alpha-Betas, but the Lambdas. This results in a heel-turn of Ogre's loyalties and he leaves the Alpha-Betas for the Lambdas, who change his uniform and firmly establish that he will go by "Frederick".
This is another problem with the franchise that we have. The character with the name of Frederick and the nickname of Ogre goes from performing one role to performing another.
Throughout the first story in our remake, Ogre must be able to witness everything the Lambdas witness. Ogre may be a part of the manipulation that makes options one through three impossible, but he's also there to see it. He might not obviously be on the road to redemption, but when there comes the time to argue that the Lambdas have gone too far, he'll be the one in best position to see that there was no other place to go.
At the same time, in his own way, Ogre has been practicing option two. From early in his life, he couldn't beat them. They were everywhere in his life. But, he could shape himself to their expectations, denying elements of himself as quickly as they crop up, because they contradict the image of himself and his place in his peer-group. For the second story, Ogre can see that, even as he says that they have gone too far, he has gone too far much earlier.
That can set him on a task of self-examination. He can do what people go to college to do, transform. Impulses that he rejected once upon a time can be accepted. We shouldn't make sexuality or gender identity into a joke, but at the very least, he can accept and treat as legitimate the impulse to give D&D a try.
And, of course, we come back to the part that others have noted before me and I noted as valid. How do we address the misogyny?
I would be willing, out of sheer aversion to the discomfort of it, to leave the remake without that at all. No oral sex under false pretenses. No invasions of women's dormitories. No objectification at all. That would still be an improvement. But, if only in theory, we should acknowledge and respond.
In the movie that we have, a cheerleader is one of the high-value objects to be taken from leader of the Alpha-Beta's. Taking her from him becomes one of the chief victories of the nerds. She goes along with this and doesn't mind having received an orgasm on false terms (not that she's obligated to object... I mean... her kink is okay, but she needs education in communication, boundary setting, safewords, etc.).
In the remade story, she needs to object... Without it getting to the point of sex without enthusiastic consent, she needs to object.
She will put it and, eventually, make it understood that Louis is doing to her what the Alpha-Betas have done to Louis. Harassment, invasion of privacy, theft of property, leaving her without the ability to be at peace. And, the reasoning is the same, in truth. She is his target not for what she has done, but for her appearance and her place in the standing social order. In short, the only thing she did to earn this abuse is be born.
I would like to imagine that would force Louis to re-establish a new boundary, force him to respect her, but I know people too well. I know the people with whom I most readily identify are not the perfect people I would like my tribe to be. The more realistic option is for this to be a conflict among the Lambdas, with one person or a small subsection advocating against such harassment and, indeed, taking action against the effort. That, too, can go, eventually, to a dark place.
The nerds will do horrible things in their revenge. The women will do horrible things in defending themselves. It will be easy to claim that they went too far. In the end, we will need to provoke a question. Is it really too far if that's what it takes?
I have a feeling that there will be some disagreement and I will invite that here more than in other places. When the topics include abuse, sexism, and a permissive authority structure, I will give myself an extra reminder of just how fallible I am. So, please feel free to hold me to task.
The stage is quickly set. Using the 80s tropes, Lambda Lambda Lambda is a fraternity peopled by those who would be labeled "nerds", "dorks", and "geeks" interchangeably. For the most part, they're intelligent, technically minded, with interests in science, chess, and the less socially desired musical instruments. They also included a gay member, an immigrant with a thick accent, and one nicknamed "Booger". They interact among themselves quite well, but face social censure for who they are, despite causing no harm.
Their rival fraternity, the Alpha-Betas, are made up of the athletically accomplished. Or, in simpler terms, they're "jocks". Early in the movie, the Alpha-Betas burn down their building, quickly blaming that on faulty wiring, and are given the Lambda house. This isn't enough, they continue to humiliate the Lambda fraternity to the point of a mass-physical assault, which prompts an important question.
Louis Skolnick, the leader of the Nerds throughout the movie, asks the question. "What did we ever do to you?"
The response was "You were born."
You can see why this movie didn't have to be all that deep to strike a cord. I was alive in the 80s, and in school. I was alive to see how schools responded to bullying, even ones that liked to believe they had this morality thing covered. In a previous post, a long while back, I told a story that included the time when I went to my teacher for help with the harassment I'd been suffering only to be told "you should learn to accept constructive criticism."
"Revenge of the Nerds" depicted a group that took abuse. It depicted authority figures and a system that should have been on their side instead making excuses and giving preference to the more socially advantaged. It depicted every reason why we should want these nerds to have their revenge.
It also had big problems.
One of the problems has been identified time and again, already. It's a big one, one that taints the memory of the movie for good reason.
That lead character, Louis Skolnick, commits rape. It's not like how the 80s or the 90s saw rape. Heck, it's not how many people today think of rape. But, Louis Skolnick has oral sex with a woman who is under the impression, at the moment, that he is someone else. Yes, she had enthusiastically consented to sex, but not with him.
That's the most blatant example, but the movie is rife with that problem. The YouTube channel "Pop Culture Detective" gave it a name in its exploration of "The Big Bang Theory"; Adorkable Misogyny.
The Alpha-Beta fraternity sets the curve in its presentation of Toxic Masculinity in its most blatant form. They present a view of manhood as only expressible through anger, hatred, and violent aggression. The Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity is, then, treated as good by simply not achieving that level of blatant violence. The members still treat women as things, prizes to be won and showed off for prestige. But, because the alternative shown is more blatant and the bad guys, we accept it.
It needs to be understood and addressed.
Another problem... I'm sure this is going to meet with some resistance. The nerds need to get far more violent. The story needs to find that line between laughing at the comeuppance of the Alpha-Betas and feeling sick about what's being done to them... and cross it. At least a couple Alpha-Betas need to suffer to such a degree that this can't help but be a dark comedy.
The reason is that our bullying narratives, as a country, tend to run down a line of options.
1. Go to the authorities. When that fails...
2. Make friends with the bullies in some way. When that fails...
3. Combat them on their own terms and with proportionate response. When that fails or is impossible on the face of it...
4. Just endure it, it'll be over in time.
"Revenge of the Nerds" goes for number three, combating the bullies on their own terms. In this case, that of "fraternity pranks".
But, if there's anything I know about bullies, it's that they act from a point where number three retaliation is impossible. People who harass and play pranks do so from a position of social advantage. People who physically assault do so from a position of physical advantage. Sometimes it mixes, but the key is always an advantage.
Due to that advantage, a proportionate response gets a more than proportionate response in turn. Or the attempt, itself, is used to justify continuing harassment and physical assault, while not having achieved anything like proportionate effect.
The story has to go to a dark place because the alternative is telling people that option three can work.
We can have a similar start to the story. The Alpha-Betas, in their display of traditional toxic-masculinity, burn down their building due to a party-trick gone awry. In a scene to establish the social matters, we see the Alpha-Betas and the Lambas, before the dean and each making their case. The dean is obviously on the side of the Alpha-Betas, even as the Alpha-Betas belittle the Lambdas with barely veiled insults.
This initially puts the Lambdas in the University's gym, where they are subject to more harassment any time they don't get up and out in time to convenience the Alpha-Beta athletes and where they are subject to property damage if they leave anything available to be destroyed. Obviously, taking (or finding some way to pressure the Lambdas into giving up) their home wasn't enough appeasement to stop the abuse.
Option number two didn't work.
Around the point where the Lambdas find a new house and move in, there may be an expected moment of peace. After all, when not on school grounds, the Alpha-Betas have no cause to come to them... but they do anyway, damaging the house in a "fraternity prank".
At this point, we show the failure of option one. The dean, much as in the original movie, claims that it just isn't his jurisdiction. The cops won't take this seriously because, after all, this is just fraternity pranks. And, the Lambda member who goes to their Christian pastor or priest for guidance is only told to forgive. Of course, most of them will offer option two as the ideal solution. The cop will offer up option three.
And, if pressed, eventually, they all go to option four.
Out of desperation and hope, the Lambdas try option three, proportionate response on the bully's own chosen field. It can also be much like the movie, wherein the conflict came from making a show that people would watch and cheer.
Note that, in the movie, the biggest case of physical assault happened after the Lambdas won a contest on the bully's own terms. And, that matches up to cases of bullying. Defeat on their own terms doesn't stop bullies, doesn't gain their even grudging respect. That's not something they're prepared to even consider.
Here we move the conflict over to fraternity pranks. In the movie we have, the pranks included inducing acne via chemical additions to the Alpha-Beta cleanliness efforts and treating their jockstraps to induce a strong burning sensation. The point has been made that either of those, and other similar pranks, would readily get the Lambdas arrested. And, that's true.
What's also true is that the same behavior that would readily get the Lambdas arrested had already been accepted of the Alpha-Betas. Another note of truth is that what would readily get the Lambdas arrested is exactly what had been suggested by anybody who suggested standing up to them on their own terms, AKA option three.
That means that the next stage of the story has to be the consequences imposed by the very people who refused to back up any claims of the value of option one. The dean will take them to task, impose consequences and threaten more. The police will threaten arrest. The one who went to the pastor will hear about how they were wrong to retaliate and are required to forgive.
It will be important that this is done and, within the story, recorded. This will be an established pattern for the sequel... but we're not done with this one, yet.
At this point, what started out as show-craft accomplishment and pranks need escalation. Options one through three have shown to be failures and option four is has limits. It's time for option five, cross moral boundaries, AKA go nuclear.
This is where the story goes dark. Where the goal has always been to get some peace from the abuse, all the other methods either fail or don't even make the attempt. Now, the method needs to be achieving a status in which the Alpha-Betas know that any abuse will be met with disproportionate suffering. At this point, it'll be agreed, among the Lambdas, that more needs to be done even though everybody else seems to believe they've crossed a boundary even by making the effort that they'd been told to make.
This boundary crossing will lead to expulsions, injuries, and, towards the end, at least one death.
The first story ends with the indication of a trial forthcoming.
For the sequel, we look to the character of Ogre. Ogre, in the first movie that we have, is the epitome of all that is disliked about the Hollywood portrayal of jocks. He's big, muscled, growls, and seems to revel in a lack of any kind of intellectual sophistication. He rejects even his given name, "Frederick W. Palowakski", calling the Dean of the college an asshole for using it.
In that franchise's first sequel, "Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise", "Ogre", late in the movie, falls into the ocean and cannot swim. He is saved not by his fellow Alpha-Betas, but the Lambdas. This results in a heel-turn of Ogre's loyalties and he leaves the Alpha-Betas for the Lambdas, who change his uniform and firmly establish that he will go by "Frederick".
This is another problem with the franchise that we have. The character with the name of Frederick and the nickname of Ogre goes from performing one role to performing another.
Throughout the first story in our remake, Ogre must be able to witness everything the Lambdas witness. Ogre may be a part of the manipulation that makes options one through three impossible, but he's also there to see it. He might not obviously be on the road to redemption, but when there comes the time to argue that the Lambdas have gone too far, he'll be the one in best position to see that there was no other place to go.
At the same time, in his own way, Ogre has been practicing option two. From early in his life, he couldn't beat them. They were everywhere in his life. But, he could shape himself to their expectations, denying elements of himself as quickly as they crop up, because they contradict the image of himself and his place in his peer-group. For the second story, Ogre can see that, even as he says that they have gone too far, he has gone too far much earlier.
That can set him on a task of self-examination. He can do what people go to college to do, transform. Impulses that he rejected once upon a time can be accepted. We shouldn't make sexuality or gender identity into a joke, but at the very least, he can accept and treat as legitimate the impulse to give D&D a try.
And, of course, we come back to the part that others have noted before me and I noted as valid. How do we address the misogyny?
I would be willing, out of sheer aversion to the discomfort of it, to leave the remake without that at all. No oral sex under false pretenses. No invasions of women's dormitories. No objectification at all. That would still be an improvement. But, if only in theory, we should acknowledge and respond.
In the movie that we have, a cheerleader is one of the high-value objects to be taken from leader of the Alpha-Beta's. Taking her from him becomes one of the chief victories of the nerds. She goes along with this and doesn't mind having received an orgasm on false terms (not that she's obligated to object... I mean... her kink is okay, but she needs education in communication, boundary setting, safewords, etc.).
In the remade story, she needs to object... Without it getting to the point of sex without enthusiastic consent, she needs to object.
She will put it and, eventually, make it understood that Louis is doing to her what the Alpha-Betas have done to Louis. Harassment, invasion of privacy, theft of property, leaving her without the ability to be at peace. And, the reasoning is the same, in truth. She is his target not for what she has done, but for her appearance and her place in the standing social order. In short, the only thing she did to earn this abuse is be born.
I would like to imagine that would force Louis to re-establish a new boundary, force him to respect her, but I know people too well. I know the people with whom I most readily identify are not the perfect people I would like my tribe to be. The more realistic option is for this to be a conflict among the Lambdas, with one person or a small subsection advocating against such harassment and, indeed, taking action against the effort. That, too, can go, eventually, to a dark place.
The nerds will do horrible things in their revenge. The women will do horrible things in defending themselves. It will be easy to claim that they went too far. In the end, we will need to provoke a question. Is it really too far if that's what it takes?
I have a feeling that there will be some disagreement and I will invite that here more than in other places. When the topics include abuse, sexism, and a permissive authority structure, I will give myself an extra reminder of just how fallible I am. So, please feel free to hold me to task.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-09 06:37 pm (UTC)