revenge of the nerds essay

Another way to show that Lisp was neater than Turing machines was to write a universal Lisp function and show that it is briefer and more comprehensible than the description of a universal Turing machine. This was the Lisp function eval ..., which computes the value of a Lisp expression.... Writing eval required inventing a notation representing Lisp functions as Lisp data, and such a notation was devised for the purposes of the paper with no thought that it would be used to express Lisp programs in practice.

Steve Russell said, look, why don't I program this eval ..., and I said to him, ho, ho, you're confusing theory with practice, this eval is intended for reading, not for computing. But he went ahead and did it. That is, he compiled the eval in my paper into [IBM] 704 machine code, fixing bugs, and then advertised this as a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today....

Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.

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The Oral History of Revenge of the Nerds

By Steve Knopper

Time has been only slightly kinder to Revenge of the Nerds than to , say, Sixteen Candles. Or Driving Miss Daisy. Or Tom Arnold’s TV career. When it came out in the summer of 1984, Jeff Kanew’s comedy was a feel-good revenge story about plucky antiheroes who wanted to make the world safe for oppressed weirdos everywhere. Now, the film is more than a little problematic.

Immortalized along with Booger’s belching and Poindexter’s hip-hop violin-sawing are the nerds’ secret filming of naked sorority women and, especially, horn-rimmed Lewis Skolnick’s conquest of Betty the cheerleader while wearing a mask and pretending to be her boyfriend. (“I do think that scene needed to be fleshed out,” Julia Montgomery, who played Betty and is now a Los Angeles Realtor, says today.) For the movie's 35th anniversary, GQ talked to the cast and writers—covering the good, the bad, and the coke-fueled, behind-the-scenes shenanigans.

Miguel Tejada-Flores and Tim Metcalfe wrote the original script based on Tejada-Flores’s father, a “brilliant, brilliant nerd” who immigrated from Bolivia to the community of mischievous hackers and scientists at Caltech. “Pasadena was a terrestrial paradise for nerds,” he says.

Ted Field ( producer ): The title Revenge of the Nerds was something I came up with. Joe Wizan, who was head at [20th Century] Fox, finally agreed to give it a shot at a budget of $6 million, and it surprised everyone.

Jeff Buhai ( screenwriter ): I don't think we knew how to spell "nerds." We spelled it N-U-R-D-S.

Steve Zacharias ( screenwriter ): The story was actually a true story at the University of Wisconsin. Our next-door neighbor didn't get into any of the fraternities, so he started his own fraternity. They'd lose 80-to-nothing in football, and their parties were nerdy, but they had fun.

Buhai: You make the fraternity guys the perfect villain, and then you make the weak and the oppressed and the different the heroes. That's going to work forever.

Jeff Kanew ( director ): Wizan sent me several scripts. One was Bachelor Party , one was Gimme an 'F,' about cheerleader camp, and the other was Revenge of the Nerds . I said, "That sounds stupid." But I realized, "I relate to this."

The first key casting choice was Curtis Armstrong as Booger, a crude outcast with crazy hair and a leather jacket. Armstrong had just been in Risky Business.

Zacharias : We thought, "If we get him, we've got a hit." And we were right. He takes our stupid lines and turns it into Shakespeare.

Curtis Armstrong ( Booger ): The money I'd made on Risky Business was just disappearing. You can't imagine the difference between being sent a script of Risky Business , then being sent, for your next film, Revenge of the Nerds , particularly when it was in the condition that it was in at the time, which was not great.

Ted McGinley ( Stan ): When I first got it, I was almost embarrassed to say the title.

Larry B. Scott ( Lamar ): I got tired of doing these roles: “I’m gonna cut you, man!” I wanted to do something different. [ Revenge of the Nerds ] allowed me to do something other than N----- #36, excuse my French.

Kanew: Bobby Carradine said, "Look, I don't know what I'm doing here—I'm not a nerd, I'm probably a guy who would beat up a nerd." He used to drive fast cars on Mulholland Drive, and he was a Carradine brother. But he was a secret nerd.

Robert Carradine ( Lewis ): I stopped by an optometrist store, and I'm looking at the glasses, and they're all $300 a pair. The optometrist comes out: "Can I help you?" I go, "Yeah, but not at this price." He says, "You've got to be careful what you put in front of your eyes, young man." I said it's for an audition and I whispered, "It's to play a nerd." The guy, in a loud voice, says, "A nerd? Yeah, I can fix you up!"

Scott: What was big back then was Flashdance . Jennifer Beals. I went in [to the audition] dressed as close to her as I could.

Tim Busfield ( Poindexter ): [For the audition] I'd taken Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and had it in a little Walkman, and went in and did Poindexter's dance in the movie. At the end—and this is the only time that's ever happened—Jeff Kanew offered me the part in the room.

The University of Arizona signed off on the six-week Tucson shoot, but the campus Sorority Council objected. Kanew, Edwards and Carradine flew out to make their case in person, which was especially challenging given sorority leaders’ concerns about the line “we’ve got bush.”

Carradine : I figured out that I wouldn't be able to develop the character living in the Hollywood hills and riding my Triumph motorcycle. I couldn't go from that to a nerd, there's just no way. So I asked the studio if they would send me to the location two weeks early just so I could get into the zone.

I brought a remote-controlled model airplane to put together. I didn't bring any of my civilian clothes. All I brought was nerd wardrobe. And I didn't leave my hotel room for three days—I was just too embarrassed. Finally, I needed a part made and I called the University of Arizona metal-shop guy and he said, "Yeah, come on over, give me the specifications and I'll build it for you." And I had to dress up as Lewis and step out of the door. To my astonishment, no one reacted. They just thought I was an engineering student.

Julia Montgomery ( Betty ): The script was minimal for Betty. Those of us who weren't the nerds didn't have the same kinds of rehearsals.

Armstrong: I was picking my nose and belching. And what was first in my mind was all of my acting teachers from the Academy of Dramatic Art at Oakland University.

Carradine: About a week before the filming, Anthony [Edwards, who played Gilbert] showed up and we went over to the campus and tried to rush the fraternities. By that time, everybody on campus knew the nerds were coming, except this one fraternity.

This guy takes us to the inner sanctum of the fraternity, and there's the head guy, he's got one of those helmets on with the two beers attached to it and the tubes coming down to his mouth. He says, "Hey, Biff!"—or whatever the guy's name was—"these guys want to rush."

He turned around and looked at Anthony and me and just said, "No way," and went back to the party. That's how I knew we had figured it out.

Montgomery: The second I met him, Bobby was in character.

Carradine: I think it was Curtis who came up to me. He said, "I get it." I said, "Get what?" He said, "You're playing it for real." I said, "Yeah. These guys don't know they're nerds." And that set the tone for the movie.

The nerds wrote much of their own dialogue on the set. Or so they said.

John Goodman ( Coach Harris ): [Kanew] ran, in a good way, a very loose ship. We all trusted each other and just kind of let it rip.

Carradine: The movie's full of these little snippets that happened on the moment—like when Brian Tochi, after they had this big pile of jockstraps we're pouring the Liquid Heat on, goes, "Ah, salad!"

Goodman: I was having trouble getting it right. And I wound up making a bunch of stuff up.

Zacharias: It's bullshit. They didn't adlib.

Brian Tochi ( Takashi ): Curtis and I were passing the time, just goofing around, playing cards and checkers, and we start coming up with these bits and we're laughing, thinking, “Hey wouldn’t this be funny?”

Zacharias: Okay, that's possible.

Tochi: We were smoking pot and Ted came in and had never done that, ever, in his life. So we said, "Here, Ted, why don’t you try this?" and passed a little joint around. “Now hold it, Ted, hold it!”

Then we’re saying, "How you feeling, Ted?" And he says, "I’m feeling nothing at all." All of a sudden, he starts laughing and laughing and cannot stop—it’s this shriekish, freakish nonstop laugh, this crazy kind of "ha HA HAAH." Then Tim Busfield took Ted and incorporated that scenario into his stuff.

McGinley: What's funny is I really didn't party. I drank beer, kind of. But that was it for me.

Allegedly, cocaine was snorted.

Montgomery: This was the ‘80s!

Scott: We partied our ass off, I ain't gonna lie.

Busfield: At 6:00 in the morning, we would go to somebody's room and order 38 orders of bacon and eggs and two cases of beer. We were all in our twenties.

McGinley: I think there were drugs at the time. You can't take it from a guy who didn't do it to be the one who says, "Yeah, it was there"—but I definitely saw some.

Scott: I remember Ted McGinley at 21, 22, and these girls were losing their minds over him.

Montgomery: It became very wild! There was a lot of sexual craziness going on. A lot of the guys were out with different local people. Larry B. Scott [who played Lamar] was, I guess you'd say, dead set on making sure that the entire town of Tucson knew that he was not actually gay.

Scott: I would like to say cocaine back then was rather prevalent. You can still prosecute, so I can't say that for sure .

Montgomery: One night we were all in John Goodman's room. He was a real doll. Genuine. Not what you would expect from his character. And I guess no one had a mirror or anything like that, so John stood up on the sofa and he pulled one of those horrible paintings out of the wall... and there was damage. [ Laughs. ] And the evening went on from there.

Goodman: That doesn't sound like me. Jesus. It's a great story! But I don't break things.

Scott: Bobby’s a really good guitarist and we would all gather in the room and sing along. He’s playing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, and, unbeknownst to us, two people sneak in and were singing with us. They actually robbed the joint and snuck into that room—we didn’t know this until the next day. They were going in there to hide.

Andrew Cassese ( Wormser ): They did a good job of shielding me from any explicit drug use and things like that. We're all at a party and at some point Larry B. takes my mom aside and went, "Oh, you're not going to want to be here in 20 minutes." And she's like, "Gotcha."

Scott: This is Arizona. Tucson. '82. Everybody's not cool with that coke shit.

Buhai: The [unnamed crew member] was dealing cocaine. And Peter Macgregor-Scott, the line producer, got the guy out of town, away from the police. And everything went back to normal.

Cassese: I remember the [crew member] getting taken out in cuffs.

Scott: They gave him a very stern warning. They happened to find him on a day when he didn’t have anything on him, which was a good thing.

Tochi: In the morning, because we were so beat, many of us would stand in line waiting for the on-set doctor to inject us with [Vitamin] B12 to get us going the next day.

The shoot was intense. In the climactic scene, the nerds compete with the jocks in the Greek Games to install their own Greek Council president and keep their fraternity. Lamar wins the javelin toss with a distinctive, wobbly technique (Larry B. Scott had the flu and could only film one take—then he returned to the hotel to hurl). Booger wins another contest with a tempestuous belch that, he later learned, involved an overdub of a camel having an orgasm. And the nerds win the music competition with a Devo-like electro-rap—renowned violinist Thomas Newman taught Busfield how to play the solo.

Kanew: [At one point] the jocks, inspired by John Goodman as the coach, run out of the locker room and wreck the nerds' house. I filmed that in great detail—there's a lot of smashing and crashing and there's a confrontation. Ogre throws Anthony Edwards off the porch and it's bullying. That was an important moment in the movie, but that had to go. The audience is having a good time and they're horrified by what's happening. Now you watch the movie, the jocks kick the fence and go inside the house and it's cut—and the nerds are picking up the aftermath.

McGinley: I had animosity towards [the nerds]. I just thought they were dicks. Ha. The first two weeks we did not intermingle. I had nothing to do with them.

It wasn't until much later that it started to loosen up.

Tochi: Bobby had a bowl of cereal on the couch watching the naked sorority chicks. He was actually eating his cereal in beer.

Armstrong: They had scheduled, outside the talent competition, something on my own, which was lip-syncing [Elvis] Presley doing "America the Beautiful," which I had been rehearsing in my bedroom with the first VHS player I had ever seen. The night of the recording, the producer and director said, "We can't do that, it's going to slow everything down." And I wind up doing Presley in the [scene] and no one knows why that is.

Scott: They tried to bring a choreographer in with us. I was like, "Psssh, damn the choreographer." Me and Andrew worked that shit out on our own. Andrew was actually a really good dancer.

Tochi: I got so much shit from Asian entities, newspapers, commentators and groups saying that I kind of perpetuated the Asian stereotype. But what made it different with me—first of all, at the time, I was one of the very Asian few actors in TV or film. Yes, it was a stereotype, but we were playing real people. We had heart and the film had heart. I thought, "Fuck 'em!" You know?

Lewis, our hero, gets the girl in the end—but in the creepiest way possible. After Betty and her jock boyfriend, Stan, have a fight, Lewis picks up Stan’s discarded Halloween costume and begins to have sex with her. When she finally learns his identity, she’s happy. Somehow the movie got away with this for decades, but in recent years, the scene has repelled critics and viewers. Crooked Marquee wrote in 2017: “Legally speaking, that’s ‘rape by deception.’” Even Zacharias, the screenwriter, refers to this as “the oral rape scene.”

Montgomery: In the '80s, we didn't see it as a rape scene, exactly.

Kanew: I've heard [criticism] a lot this year because of the #MeToo movement—that's considered a form of rape because it's sex under false pretenses. At the time, it was considered sort of a switch. She doesn't resist and scream and say "my God, get away from me!" Her first line was, "You're that nerd, oh, that's wonderful." That excuses it. But in a way, it's not excusable. If it were my daughter, I probably wouldn't like it.

Montgomery: I thought about it as "what a surprise, Stan's got some new moves—but oh my God, it's not Stan, it's Lewis!" He just wanted to date me. There's something charming about that. You can write this: I blame Jeff. There should've been one more beat in this scene—something else, something added, even if Betty had pushed him or slapped him or something.

Carradine: It wasn't until recently that people started to point that scene out and put it in a negative light. It was never our intention to have anything but a funny scene where I get the girl.

Busfield: The movie would've been just fine without it. He could've found another way to win the girl over.

Zacharias: I regret that. I've written a play for the musical and I eliminated the rape scene. I made it that Betty was thrown off the cheerleader squad because she flunked trigonometry and Lewis teaches her trigonometry and then before the rape scene he reveals who he is and she wants to have sex with him. I also regret the video scene. It would be goofy enough if they just did a panty raid and played it really nerdy.

McGinley: I got screwed, for sure. Stan got the short end of that deal. Lewis is going to jail! And Stan would remain king.

When it debuted to a wide theatrical audience on August 10, 1984, the film earned $15 million in its first week, eventually scoring $40 million at the box office.

Goodman: I had no idea people would still be talking about it this many years later.

McGinley: I read a poll a couple years ago—and this is a sports, football poll—"Top 10 Asshole Quarterbacks." And Stan Gable was in there. I mean, come on, that's like the highlight of my life.

Scott: Nerds were ostracized and shunned and hidden and being a nerd was the worst thing you could be. If you were called a nerd that meant you were getting 1-800-NO-PUSSY. Now being a nerd means "oh, he owns something, he's really smart."

Field: We're developing, at Fox, a sequel where we've reversed the status of the nerds and the jocks. Everybody wants to be Zuckerberg and the movie is about a jock trying to get respect on campus.

Tochi: This is before computers became cool. What made nerds also cool is Bill Gates, and the Steve Jobses of the world. Now everybody wants to be a nerd.

McGinley: When I watch that movie, do I cringe? A little bit, sometimes. Or do you just say, "Sorry, this still holds up, it's still funny"?

Scott: I remember Bernie Casey [the late actor who played U.N. Jefferson] telling me, "Wow, you’re going to be remembered for this more than anything you do." I didn’t get it at the time. Maybe he did. He seemed to be right.

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Revenge Of The Nerds

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Read This: An exhaustive analysis of Revenge Of The Nerds

On the surface, 1984’s Revenge Of The Nerds appears to be another entry in the slobs-vs.-snobs canon that dominated most comedies of the late ’70s and ’80s. But whereas most see it as another entry alongside films like Meatballs , Caddyshack , or Animal House , Rob Ager has a slightly different take on the film. Over on his site, Collative Learning , Ager offers up a much more detailed and sociopolitical analysis of the film than even its most ardent (and, well, nerdy) fans might have dreamt possible.

In 14 chapters clocking in at about 37 pages , Ager dissects the film’s merits and cultural legacy (not unlike The A.V. Club’s own A.A. Dowd did when he ran the series ) but also looks deeper into some of the more troubling aspects of the film and the implied life at Adams College under, as he calls it, “Nerd Rule.” He notes that while the film’s supposed (and quite literally voiced) message of acceptance of differences and otherness, the titular nerds actually only end up getting their titular revenge by effectively transforming into their most sworn enemy: the jocks.

The film demonizes jock behaviour and mentality, yet shows the nerds effectively transforming themselves into jocks as if it’s a thing to be proud of. The jocks have a wild drunken party and the nerds go one better by having a drunken and stoned party. In the jock party a song with cock rock lyrics called Are You Ready is played and in the opening of the nerd party there’s a similarly themed song called Are You Ready For The Sex Girls . I love the wild vs. boring juxtaposition between the scenes too. In another parallel Booger has two women like Ogre does. Like the jocks, the nerds start treating women as sex objects and parading their own sexuality (Poindexter dancing and moving his crotch). They sit up all night drinking beer and doing something we’d expect jocks to do–watching porn, which Wormser is under age for. And look at the changes in their usually rigid body language in the same scene–they’ve become the legs wide open lounge cats that the jocks domestically would be, their nerd clothes are gone and they’re boozing and eating junk food. Wormser and Lamar even have army fatigues on–a sign of masculinity. They disregard the law in their pursuit of fun and get away with it as if they’re untouchable. And Takashi breaks his cultural politeness by swearing during the tricycle race, as did his jock competitor at the start of the race.

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The entire analysis is a pretty fascinating look at the film from multiple angles . Ager examines the various stereotypes the film traffics in—be it ethnic, gender, sexuality, or basically any group that can be reduced to two-dimensional representation. He also looks at the ramifications of the nerds’ revenge and some subtle meanings behind various imagery used in the film (and, yes, he mentions the Freemasons). It’s a greatly detailed, researched, and exhaustive look at what many consider a simple entry in a comedy subgenre. Hey, Ogre—what do you call someone that writes up 37 pages on an ’80s sex romp culture comedy?

Thanks, Ogre.

Revenge of the Nerds: A Retrospective

Nerd – noun:

• a person devoted to intellectual, academic, or technical pursuits of interest;
• also : a person preoccupied with or devoted to a particular activity or field of interest.

Before superhero cinema, sci-fi, and anime became mainstream, before gaming became everyone’s favorite pastime, and before working in tech was cool, all of these points of interest were mostly associated with a subculture whose members were often marginalized and even ostracized among the youth. If you haven’t guessed by now, we’re referring to nerdom — a term that embodies the culture, practices, and interests of individuals who identify themselves or are identified as nerds.

Yes, that’s right, being a nerd wasn’t always a good thing. Historically speaking, the term “nerd” was largely pejorative, synonymous with social ineptitude, academic obsessions, and unbridled passions for any point of interest mentioned at the beginning of our discussion. But all that changed with the release of 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds , a comedy film that has set the standards for what defines a cult classic of the ‘80s, and the beginning of a somewhat commercially successful franchise that played its small part in bringing nerdom to the mainstream.

The movie introduces us to best friends and nerds Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe, who enroll in the fictional Adams College to study computer science. Following a series of events, the freshmen are kicked out of their dorms to accommodate the Alpha Beta fraternity, which includes most of the Adams football team (the jocks). Freshmen were given temporary living space in the gymnasium until they rushed and joined fraternities, but Lewis, Gilbert, and several other nerds failed to join (oh, surprise); instead, they obtained and renovated an old house near campus.

Their success puts the nerds in the Alpha Beta’s crosshairs, who start harassing the nerds — a campaign that involves ridicule and instances of property damage. In response, the nerds implore the Greek Council to sanction Alpha Betas (who actually run it); they get accepted into a Black fraternity, Lambda Lambda Lambda (Tri-Lambs), and end up not only challenging the Greek Council but also leading it, as Gilbert becomes the new Council president by the film’s end.

Through its humor, the original Revenge of the Nerds directly criticized the social dynamics prevalent in the 1980s, where physical prowess and superficial, fleeting popularity often overshadowed intellect and innovation. Nowadays, looking back on the film, a lot of the things that the nerds in Tri-Lambs would have enjoyed, like high-production sci-fi series, AAA video games, and all the tech gadgetry, are common course. Being a nerd is no longer the scarlet letter that it once was in the heyday of wedgies and swirlies from Hell.

We can say, with a degree of certainty, that the Revenge of the Nerds ’ portrayal of its leads as multidimensional characters with exceptional talents served as a small stepping stone towards mainstreaming the nerd culture. Not only did the movie lay the groundwork for several sequels — none of them actually performed as well as the original — but it also inspired countless other works that celebrated nerdom throughout the ‘90s. This includes shows like Freaks and Geeks , 3 rd Rock from the Sun , and Family Matters , whose Steve Urkel was supposed to make only a single appearance in the show.

Then came “ geek chic ,” a fashion and cultural shift that further embraced things historically associated with nerdom (video games, comics, wearing glasses, and the socially awkward vibe) as fashionable or trendy. Around the same time, in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, the widespread adoption of the internet happened, and the digital revolution made knowledge and tech skills more valuable than ever before. The very pursuits of the things that once labeled people as nerds, like proficiency in tech and a passion for gaming, have become mainstream.

Thus, being a nerd is no longer seen as an insult but as a badge of honor. So, it’s safe to say that 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds crawled so that Jaleel White’s Steve Urkel could run and the Big Band Theory could fly. However, despite its role in changing the way the world sees nerds, Revenge of the Nerds isn’t without its controversies , particularly when seen through the lens of a modern viewer. Some aspects of the movie, particularly those regarding gender relations and consent , really didn’t age well.

Beyond the controversies, Revenge of the Nerds is everything you’d expect from a 1980s comedy movie with an underdog narrative. Instead of watching young Ralph Macchio becoming Karate Kid, we get to see a group of nerds challenging traditional societal hierarchy, overcoming adversities, and, ultimately, becoming the hottest thing on campus. Watching Revenge of the Nerds in 2024 shows just how much we, as a society, have changed and how we now embrace and worship the things we once marginalized and ostracized.

For our closing argument, may the force be… equal to the mass times acceleration — because it’s important to remember that nerds also come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors.

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The revenge of the nerds.

America seems consumed by a cult of intelligence.

W hen Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein published The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life  10 years ago, the book provoked a more violent response than any other in recent memory. Enough heated reviews and articles appeared to fill several anthologies. Yet the critics said very little about one of Murray and Herrnstein’s central contentions: that a high-IQ “cognitive elite” is consolidating a dominant position atop American society.

Maybe that silence is understandable, given that the two men made several far more incendiary arguments—about IQ as a source of intractable forms of social and economic inequality, and about the differences in IQ between whites and blacks. Then, in 2002, Richard Florida published The Rise of the Creative Class . Florida, a professor of economic development at Carnegie Mellon University, came at the question from the opposite end of the political spectrum, barely breathing the word intelligence  while asserting that creative professionals—in reality, smart people—increasingly dominate American society. Florida argued that cities seeking to revive their fortunes need to do everything possible to attract his liberal, tolerant “cultural creatives.” Again there was controversy, but again it wasn’t about one of the book’s key arguments. To critics in the universities and the news media, the notion that people like themselves possess extraordinary mental powers must have seemed obvious.

In fact, the evidence for this view is debatable. But one thing we do know conclusively: The smart people who mold opinion in this country think  it’s true.

It’s not just the academic and media elite who worship smarts. In this nation of casually anti-intellectual pragmatists, where Thomas Edison once brushed off the accolades heaped upon him with the observation that “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” it has become fashionable to be smart. Our books and movies reveal a fascination with the intellectually gifted: Einstein in Love , A Beautiful Mind , Good Will Hunting . In the highly popular Matrix trilogy, the heroes are hypertalented computer geeks chosen for their extraordinary ability to manipulate technology. The geek and the wonk, once social outcasts, are now cultural heroes. If you can’t be smart, you can at least look the part by donning a pair of thick-rimmed eyeglasses and a shirt with a long, pointy collar, buttoned all the way up. The annual announcement of the MacArthur Foundation’s genius grants (a name the foundation disavows) is greeted as eagerly as the Queen’s Honors List in Britain. We have smart cars, smart mobs, and smart growth. Thanks to Smarty Jones, even horses appear to be getting smart.

I t may seem implausible to speak of a cult of smarts in the age of Paris Hilton and 30-second political attack ads, when it appears that America is being relentlessly dumbed down. But don’t blame dumb people for that. Dumbing down is the idea of film and television executives, political consultants, newspaper magnates, and other very intelligent people. It’s a shrewd moneymaking strategy. It also reveals one of the problems of putting too much stock in pure brainpower: Smart people are uniquely capable of producing noxious ideas.

The triumph of these canny operators points to the key reason why intelligence has achieved such high status: It’s not so much that brains have risen in our esteem as that other qualities have declined. Intelligence has always been respected and rewarded, but in the past it existed in a larger world of shared values that were intensively cultivated by social institutions. The consensus that supported this system has largely dissolved, and many of the personal and institutional virtues it encouraged have been weakened. But there’s at least one quality about whose goodness we still seem able to agree: raw intelligence. It now enjoys a status akin to virtue.

Why haven’t intellectuals and nascent philosopher-kings benefited much from the new status dispensation? Because Americans prefer their smarts in the form of relatively narrow expertise, and all the better if ratified by a significant paycheck. Intellectuals and academics win time in the sun only when they can convey specialized knowledge about subjects such as the economy and the Middle East.

There are other, more tangible reasons for the elevation of intelligence. The transformation of the economy since World War II, with the decline of farming and manufacturing and the rise of service industries and technology, has put a new premium on education, training, and the smarts needed to obtain them. (Ironically, the public schools are one of the few institutions that have not come to terms with this reality.) Along with economic transformation came social change. Beginning in the 1950s, doors that had once been closed to the talented were thrown open; the less-than-brilliant son of an alumnus was no longer guaranteed admission to Harvard—or to the American elite. Many bright people have had opportunities they would not have had in the past.

Yet the rising value we attach to smarts exceeds any increase in their actual importance. America’s postwar changes are of relatively recent vintage, and there are other forms of economic and social inequality that still play a role in determining who rises. At the very highest levels of society, moreover, it’s hard to know whether some new increment of IQ is really needed. Do today’s political and corporate leaders need to be smarter than yesterday’s? Is there any evidence that they are ?

N owhere is the trend toward the worship of smarts—and both its positive and negative consequences—more apparent than in the business world. The corporate titan as cultural hero pretty much vanished from the American scene in the 1960s, and when he reappeared a couple of decades later, he had shed his sober, Ike-like mien and gray flannel suit and become a dazzling, iconoclastic genius in a polo shirt. Instead of drearily working their way to the top, today’s exalted executives travel a route more like something out of a Harry Potter novel. Initially, the wunderkind finds his way to one of our most elite universities, which still proves inadequate to contain his prodigious mental energies, as in the case of Harvard dropout Bill Gates and the two founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who abandoned a Stanford Ph.D. program. Then he retreats to a holy site (often a Silicon Valley garage), where there’s a period of mysterious wizardry involving smoke and flashes of light before our hero emerges with his Creation. More years of struggle follow, and then comes the magical ceremony that finally earns him the mantle of true genius: the initial public offering.

Turn the pages of a Fortune magazine from 50 years ago and you will encounter an entirely different kind of business leader. It was the world of Organization Men and team players. The first line of a profile of construction magnate Steve Bechtel describes him as a man who “works himself to the bone.” He has some of the “old-time construction man’s swagger” and “knows how to exert a certain force on other men.” He is surrounded by “tough, well-schooled” engineers and executives. Sam Mosher, the head of Signal Oil & Gas, has “five hard years of farming” behind him and “works very hard and seriously.” Of course these men were smart, but in 1954 that was not a fact Fortune  thought worth emphasizing. Successful business leaders were hard working, seasoned by experience, a bit macho.

B rains can produce wonderful things. They gave us Google and cracked the human genetic code. But we tend to forget that big brains also ran Enron, MCI, and scores of short-lived technology company skyrockets. (One account of the Enron debacle is called The Smartest Guys in the Room .) During the mid-1990s, investors sank a fortune into Long-Term Capital Management, the now-infamous hedge fund, trusting in the scintillating brains of its two economists, Myron Scholes of Stanford University and Robert C. Merton of Harvard University, who had done pioneering work on the modeling of stock-price movements. For a time, the firm was fabulously successful. In 1997, Scholes and Merton won the Nobel Prize in economics. A year later, when the Russian bond market collapsed, Long-Term Capital Management lost $2 billion in the space of weeks and teetered on the edge of a collapse which, thanks to its intricate deals with Wall Street institutions, threatened to wipe out billions more in assets and trigger a global financial crisis. Only the intervention of the Federal Reserve saved the day.

“How could high intellect go so wrong?” asked Edward Tenner, the author of Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences  (1996). “Easy. Brilliance is dangerous. It tempts those who have it to pronouncements that outrun experience and even common sense.”

Still, the hot pursuit of business genius goes on. It’s seen in Wall Street’s continuing quest for the next big idea. It’s seen in the incredible increase in the pay of corporate CEOs. In the early 1970s, CEOs earned 30 to 35 times as much as the average corporate employee. Today the multiple is about 300, or $150,000 per week. That’s a paycheck only a superhuman could deserve.

I t ought to be clear that high intelligence is no guarantee of good political leadership, yet we incessantly discuss the raw intelligence of our leaders as if it would determine the quality of their performance in office. Journalist Daniel Seligman, who gathered information on U.S. presidents’ IQs from their biographies, reports that John F. Kennedy scored 119—on the upper end of the normal range on the IQ scale—before he entered Choate Academy, while the young Richard Nixon recorded an impressive 143. How many people now wish the smarter man had won the election of 1960? Before they went on trial at Nuremberg, the Nazi war criminals were given IQ tests that turned up uniformly high levels of intelligence: Albert Speer had an IQ of 128, Hermann Goering 138. In fact, research suggests that JFK’s relatively modest IQ was just about perfect for the presidency, or most other leadership positions. Above that level, a person’s ideas and language may become too complex for a mass audience, according to Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California at Davis. Other traits matter more. “Many empirical studies confirm the central prediction that an IQ near 119 is the prescription for leader success,” Simonton writes in Greatness: Who Makes History and Why  (1994).

Yet the reigning assumption in the world of opinion makers is that high intelligence is a singular qualification for leadership. Political parties, which were once reasonably effective at vetting politicians on the basis of other qualities, such as their judgment, loyalty, and character, are no longer strong enough to do that job. We are left instead to rely on other, more limited standards.  

I f there were any doubt that intellectual brilliance is not the sine qua non of effective leadership, the case of former president Ronald Reagan should have put an end to it. Amid the remarkable bipartisan outpouring of admiration for Reagan during the week surrounding his funeral, a few critics dredged up the failings of the Reagan years—the budget deficits, the rise in poverty, Iran-contra—but hardly anybody seemed to recall one of the most damning charges the cognitive elite lodged against him in his day: that he was a simpleton, slow, a man who needed to have the world reduced to 3x5 index cards, a movie actor . “Even some of Reagan’s friends and supporters on the right had their doubts about his intellectual candlepower,” writes biographer Lou Cannon in President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime  (1991). (Cannon, who covered Reagan for many years as a reporter, doesn’t share those doubts, and offers an interesting portrait of Reagan’s brand of nonanalytic intelligence.)

Now Reagan is hailed for his vision, his decisiveness and determination, his modesty and civility, his self-deprecating sense of humor. Some of these are traits that can’t be taught, but the others—along with still more that aren’t ordinarily attached to the 40th president—are qualities American society once recognized as virtues and labored to cultivate and reward. The virtues went by names such as loyalty, fairness, discipline, hard work, and balanced judgment, and they were learned in school, in church, at the university, and in the wider world.

In higher education, for example, the goal once was to mold a well-rounded person, grounded in many areas of learning and closely acquainted with the ideas and forces that had shaped the past. The modern university aims, reasonably enough, to create well-rounded classes , with the proper complement of violinists, designated ethnic groups, and lacrosse players. But it leaves individual students to look for meaning and direction on their own, or to burrow into the increasingly narrow and specialized disciplines that dominate the campus. Survive by your wits, they are told.

A t some level, we all seem to recognize that a world in which only wits matter is impossible. Far from the heights of the American corporation, for example, the people who search for talent administer batteries of personality tests and pray for job candidates with “emotional” intelligence—a useful quality, perhaps, but in the end nearly as morally neutral as brainpower.

Intelligence researchers themselves often say that smarts are an overrated quality, but the conversation then quickly moves on. “We agree emphatically. . . ,” Herrnstein and Murray write in The Bell Curve , “that the concept of intelligence has taken on a much higher place in the pantheon of human virtues than it deserves.” Men and women of high intelligence certainly deserve our admiration, but our greatest admiration ought to be reserved for those who combine whatever mental gifts they have with virtues such as humanity, prudence, and wisdom. Ironically, it was left to a genius, Albert Einstein, to say it best: “We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.”

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Revenge of the Nerds: It’s Past Time for Nerd Persecution to End

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This post was originally published on Defender Network

By Aswad Walker

What do Neil deGrasse Tyson, President Barack Obama, forever First Lady Michelle Obama, and Chance the Rapper have in common? They were all, back in the day, considered n-words: Nerds.

Now, each has reached the highest heights in their respective fields and wields influence over a global society, including those folk who in the past may have called them out of their names.

I’ll never forget when the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” came out back in 1984. The first person I thought of was my homebody and running buddy from middle and high school, Mike Meade.

We were both nerds to the Nth degree (not even my very active participation in sports, namely football and baseball, could mask my nerdness), but I gave him extra grief because he played in the band. Now, did I think “band geeks” were really nerds? Not at all. I’ve always had mad respect for folk so musically inclined that they possessed the talent, intelligence, and cool to master an instrument. However, both of us knew that society viewed band members as nerds, and so I called Mike out on his supreme nerd-dom religiously.

It was all in fun, no venomous intent included. And Mike knew it. Hell, I was a bigger nerd than him. But me, the nerd, teasing Mike about his band membership as iron-clad proof of his nerd superiority, was a running joke between homies.

So, when the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” came out, I knew me and my dude had to see it together.

So, there we were, now both college freshmen, sitting in the theater watching this movie. And then the scene of all scenes shown on the big screen.

If you’ve seen the movie you already know that near the end, as the “jocks” are doing everything possible to humiliate the nerds who have formed a college frat, during the homecoming football game, one of the head nerds, Lewis Skolnick, delivers the famous nerd “call-to-action” speech.

“We have news for the beautiful people. There’s a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there’s alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams (College) you might’ve been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you’re a nerd or not, why don’t you just come down here and join us, okay. C’mon!”

And in the movie, slowly, individuals in the stands who identify as nerds start walking down onto the field. And then more and more join them. And then the ENTIRE BAND walks down onto the field.

I was dying laughing. And Mike was too!

But I also felt that nerd call personally because I was, and still am, a nerd.

But I’ve seen with my own eyes and my own personal life experiences that nerds have done, are doing, and will continue to do some of the coolest things on the planet.

Take my nerd compadre Mike Meade , for example. He proudly let his nerd-dom express itself in an early career as a videographer and cinematographer. But that was just his opening act. Mike is a freakin’ world-class musician who has done his thing on the international stage for decades now.

And I don’t even need to review the resumes of Tyson, Chance, and the Obamas.

For far too long, children, sometimes at the egging on of parents, have labeled whole groups of our people as nerds because some actually liked school or weren’t feeling sports, so they applied their interests in other areas. Some of these nerds were made fun of and even bullied. Others were silently “tolerated.” Others gained some level of peer acceptance and/or notoriety, but were still viewed as “different.”

Well, if being a nerd means that you like reading, excelling in the classroom, playing an instrument, using your hands to work magic in any number of areas (carpentry, auto repair, farming, gardening, art, etc.), or taking up hobbies that are considered outside the Black “norm,” then we need to start pushing our children to aspire to be the biggest nerds on the planet. And if being different means being your true, authentic self, regardless of what others think, that looks like courage to me – like someone who can grow up and successfully take on the world and all its slings and arrows, and still stay true to themselves and their purpose.

We’ll all be better as a people when we start encouraging one another to let our nerd flags fly. Or as Lewis’s “Revenge of the Nerds” running buddy Gilbert Lowell put it in that final scene, “No one’s gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.”

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Revenge of the Nerds

• At Adams College, a group of bullied outcasts and misfits resolve to fight back for their peace and self-respect.
• When lovable nerds Gilbert and Lewis embark on their freshman year at Adams College, little do they realize the dangers that await them. They are beset by taunting from the jocks of Alpha Beta fraternity, which only worsens when the jocks accidentally burn down their house and toss the freshmen out of the freshmen dorm. To make matters more problematic, Lewis develops a crush on pretty Betty Childs, popular sorority sister and quarterback's girlfriend. Joined by the aptly named Booger and the violin-playing Poindexter, the nerds soon realize they must form their own fraternity in self-defense. Soon the tables are turned as the nerds employ high-tech warfare against the jocks.... but can they really succeed and make a difference? — Rick Munoz <[email protected]>
• Relentlessly bullied for being "different", the bosom buddies and big-time nerds, Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe, are on their way to Adams College. However, when the homeless Alpha Betas, the campus' fraternity of barbaric jocks, are left with nothing, Gilbert and Lewis, along with a motley crew of genius pariahs, will find themselves with their backs to the wall. Now, as the harmless nerds are reaching their breaking point, there is no turning back, and if the gifted boys want to beat the obnoxious football players at their own game, they will have to rise to the occasion. Who will win the inevitable, no-holds-barred war between fraternities? Above all, will the nerds finally have their revenge? — Nick Riganas
• Best friends and nerds Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) enroll in Adams College to study computer science. They are driven to college by Mr. Skolnick (James Cromwell) and Mrs. Lowe (Alice Hirson) worries for both of them back home. The Alpha Betas, a fraternity that includes most of the Adams football team, carelessly burn down their own house and, urged by Coach Harris (John Goodman), take over the freshman dorms, literally throwing the freshmen out into the street. Dean Ulich (David Wohl) designates temporary living space in the gymnasium and allows the freshmen to rush the fraternities. Lewis, Gilbert, and several other nerds fail to join fraternities. Lewis and Gilbert are humiliated by the Alpha Betas, who make them have sex with sheep as part of their initiation ceremony and then throw them out of the freshman dorm. The nerds include Toshiro Takashi (Brian Tochi), Arnold Poindexter (Timothy Busfield), Lamar Latrelle (Larry B. Scott), Harold Wormser (Andrew Cassese), Dudley Dawson etc. Gilbert meets Judy in computer class and takes a liking to her. To find a new residence, they create a list of all available homes near their college, but nobody will rent homes to nerds. The nerds are able to secure a dilapidated house near campus and repair it as a residence. The Alpha Betas, led by star quarterback Stanley Harvey "Stan" Gable (Ted McGinley) & his 2nd in command Frederick Aloysius "Ogre" Palowaski (Donald Gibb), are irked by the nerds' success, and Stan sets his fellow members to pull pranks against the nerds, which includes throwing a rock through the window saying "Nerds, get out". The nerds try to get campus police to help, but the campus cops are constrained by the Greek Council that adjudicates all such pranks, of which Stan is currently president. Stan also wont allow the nerds to form a fraternity as they need a National fraternity to be their sponsor. The nerds decide to seek membership on the Greek Council by joining a national fraternity. After 29 rejection letters, the only one that considers them is the black fraternity Lambda Lambda Lambda (Tri-Lambs), led by U.N. Jefferson (Bernie Casey). As only one of the nerds is black, Jefferson is about to disapprove when one of the nerds sees in the fine print that all applicants are given probationary membership. The nerds set up a large party with the Omega Mu sorority, similarly, made up of female nerds, including Gilbert's girlfriend Judy (Michelle Meyrink), and invite Jefferson to attend. The party is dull until Dudley "Booger" Dawson (Curtis Armstrong) provides them with high quality marijuana. The Alpha Betas and the Pi Delta Pis, the sorority to which Stan's girlfriend Betty Childs (Julie Montgomery) belongs, then disrupt the party by bringing and releasing pigs. The nerds exact revenge on both groups by pulling similar pranks. They get into the Pi Delta Pis, install cameras all over their dorm and transmit live stream of naked girls all over the college campus. They get into the Alpha Betas change room and mix liquid heat into all their jock straps. Impressed with the nerds' tenacity, Jefferson grants them full membership. However, the harassment intensifies, and Stan Gable stonewalls any attempts by the Greek Council to sanction Alpha Beta. The nerds realize the only way to get the Council to help is to put one of their own in as president, which they can do by winning the Greek Games during homecoming. Partnering with the Omega Mus and using their extensive knowledge, the Tri-Lambs compete strongly with the Alpha Betas/Pi Delta Pis during the athletic events. For e.g., at the cycle race (20 laps, and one beer for each completed lap), the Tri-lambdas use chemicals that counter the effect of alcohol in the blood stream and win the race. But they lose events like the wrist wrestle and the Trojan horse (Ogre sits on the horse and due to his heavy weight, nobody can dislodge him). They win the tug of war by letting go of the rope and thus their opponents lose balance and fall. Booger helps them win the belching contest against Ogre. Lamar designs a new aerodynamic javelin and wins the contest. At the charity fundraiser, the nerds heavily outsell the Alpha Betas by offering pies with naked pictures of Betty and other Pi Delta Pis on the bottom. During this, Lewis, who has fallen in love with Betty, steals Stan's costume and tricks Betty into engaging in sexual intercourse with him. Though surprised when Lewis reveals his identity, she admits he was "wonderful". Finally, the nerds dominate the musical competition with a techno-computer-driven musical production, winning the overall games. Lewis immediately nominates Gilbert as the new Council president. Coach Harris lambastes the Alpha Betas for losing to the nerds, and Stan leads them in vandalizing the Tri-Lamb house. The nerds become despondent, and Gilbert decides to barge into the middle of the Homecoming Pep Rally to address his complaints. The Alpha Betas try to stop him, but Jefferson and a group of national Tri-Lambs arrive to intimidate the Alpha Betas, giving Gilbert the opportunity to give a rousing speech about standing up to discrimination. Lewis and the other Tri-Lambs, many alumni, and Betty, who announces she is "in love with a nerd", join in cheering Gilbert, soundly shaming the Alpha Betas. An emboldened Dean Ulich instructs Coach Harris that the Tri-Lambs will now live in the Alpha Beta house, while the Alpha Betas will live in the gym until they can repair the Tri-Lamb house.

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Revenge of the Nerds

How aerospace geeks taught southern california to have fun.

by Matthew Hersch and Peter Westwick | October 16, 2011

We all know the image of the aerospace engineer. Short-sleeved white shirt, skinny dark tie, crew cut, horn-rimmed glasses, pocket protector. Think Michael Douglas in Falling Down , the 1993 movie that followed Douglas’s character, a laid-off aerospace engineer, on a violent spree across Los Angeles.

There is some truth to the image. A new archive on the history of Southern California aerospace, a collaboration between USC and the Huntington Library, has abundant photos confirming the stereotype: earnest young engineers of the 1940s and ’50s bent over drafting tables in full nerd regalia, slide rules at the ready. But the archive also suggests a more interesting reality.

Consider Al Hibbs, whose papers recently arrived in the aerospace archive. As a young mathematician, Hibbs calculated probabilities in Las Vegas casinos and sailed the Caribbean for a year on his winnings. (Along the way, he trapped alligators to sell to zoos.) He went on to earn a Ph.D. in physics at Caltech and to help design the early space program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also popularized science on radio and television, flew sailplanes, invented an electronic trombone, applied to the astronaut corps, acted in local theater, and pursued underwater photography and kinetic sculpture.

During the 20th century, millions of people flooded Southern California for aerospace jobs; dozens of airfields dotted the landscape; test-rocket firings flashed and echoed in the foothills; and the local economy became yoked to the boom-and-bust cycles of defense spending. In the process, aerospace helped drive the extraordinary metamorphosis of California from a rural, agrarian state to the sixth-largest economy in the world.

Southern California aerospace not only reshaped the region; it changed the world. Its technologies underpinned U.S. national security, from propeller-driven airplanes and bombers in the World Wars to strategic missiles, reconnaissance planes and satellites, and stealth aircraft in the Cold War. Meanwhile, its commercial aircraft and then communications satellites connected distant continents and cultures, propelling globalization. Finally, Southern California’s fundamental contributions to the civilian space program, including the moon landings and the robotic exploration of the solar system, challenged and transformed the human imagination.

All the aerospace workers who made these innovations possible–hundreds of thousands of them, for much of the Cold War–helped ferment the heady brew of Southern California culture, from water sports and hot-rodding to architecture (William Pereira’s aerospace buildings), literature (from science fiction to Thomas Pynchon and Joan Didion), and design (Charles and Ray Eames).

A just-opened exhibition at the Huntington Library, “Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California ,” presents some first fruits from the archive. It also highlights the fact that the history of Southern California aerospace is not just about the technologies of aircraft and spacecraft, although these represented some remarkable engineering achievements. Rather, the history is also about the people who built these things, what they did both on and off the job, and how they lived their lives here in Southern California.

That brings us back to Al Hibbs. On a Caribbean sailing trip in 1982, when Hibbs was pushing 60 years old, he remained an avid participant in boat races.

Not sailboat races, mind you. Rather, the “boat races” familiar to any college student: you take two rows of people (in Hibbs’s story, men versus women), give each one a beer (here, Guinness Stout), and go down the row: as soon as the first person has downed his beer, the cup goes upside down on top of his head, and the next person starts guzzling. First row finished wins. In this case, the first mate ruled the women had won, only to be overruled by the (male) captain, who exercised his prerogatives and, Hibbs recounted, “gave the prize to the boys.”

“But then,” Hibbs concluded, “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”

Matthew Hersch is lecturer in Science, Technology and Society in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Peter Westwick is director of the Aerospace History Project at the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and assistant research professor in history at USC. The Blue Sky Metropolis exhibit runs through January 9 at the Huntington Library.

*Photos courtesy of Matthew Hersch and Peter Westwick

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Breaking Down Every 'Revenge of the Nerds' Movie, From Most Questionable To Least

Vote up the Nerd -y movies that are the most unsettling in hindsight.

When diving into the raunchy comedies of the ‘80s, one has to expect a blend of nostalgia and discomfort at some aspects that haven't aged well . Though it's possible to still get a kick out of these feel-good romps, it's certainly unsettling to realize just how many of them focus on teen boys constantly scheming to find a way to separate young ladies from their clothing. 

This is especially true when watch the enjoyable but highly problematic Revenge of the Nerds franchise, a four-film journey that follows the exploits of the Lambda Lambda Lambdas (or the Tri-Lambs) of Adams College as they attempt to make their way in the world despite wearing glasses and pocket protectors. Though many of the jokes still land (at least in the first installment) because of its crass yet funny script, it must be acknowledged that many of the characters and scenarios are now considered iffy at best, or highly disturbing at worst.

The nerds get a whole lot of revenge in the end, though - four movies' worth. Here's a complete breakdown of the series for the purpose of finding out which Revenge of the Nerds flick is the most dubious in hindsight.

Revenge of the Nerds

The Plot: Best friends Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) are excited to begin their new lives at Adams College, only to be kicked out of the dorms with the rest of the freshmen class after the Alpha Betas burn down their own fraternity house. With nowhere to go, Gilbert, Lewis, and a handful of nerds start their own fraternity chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda only to be harassed by the jocks again and again - and since the jocks control the Greek Council, there is nothing the nerds can do and no one they can complain to. The nerds make a plan to win the Greek Games, take over the Greek Council, and get revenge on those Alpha Betas once and for all. 

The Heroes: Lewis, Gilbert, and the rest of Lambda Lambda Lambda (The Tri-Lambs) and the Omega Mu sorority.

Worst Things The Heroes Do: While the nerds are done dirty in many ways, they also fight dirty, especially when it comes to the Pi Delta Pis. To get revenge on the sorority that helped the Alpha Betas (but barely, really), the Tri-Lambs plant hidden cameras all through their house during a panty raid. Then, they spend days watching the unaware young women in states of undress from the comfort of their house. It is using one assault to lay the groundwork for another. 

The Villains: The Alpha Betas, the Pi Delta Pis, and Coach Harris.

Worst Things The Villains Do: The Alpha Betas show little regard for safety, personal space, or personal belongings throughout the film. They are seen tossing the belongings of 18-year-old strangers out onto the lawn when they confiscate their dorms, as well as filling the Tri-Lambs fraternity house with pigs. Their worst behavior comes at the end when the Alpha Betas, angry at losing control of the Greek Council, fully destroy the Tri-Lambs house. This isn't just “revenge,” it's breaking and entering with property damage to an extent that might qualify as a felony.

Most Dated Scene: Gilbert attempts to woe nerdette Judy (Michelle Meyrink) by teaching her the joys of computing. While explaining keyboard comforts to her, he creates little animated versions of the duo on a first generation PC with 16 KB of RAM. It's incredibly dated, but also undeniably adorable.

Most Controversial Scene: During the homecoming carnival, Lewis tricks Pi Delta Pi Betty (Julie Montgomery) into sexual intercourse by making her believe he's her boyfriend Stan (Ted McGinley) by wearing his costume. When she discovers the ruse, she's momentarily angry, but so impressed with his skills that the deception is quickly forgotten. 40 years later, the moment hits different. Rather than funny, it's upsetting, as clearly no consent was given.  

Best Scene: At the talent show portion of the Greek Games, the Lambda Lambda Lambdas and the Omega Mu sorority beat every other house competing with their electro-pop number that makes use of fireworks, a giant gong, moonwalking, an Elvis costume, coordinated clapping, an electric violin, and one impressive spiky hairstyle. Led by Lamar (Larry B. Scott), the nerds and nerdettes channel their inner Devo (sans the rapping) to create a fun, show-stopping song that highlights the talents of everyone in group and earns them a victory.

Musical Moment: In addition to the talent show, there is also a musical montage to the song “One Foot in Front of the Other” by the band Bone Symphony as the gang cleans and repairs their fraternity house. A signature '80s scene. 

Actors Of Note: In an early role, John Goodman plays the villainous Coach Harris, who convinces the jocks to seek and destroy the nerds and fosters their collective egos as kings of the campus. 

Nerdiest Nerd: Gilbert, both the hero and the head nerd for Tri-Lambs. In the end, he's the one who makes an impassioned speech set to Queen's “We Are The Champions” as he implores the school to stop their assault on the less-athletic. 

MVP: Ogre, for the catchphrase “NEEEEERRRDDDS!” that was used in all the marketing. 

What Makes This Movie Problematic? While this movie has a lot to say about the treatment of nerds, it doesn't seem to think much of women, who are objectified again and again for laughs, particularly Betty. While she might not be the nicest person, she certainly doesn't deserve to have her personal space invaded, to be assaulted, to have her clothing stolen, to be stalked and spied on, to have naked images of her body distributed throughout the university without her knowledge, and to be coerced into a sexual relationship with a stranger. 

While many parts of this movie are funny and fun to watch (particularly when the nerds work together to get revenge in a non-exploitative manner), the scenes in which they invoke their wrath on the Pi Delta Pis seems a bit over the top and, frankly, very illegal.

Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise

The Plot: The nerds head up to Florida for a national fraternity convention where once again they face discrimination from jocks who are in charge of the conference, as well as the manager of their hotel. Despite having to change to a run-down motel in the middle of a shantytown and the constant sideswipes taken at them by the jocks during the conference, the nerds hold their own. After defeating a new bylaw that would make athletic standards mandatory for all fraternities at the conference, new Alpha Beta head and chairman of the regional conference Roger (Bradley Whitford) plots to remove the Tri-Lambs permanently. His evil plan is foiled by the nerds, who now gain control of the conference and have the charter for the Alpha Betas pulled. 

The Heroes: Our happy, hapless nerds from Lambda Lambda Lambdas, friend to the nerds Sunny (Courtney Thorne-Smith) and hotel worker Stewart (Barry Sobel).

Worst Things The Heroes Do: While they do trick a bunch of lowlifes into thinking they will receive sexual favors at a seedy motel by breaking a neon sign in a lewd manner, they don't objectify women too terribly in this chapter.

The Villains: Roger and the Alpha Betas, as well as Buzz (Ed Lauter), the hotel manager who doesn't want geeks on his precious property. 

Worst Things The Villains Do: The Alpha Betas and Roger set up the nerds for grand theft auto… then Roger arranges to have them kidnapped and taken to an isolated island, with presumably no escape or rescue plan. Once again, the bad guys cross into felony territory.

Most Dated Scene: Every time Ogre appears in a midriff and jorts in public and screams about nerds, one has to wonder if he is complaining, or just trying to find his brethren. 

Most Controversial Scene: The scene in which the jocks pretend to be an Indigenous tribe so they can frighten the nerds is done with all the dignity, respect, and reverence one would expect from an '80s sex comedy set in Florida - that is, none at all. With feathered headdresses, fake accents, and face paint, the entire scene is better left in the past.

Best Scene: In the end, right when the Tri-Lambs are about to have their charter revoked for… reasons? … the nerds crash the party, escaping their island prison by using found Cuban military gear, including an amphibious DUKW that they use to crash the conference. Once there, they reveal that Roger was the culprit who devised the devious plan to get them removed from the conference. As a result, the Alpha Betas have their charter revoked.

Musical Moment: In an effort to get people to vote No on Proposition 15, a bill that would require physical as well as academic standards to be met by all members of the United Fraternity Conference, the nerds perform a rap about believing in one's self in front of their dingy, dirty motel, that managed to brings in hundreds of people thanks to an equally dirty light-up sign. It doesn't quite capture the magic of the talent show of the first film, nor is it clear who is voting on this bill (Students? Conference-goers? Oversexed drivers from off the freeway?), but it is still a somewhat lively number. 

Actors Of Note: The always amazing James Hong ( Big Trouble in Little China, Mulan, Kung Fu Panda series, and Everything Everywhere All At Once ) plays Edgar Poe "Snotty" Wong, Booger's mentor in all things belching.  

Nerdiest Nerd: Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) gets to step into the spotlight this time around as best friend Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) is down for the count due to a broken leg. However, he does appear in a dream, Obi-wan style, later on to help encourage his best bud during the low times. 

MVP: Once again, Ogre is the MVP as he sports the best character arc, going from angry jock to angry nerd, complete with failing eyesight and button up shirt as he pledges Lambda Lambda Lambda by the end of the movie. 

What Makes This Movie Problematic? While the first film seemed to have an issue with women, the second out seems to have a few issues regarding ethnic stereotypes. Aldonza's (Priscilla Lopez) exaggerated Cuban accent along with her constant humming of the “I Love Lucy” theme song and penchant for keeping and killing live chickens in her place of business is not a great look, and neither is the scene when the jocks dress up like Indigenous people.

Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation

The Plot: In the early '90s, the nerds have grown up, but so have the jocks. A pony-tailed Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) chairs the computer science department at Adams College and is happily married to Betty; meanwhile, a new crop of nerds make their way to Adams - along with a new crop of jocks, backed by a new, aggressive Board of Regents who have brought back Stan Gable (Ted McGinley) and made him Dean of Adams College. Stan's goal is to not just rid the campus of geeks, but also to break up Lewis and Betty's marriage and prove he's the right guy for her. Soon, Stan and the Alpha Betas are up to their old tricks, harassing the Lambda Lambda Lambdas and framing Lewis for embezzlement. Eventually, Stan discovers he's not the jock he used to be, and comes around to help the nerds.

The Heroes: The next generation of nerds, along with Lewis, Betty, and eventually, Stan.

Worst Things The Heroes Do: Early on, Lewis puts down the nerds as much as the jocks do, a stance he stands by throughout most of the film. For a smart man, he finds it impossible to realize that one can improve their general appearance and enjoy hummus without have to turn their backs on friends and core beliefs. His anti-nerd rhetoric almost borders on bigotry. Also, Betty and Lewis reminisce lovingly about the time Lewis assaulted her in the first film, which is just gross. 

The Villains: Orrin Price (Morton Downey, Jr.) and the Alpha Betas.

Worst Things The Villains Do: The Alpha Betas destroy a perfectly lovely BBQ outing for the nerds. Then, Orrin Price opts to frame Lewis for embezzlement of school funds from Adams College and harvesting marijuana in the basement of the Lambda Lambda Lambda house. 

Most Dated Scene: The movie includes a major role from daytime TV host Morton Downey, Jr. as abhorrent businessman and new member of the Board of Regents, Orrin Price. Downey was a key part of the '90s pop culture at the time, albeit a somewhat controversial one, but now his presence seems like a relic of the era. Also, small details such as Malcolm Pennington III's “Malcolm X” hat and the sheer amount of Day-glo present in the tennis scene help date the film to the '90s.

Most Controversial Scene: Part three of the Nerds saga attempts to remake certain problematic scenes from the first chapter into a bit more digestible, wholesome content. For example, in Next Generation, when the nerds of both genders set up secret cameras in a fraternity house, it's to watch the jocks use pimple-inducing cream instead of pimple-preventing cream, instead of watching them take off their clothes. Though the intentions are good, it just reminds viewers of that scene which probably never should've existed in the first movie.

Best Scene: Stan's impassioned speech on stand about realizing he's a big nerd himself, and that everyone has a bit of nerd in them was a nice touch. Moved when the Tri-Lambs come to court to support Lewis, Stan realizes that he envies that friendship the nerds hold in high regard and that his hate for them stems from his hate for himself. He admits that Lewis was framed by Orrin and gets the case thrown out of court, allowing Lewis to walk away an innocent man. 

Actors Of Note: Clancy Brown ( The Shawshank Redemption, Highlander, SpongeBob SquarePants, and John Wick 4 ) shows up in an uncredited role as a gas station attendant. 

Musical Moment: When Malcolm Pennington III (Chi McBride) is giving a tour of the new Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity house, he provides potential new members and the audience a breakdown of the fraternity with the “Lambda Rap," featuring lines like: “We have no group excluded, we don't discriminate. We just ask that you keep your GPA at 3.8.”

Nerdiest Nerd: Gregg Binkley leads the new horde of Tri-Lambs as Lewis's nephew, Harold Skolnick.

MVP: Ted McGinley's Stan is the MVP his time around, mainly because he learns an important lesson, but also due to his impressive ability to climb the career ladder from motorcycle cop to Dean of Adams College (with an assist from Orrin). 

What Makes This Movie Problematic? Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation is not as clever as the first movie, but it makes an admirable effort undo the wrongs of its past by making the nerds less skeevy and more heroic. The Tri-Lambs are inclusionary and respectful, while the jocks remain mean, but don't commit quite so many felonies as their predecessors (they leave that to the grown-ups). The only gripe has to do with the word “nerd” being treated like a genuinely derogatory slur, which can be a bit jarring. 

Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love

The Plot: This time, the nerds are off campus as the nose-picking Dudley "Booger" Dawson (Curtis Armstrong) is about to get married. Alas, his father-in-law, Aaron (Joseph Bologna), is less than thrilled about having a nerd in the family and comes up with a complicated scheme involving a faux illegitimate child to thwart the marriage. Lewis (Robert Carradine) is back to help support his friend, while he and Betty (Julia Montgomery) are just about to have their first child. 

The Heroes: Booger takes the spotlight, along with the rest of the nerds, who are now adults making the world a better place. Even Stan (Ted McGinley) has completely embraced the culture since the third installment, wearing the uniform of a plaid button-up, khakis, and glasses.

Worst Things The Heroes Do: Not a lot, really. Even at the bachelor party, they are very respectful of the strippers, forming a conga line with them at one point. 

The Villains: Aaron and his son-in-law Chip (Stephen Davies). Also, wealthy people in general, strangely. While the only well-off people in this film are the Humphrey family, for some reason every rich person is deemed as anti-nerd and anti-nouveau riche by both the nerds and the well off folks. 

Worst Things The Villains Do: Chip brings out a poor orphan girl from the Midwest for the sheer purpose of humiliating Booger. This is also, most likely, not legal, especially given the girl's age.

Most Dated Scene: At Booger's bachelor party, future brother-in-law Chip introduces the entertainment, which are nerd-themed strippers ("Miss Modem! Miss Mainframe!") jumping out of an oversized cake while wearing random gadgets from ‘90s over their nether regions as if they don't weigh 25 pounds each. Here's to hoping that the two women in the calculator bikinis were given hazard pay.  Also, all Louis's dated technology to keep his unborn child safe is a little strange and slightly terrifying. 

Most Controversial Scene: Not many, here - the bachelor party scene is probably the closest.

Best Scene: Booger's wedding ends with an adoption, the birth of Lewis's child in a tribute to The Lion King , and a reunion that includes U. N. Jefferson (Bernie Casey) and Mr. Skolnick (James Cromwell), and Ogre (Donald Gibb) in a mohawk and a suit with the sleeves ripped off. Of course, it's topped off with a big dance number at the end. 

Actors Of Note: It should be noted that while this is James Cromwell's fourth turn as Louis's dad, Mr. Skolnick, this movie came out only a year before his Oscar-nominated performance as Farmer Hoggett in Babe. 

Musical Moment: When Booger's fiancee is about to break up with him for good, he starts to serenade her with the song “Jean” by Oliver. It's a far cry from the electronic music showcases and rap exposition dumps from previous films, but still, a great way to carry on the series tradition. Also, in the final moments of the film when Booger and Jeanie finally get hitched, they dance down the aisle while original nerd Takashi (Brian Tochi) sings.

Nerdiest Nerd: Surprisingly, Stan Gable. Though still the coolest nerd in the bunch, his character arc from golden boy, dork-despising jock in the first movie to full-on geek must be appreciated.

MVP: Booger, no doubt. His efforts to awkwardly bond with his alleged daughter, Heidi, show a delightful side of the gross-out character we rarely get to see. Also, the scene in which he refuses to sleep with a stripper at his bachelor party because he both respects her and his fiancee, but asks her kindly to take a moment to please sit with him so his friends won't think he's “a sissy" is actually very sweet. 

What Makes This Movie Problematic? Other than forcing a few sex workers to wear outdated calculators as lingerie, Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love is probably the best in the bunch in regards to sensitivity around gender, sex, culture, and race. Is it funny? That's a question of personal taste. No matter what, it displays tremendous growth among the characters, who have finally learned that “revenge” doesn't have to mean behaving just as questionably as their enemies.

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Reconsidering Revenge: How Revenge Of The Nerds ‘ Misogyny Is Evident In Current Nerd Culture

Thirty years ago, the brothers of the Alpha Beta fraternity at Adams College in Arizona were taught a particularly harsh lesson. The Alpha Betas had been your stereotypical frat guys—athletic, but hard partiers with a sense of arrogance and entitlement that led them to disregard the laws of polite society and torment some of their classmates with name-calling and even vandalism. No doubt, the Alpha Betas were out of control and needed to be brought down a peg.

However, when a group of students they had targeted for ridicule banded together to exact some payback, things went from bad to worse. Although these students’ complaints about the fraternity were completely legitimate, their methods for dealing with their bullies most certainly were not. Realizing they couldn’t really hope to take these guys on in a fight (part of the reason the brothers picked these students to push around was because of their own physical weakness) or even in a war of pranks (again, they likely would have wound up getting their asses kicked), the students concocted a plan to attack the Alpha Betas without engaging them directly.

They took the fight to Pi Delta Pi, the sorority that the Alpha Betas’ girlfriends all belonged to. While one group of guys broke into the house to menace and terrorize the women, another group began to install cameras throughout the sorority house to capture nude images of the women—obviously, without their knowledge or consent. Some of these images later wound up disseminated amongst the student body, and later, at least one of these students sexually assaulted the girlfriend of the president of the Greek Council (an Alpha Beta himself), coercing her into joining him in a secluded area and then raping her while the rest of the school enjoyed a raucous pep rally.

Honestly, this is not how most people remember the plot of 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds , a movie that, according to the Internet Movie Database , grossed $40,900,000 on an $8,000,000 budget and is described by one IMDB user as “An Instant Classic for the Underdog in All of Us.” That’s kind of how I remembered the movie too, until I watched it again a couple years ago, for the first time as an adult, and was immediately struck by the way the film plays sexual exploitation and assault for laughs. It’s true that the nerds stand up to their bullies and empower themselves, but they are only able to do so by victimizing women whose chief crimes are snootiness and bad taste in boyfriends.

Some, of course, will argue that I take these things too seriously; it’s just a dumb campus sex comedy, for crying out loud. But I can’t help but feel that this movie actually has something to tell us about our cultural attitudes surrounding violence, misogyny, and notions of masculinity. We’re all familiar with the dumb jock/ frat boy stereotype with his overly-moussed hair, reeking of Axe Body Spray . We know that that guy’s a misogynist who amuses his bros with rape jokes. But I think, sometimes, we mistakenly assume that the guy wearing a Green Lantern T-shirt who can recite Monty Python and the Holy Grail in its entirety is harmless. He’s scared to talk to women, we reason, so he can’t possibly have the frat boy’s sense of entitlement or privilege. But recent events, I think, should cause us to call that conventional wisdom into question.

I’m a nerd myself. I’ve got a massive comic book collection. There is currently a Gremlins lunchbox on my dining room table. I still play Mortal Kombat II on my Sega Genesis. And, when I was younger, I was pretty sure I was doomed to remain a virgin for the rest of my life. If you had told the 17-year-old me that, one day, I would be madly in love with my brilliant and beautiful wife—as I am now—I would have assumed you were setting up a joke at my expense.

There are certain lies the virginal nerd tells himself in order to cope with his own lack of romantic success. Some of these lies are somewhat harmless: “Girls, by nature, just don’t appreciate superheroes or Star Wars —that’s why they aren’t attracted to fans like me.” That’s the sort of lie I told myself, before I could finally admit that my problems really stemmed from my own shyness. Some of the lies are more troublesome: “Women are all superficial—they can’t see past my acne or weight problem to appreciate the awesome guy I am, deep down.” To be honest, I might have told myself this lie a time or two, when I was a stupid adolescent who, it should be noted, never pursued overweight or pimply girls himself. From there, the lies get even more damaging: “Women are cruel—they’re only interested in jock assholes, and they enjoy abusing any other guy who winds up in their orbit.”

I don’t want to pat myself on the back here, but I never told myself that last lie. But I know plenty of guys who did, and who probably still do. These are the guys who believe “nice guys finish last” and complain about being “friend-zoned” by the women in their lives. These guys truly believe that they are owed something by women—sex, of course, but also devotion and a rather twisted version of love. These guys are lonely and frustrated, and, rather than examine themselves in order to find out why this is, they have concluded that the problem is women.

We saw this psychology in Elliot Rodger , the 22-year-old multiple murderer who explained his motivations in a video posted to YouTube : “For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me.” We see it in the so-called “Pick-up Artist Community,” where ridiculously-dressed guys who at times seem downright psychopathic instruct socially-awkward guys on the best ways to trick a woman into thinking that they’re interesting. And more and more frequently, we’re seeing this attitude in “geek culture,” among comic book fans, video game players and others who have, historically, been identified as nerds.

Much has already been written about “Gamergate” —an online campaign to degrade and silence women active in the video game industry. The phenomenon began when video game developer Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend alleged that Quinn had had a romantic relationship with a video game journalist that resulted in positive coverage of her game Depression Quest . This claim was quickly proven to be fraudulent, but that didn’t stop a number of deranged video game fans from attacking her on Twitter—revealing personal information as well as threatening rape. Gamergate supporters will tell you that the movement is not, in fact, motivated by misogyny, but is in fact about “ethics in journalism.” These claims are belied by the fact that members of the movement subsequently also targeted feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian and game developer Brianna Wu , both women, and no men active in gaming culture (not even Nathan Grayson , the journalist alleged to have given Quinn positive coverage as a result of their relationship, got the kind of treatment these women received). The claims are also belied, of course, by the rape threats.

As a movement, Gamergate seems to be dying down. Just a few weeks ago, it was fairly common to see people defending the movement, but at this point almost everyone is in agreement that the argument was less about ethics in journalism and more about whether or not girls should be allowed in the clubhouse. But even if people stop using Gamergate as a hashtag, it’s important that we—and when I say “we,” I’m addressing my fellow nerds here—be mindful of the hatefulness that exists among us.

In many ways, the comic book industry is doing a really good job of marketing itself to women and girls. It seems to me that there are more female creators working on mainstream titles from the major publishers than ever before. Wonder Woman is getting the big screen treatment, as is Captain Marvel (the female one from Marvel Comics, not the kid who turns into a superhero when he says “Shazam”—although, yeah, he is getting a movie too). We’ve recently seen an X-Men team consisting of all female characters . There’s a new woman wielding Thor’s hammer and acting as a thunder goddess. It does seem like we’ve come a long way from the days where Wonder Woman was perpetually the Justice Society of America’s secretary , or even twenty years ago, when comic book writer Gail Simone created her website “Women in Refrigerators,” which chronicled the assaults and deaths of female characters that acted as plot points to motivate the male superheroes.

We still have some work to do, though, as writer and cultural critic Janelle Asselin could probably tell you.

Last April, Asselin wrote a critique of the cover of the then-upcoming Teen Titans #1 for Comic Book Resources . The cover, drawn by artist Kenneth Rocafort, features the character Wonder Girl front-and-center, which is a choice that would be applauded were it not for the fact that this adolescent girl is drawn with comically large, unrealistically round breasts. Seriously, we’re talking bigger-than her head, Pamela Anderson-sized implants. It’s ridiculous, it’s not something any parent is likely to buy for their child, and Asselin said as much in her review.

I don’t imagine anyone is going to stalk me on Twitter over this essay, but Asselin was soon flooded with nasty, abusive comments over her opinions on the bizarre sexual objectification of a child who appears in children’s entertainment. The best of these critiques suggested that she was unqualified to comment on the cover (despite the fact that she has a master’s degree in publishing and has years of editorial experience). Others used the word “feminist” as a pejorative, suggesting that she was pushing a “feminist agenda.” Still others employed the stupid Limbaughism “feminazi” to attack her.

And then, of course, the rape threats started, leading her to eventually write in an essay published in xojane , “Every woman I know who has any sort of online following gets harassed, and most of them get rape threats. It’s become part of doing business if you write online at all.”

I genuinely feel like any moral code I might have owes more to the superhero comic books I read as a kid than it does to the years as an altar boy or Cub Scout. I think other comic fans would probably say the same thing. This is part of the reason why I find these rape threats so shocking. I get that people love their superheroes and don’t like to see them criticized, and I get that this criticism can feel a little personal—“If this material is sexist, doesn’t it follow that I’m a misogynist for liking it?” But threatening sexual assault doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Green Lantern or Mr. Fantastic would really approve of.

I think it would be good for those of us who enjoy popular culture to acknowledge that, at times, the popular culture can be somewhat flawed. Animal House is a very funny movie, but the frat guy “heroes” are kind of repugnant, especially in the ways they treat women . Van Halen was a great band once upon a time, but the video for “Hot for Teacher” is still sexist. And mainstream superhero comic books—long created by and for guys—have not, historically, portrayed women particularly well. There’s really no reason for Wonder Woman to fight crime in a bathing suit, or for the Spider-Woman to present her ass to her enemies. These choices—made for the male gaze—are completely impractical, and ought to be rectified.

I understand the young male nerd’s awkwardness around women. I have experienced the same anxiety that has turned to anger in others. Luckily, I went to college and befriended several feminists who disabused me of the delusions that so many geeky guys have about women. I’m grateful for that.

Now that more women are getting involved in comics, video games, and other forms of geek culture, I think more guys can benefit from hearing their points-of-view, just as I benefited from the friendships I formed in college. I know that change is scary, that reconsidering one’s beliefs can be very difficult. But it’s worth trying. My fellow male nerds, there is no reason to feel threatened by the women and girls who want to gain entrance to the clubhouse. They’re not here to make fun of you or hurt you. They’re here because The Avengers and World of Warcraft are awesome. So let’s put an end to all of this desire for “revenge” when a woman expresses her opinions about these hobbies we all love, and instead trying listening . It’s what Superman would do, after all.

William Bradley ‘s work has appeared in The Utne Reader, The Normal School, Brevity, The Missouri Review, Truth-Out and other websites and magazines. His book Fractals—a collection of linked essays about love, illness, and a lifetime of dorky pop culture obsessions—is forthcoming from Lavender Ink.

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