1. Why do nerds in teen movies think they have ANY chance of getting the hot and popular boy/girl?
Remember the 1986 film, Lucas? Corey Haim was the adorable (think: puppy) nerd with hugely oversized glasses to match his hugely oversized crush on blandly lovable Kerri Green (who you will remember as the "it" girl from Goonies, NOT Martha Plimpton, who I actually adore.) Lucas was your classic undersized weakling academic misfit who hung out with his fellow outcast, Winona Ryder (!) with whom he may actually have had a slight possibility of hooking up. And yet, he foolishly goes out for the football team in order to impress the popular girl.
There are so many things wrong about this premise.
I have hung out with many a nerd/outcast/non-jock type in my teen years and we (I mean, they) hated the freakin' jockish and popular crowd. Because, as a whole, the popular sect are all a bunch of entitled jerkwads, who even if they deign to act civilly on occasion, are worthless when it comes to actually having a rewarding conversation. No self-respecting outcast actually wants to hang out with a bunch of popular assholes. I mean, give me a bunch of goth skaters and art geeks over the vapid loveliness of the richies any day. Plus, nerds are smart enough to calculate that they have no real chance to fit in with this group.
Even when they all give Lucas the big slow clap (you know, that gradually increasing, emphatic jock clap) in the end of the movie, it was more like: Man, dude, We can't believe you were stupid enough to take off your helmet right before you caught the big Hail Mary pass and then allowed the other team to tromp on your skinny neck like that just to get a stupid football jacket. We admire your admiration of our superiority and your sacrifice to us. Now please give us the space our superiority demands already. And try to stay away from our wimmin folk. That is what a slow clap means, people.
As an adult and a parent, I think I will be totally concerned if my children begin to run a bit too mainstream. Thus runs the path to Madness and Sheeple-dom. This is not something to which you should aspire, people! (Remember Mr. Pine and his purple house? Anarchy! That's the ticket.)
2. And this leads me to another point. Why are movie nerds so transparently not really very nerdy/unattractive? And why do they become "attractive" once they dress up conventionally and fit it with the ridiculous jock group? Glasses can be wicked cool people!
I am thinking of She's All That, with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachel Leigh Cook. She was this totally cool and brilliant art nerd who for some reason didn't realize that she just needed to get contact lenses and some Abercrombie clothes to fit in with the glam crowd. Of course, her makeover is delivered, My Fair Lady style, by Freddie Prinze Jr. himself, who naturally falls in love with his Eliza now that he has fixed her up. Why the hell can't he fall in love with her in her original interesting modern goth get up? For that matter, why did Eliza Doolittle have to "be a lady" before Henry Higgins found her acceptable? It's class warfare being taught to teenagers on the big screen with the main-est of the mainstreamers cast in the roles of royalty. I call bullshit! NO more elite status for Sheeple! Let's give credit and elevated status to those who are willing to be different!
And how about Can't Buy Me Love (1987) with the coolest nerd in history, Patrick Dempsey. He pays to get Pygmalioned by his beautiful and shallow neighborhood hottie, and she actually learns to love him, blah blah blah. I guess this one has a little twist, because they both learn to reject the "go with the crowd" idiocy of their crowd and "be themselves" and so on, but they both still end up as attractively styled blandly mainstream version of "themselves".
Pretty In Pink is the only movie I can think of where the outcast doesn't have to change into a Sheeple Girl to get the guy. BUT, they originally had her NOT get the cool guy and had to change the ending to make it happy enough to please audiences and furthermore, I still cannot see Molly pining after this dopey Rich Boy in the first place. Just because she hangs around with Duckie (which, hubba hubba, who wouldn't want a little Jon Cryer action anyway!?) doesn't mean she can't attract any interesting guys. She is a strong, interesting, attractive girl. She wouldn't be sitting home crying every day in the real world. She'd be like, "These high school guys are dorks. Let's go get coffee by the college and pick up some cool art students." I know this. Really. This is what we did in high school when the guy pool seemed to be drying up.
3. I must stop watching VH1's I Love the 80's 3D or you will be subjected to many more posts like this one.
4. Oh yeah, and why do I LOVE to watch these movies, even though they push all my buttons? Gah!
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