What is wrong with this movie? How can people make a joke out of rape? I am so sure that the cheerleader would fall in love with the nerd after he raped her. And let’s not forget these nerds also broke into the sorority and set up cameras to film these young women naked.
Was morality really so much different when this movie was released that we are not only supposed to find these activities funny, but we are also supposed to cheer for the people committing these horrible acts. I wonder if the message this movie sent out made people think it was a good idea to rape a woman to get her to fall in love as long as it wasn’t a violent rape. Does anybody here think the rape in this movie was funny?
*This might be better suited for the Pit, but it involves a movie. Please move it if you think it would be better.
your parents had a costume party and some guy with the same costume as your dad and had sex with with your mom because she thought it was her husband. Would you call that rape? Would you say she consented to have sex with the guy?
I looked up the law for simple rape in my state and it has language which states, “When the female victim submits under the belief that the person committing the act is her husband and such belief is intentionally induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the offender.” If the person committing the act was not her husband, but she consented due to mistaken identity, it might be sexual battery.
Of course, I don’t think Revenge of the Nerds is that deep, really.
Merits of the movie (or the legal argument) aside, I seem to remember that as of 1983 the truism that “rape is about power, not sex” was not yet universal in pop culture, and that jokes involving rape were, for better or worse, still to be found on the continuum of sex jokes. Maybe on the borderline, and I’m not saying this was a good thing…just that there was somewhat less pop awareness then than now. So the answer to “How can people make a joke of rape?” is…they just did. Racist jokes used to be more common too.
Of course, I was only 16 when the movie came out, so maybe it’s just me who was less aware.
No, it wasn’t so different. Wasn’t it American Pie (1999) in which a teenage boy set up a hidden webcam in the room of a hot foreign exchange student staying in his house, to broadcast video of her changing clothes to his friends?
I saw this movie for the first time on video back when I was maybe 15 – so 1985 or so. I don’t remember thinking much of anything about that scene. Maybe it was because I was a horny young man, but I think some of it was because that kind of deception was not popularly considered rape at the time.
When I saw that part of the movie on TV a year or so ago, though, the scene made me extremely uncomfortable, basically because yes, you sure could consider it a rape scene.
Of course, it was a movie, and people sometimes accept behavior in movies that they won’t accept in real life. And, most importantly, the reaction of the victim isn’t shock and horror – she enjoys the experience. I’m sure it could be argued that she wasn’t raped at all, given that she didn’t consider it rape, but I’m not familiar with Nerdville rape law circa 1983.
That said, I wouldn’t be comfortable watching that scene again today, and not because I think <em>Revenge of the Nerds</em> is a fairly crappy movie. (Actually, for an early '80s sex comedy, it’s not bad. High praise indeed.)
What about A Clockwork Orange? Widely considered a classic across the board, it features a hilarious rape scene. Rape, like anything else offensive, can be not just funny but hilarious when handled correctly.
Prison Rape has been recurring comedic motif in films since Cool Hand Luke, and probably before. Is it less offensive because it’s homosexual rape?
Also, bestiality and rape-by-animals have come into vogue in even lighthearted romantic comedies. While they’ve been mostly unfunny attempts, more adventurous comedy sources have successfully navigated that territory.
But all of that’s neither here nor there. Isn’t it specifically implied in Nerds that the mask only serves to get the girl “into position” (so to speak), but she’s turned on when she realizes it’s the nerd and closes the deal?
Wrong. Humor can indeed involve rape, child abuse, or homicide, and sometimes all three.
Bill Cosby’s famous “I’m you’re father, I brought you into this world, and I can take you out” nicely combines child abuse and homicide, and he’s considered one of the “cleanest” comedians.
Last year there was a news story about the world’s funniest joke, and it revolved around hunters and death.
An example cited upthread about the costume party was an actual joke in Playboy’s jokes page not two months ago.
This thread is exactly why there is a backlash against political correctness. Lighten up, people.
How can people manufacture/buy/purchase video games featuring car-jackings and random violence? How can people watch “The Real Guilligan’s Island”? How can people put ketchup on a Hot-Dog?
Its a fucked-up world. Get used to it and things will be easier on you.
I can’t speak for child abuse or rape as I’ve not seen it much in the movies I watch but homicide can definitely be funny depending on the context. I love black comedies and there’re plenty of humorous deaths in that genre.
And did you never laugh at Looney Tunes? While none of the characters died in those cartoons, it sure as hell wasn’t from a lack of trying.
I’m with Kel on this one: I saw the movie when I was 16 and it first came out - agreed, PC was hardly rampant in that era - and it creeped me out even then.
Mind you, a lot of sex-based jokes in movies date very quickly {probably rightly so, IMHO - hopefully we have progressed a little}: remember Leslie Neilsen and the young boy Billy in the cockpit in Airplane {1979?} - “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” Anyone writing paedophile jokes for cheap laughs now would probably be burnt at the stake.
Or count the rape scenes in early 70’s movies - Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter {1972?} springs to mind, where he casually rapes a woman on two different occasions, and she enjoys it each time. Actually, count the number of pre-90’s Eastwood movies that feature rape scenes.
I don’t think it is the dreaded PC monster; rather that many {I would say most, but I’m not that optimistic} people have come to accept that certain types of humour are offensive, and movie studios have responded accordingly.
It was funny back then not because people used to think paedophilia was A-OK (they didn’t) or that it really wasn’t that big a deal. Rather, it was because it was totally innappropriate, especially in an aeroplane disaster movie (which of course was the genre being parodied). In my opinion, it remains funny for that very reason.
(I don’t think it was Leslie Nielson, by the way.)
Things have changed, I think. Just the other day I was remembering a particular scene out of Animal House, where a character’s conscience, expressed as a miniature angel and a devil, is arguing over whether he should have sex with his date, who has fallen comatose under the influence of alcohol, and I remember thinking that this was funny at the time. But now I just go “eugh, date rape”.