The eighties were definitely the golden age of nerd-related cinema.They had The Revenge of the Nerds(1984) and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987). Sure, the nineties had Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love, but they were only released on TV.
This might lead you to believe that it was good to be a nerd in the eighties, that back then nerds were something people publicly complained about but secretly loved, like MacDonald’s hamburgers or reality TV. But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong.
Firstly, if people really had liked nerds in the eighties, what would the nerds have had to take revenge for? Secondly, the idea of nerds taking revenge resulted from people being secretly fearful of nerds: everyone hated nerds, but was also afraid of them because they had specialised knowledge that other people didn’t have. Who do you think built the atomic bomb? Nerds, that’s who.
Sure people enjoyed watching the nerds get their revenge, but this resulted from the fact that everybody was secretly afraid that they themselves were nerds but didn’t know it. Have you ever wanted to make an unkind remark about someone’s body odour behind their back, but were stopped by a sudden, irrational fear that you also stank, and bringing up the subject would expose you to ridicule? That’s kind of how everybody felt about nerds in the eighties.
So why did nerd-related cinema die out? Why is it that in the nineties Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love were only shown on Fox, and in the twenty-first century Revenge of the Nerds V (Nerds go to Hogwarts?) was never made at all? I’ll tell you why: because today we’re all nerds.
Think about this for a moment: in the original Revenge of the Nerds movie, the two main characters were established as nerds when they talked about setting up a personal computer in their dorm room. That’s right: the audience instantly understood these two men to be the most contemptible losers and social outcasts because they owned a computer. Do you own a computer? Don’t lie, because if you didn’t own a computer you wouldn’t be able to read this. And these two nerds didn’t even own a computer each, but just one between them. Only owning half a computer made them big enough nerds to be the stars of a movie about nerds, and that means that you, with your desktop and laptop and smart phone, are six times as big a nerd as either of them.
You know how your mother doesn’t understand anything about computers? How she won’t start an Amazon account because she’s afraid Romanian cybercriminals will steal her login information and use it to hack into the microchip in her cat? The reason why she doesn’t know anything about computers is that, back in the eighties, only nerds knew about computers. If you know more about computers than your mother, that means that, in eighties terms, you’re about as big a nerd as they come.
In the eighties, people argued about whether Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger was tougher, or whether Mr. T could beat Hulk Hogan in a bar fight. Now they argue about whether iOS or Android is better, or whether Call of Duty is better than Gears of War. The nerds have had their revenge: they’ve made us all like them.
Nerds, circa 1984.
Rock stars, circa 2012.