So THAT Happened: Lewis Was A Rapist In ‘Revenge Of The Nerds’

For the most part, the history of TV and movies has been a wondrous and larger-than-life adventure, expanding our imaginations and our emotions. But sometimes that history has gotten weird. That’s where we come in. Welcome to So THAT Happened, a corner of the internet devoted to dredging up some of the most surprising pop culture moments and reminding you how weird pop culture history actually is.

It’s no big surprise that the sexual politics of classic ‘80s comedies are vastly different from what’s acceptable in 2016. There was a lot of groping and near sexual assault that was played for laughs. But even under the cringe-worthy “it was a different time” defense, Revenge of the Nerds is a particularly bad example of cinematic sexism.

You know the story. As A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd convincingly argues, the movie was one of the first mainstream steps that helped transform “nerd” from a dirty word to an identity to be proud of. However, in the course of proving that it was OK to be a nerd, the movie more often than not sacrifices its female characters in increasingly disturbing ways (Dowd makes that point as well in his article). And then Robert Carradine’s character, Lewis, technically commits rape.

WTF HAPPENED?

A lot of morally questionable things all at once. In order to win their fight against the jock-ish Alpha Betas, our protagonists target the Pi Delta Pi sorority house — the house that typically dates AB guys. While his friends are installing cameras to take nude pictures of the young women without their consent, Lewis steals the costume of alpha male Stan, the president of AB. Wearing this costume, Lewis finds Stan’s girlfriend Betty (Julia Montgomery) and tricks her into having sex with him. Later, Lewis reveals his identity as not Stan, the man Betty had consented to have sex with. But don’t worry, she’s totally cool with it, guys. Hi-jinks! Tri-Lamb for life!

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

Let’s get some logistics out of the way. Technically, the type of sexual assault Lewis committed is rape by deception or rape by fraud, which is when the perpetrator gains the victim’s consent but has used deception to get it. You may recognize that description as the exact premise of this subplot. This article in the Yale Law Journal does a good job of explaining the nuances of the topic. Legally, this is something that is rarely punishable because the definition of what counts as fraud in this case can be incredibly vague. Since legislation about this didn’t really start happening until around the 2000s, there’s a good chance there were next to no preventative laws in place during the ‘80s. However, just because you can’t legally punish someone for something doesn’t mean it’s morally right. Pretending to be someone’s significant other to trick them into having sex with you is violating to say the least.

This is far from the movie’s only crime against its women. The women of Pi Delta Pi are treated as trophies to be earned by both Alpha Beta and Tri-Lamb. And like I mentioned before, there’s that whole plot involving illegally take nude photos of these women and distributing around school without their permission. If the POV of Revenge of the Nerds was flipped to focus on the women of Pi Beta Pi, it would be a horror story. Or as Noah Brand of A&E puts it “Revenge Of The Nerds has so much rape culture, you could use it to make rape yogurt.”

NO, HOW WAS THIS POSSIBLY CREATED?

Ehhh … the ‘80s were a different time? That’s really the only defense I can come up with, and I know it’s a weak one.

[Where to watch Revenge of the Nerds]