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Why Does Hollywood Give Nerds a Bad Rap?

Posted 09/23/08 at 04:51:30 PM  by Will Smith

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Will SmithI just returned from a special theater screening of War Games—quite possibly the only good film Hollywood has ever produced about computers, computer nerds, or hacker culture. Shockingly, the movie, which was first released in 1983, holds up quite well, despite the use of archaic hardware (acoustic couplers and vocoder boxes), a laughable sentient military supercomputer, and an occasional lapse into typical Hollywood lingo.    

The abundance of 8-inch floppy disks also gave people in the theater a laugh, as did the fact that characters were practically chain-smoking throughout the entire movie. Our biggest laugh came when the machine running the projector crashed—it displayed a Windows 2000 Start Menu, sending the nerd collective into hysterics—but none of the showing’s pervasive air of yestertech could take away from the fact that War Games remains awesome. It was well-researched, authentic, and sometimes downright prescient. After all, the main premise of the movie is about people dialing into military networks using modems. Who would have thought that just five years after the movie’s release, the military-focused ARPANET would be opened up to commercial interests, and very soon after that, the Internet as we know it would be born.

After the show, I lingered in the lobby with my fellow sweaty nerds and reminisced about good hacker movies. Well, we tried to, anyway. Aside from The Matrix (which was about a nerd but shares more DNA with Hong Kong martial arts flicks than anything else), there haven’t been any good films that explore the geekiest depths of computing—ever. Think about it for a minute: Hackers was at best laughable, a blatant attempt to capitalize on a legitimate underground phenomenon. Even movies that first appear to add a promising element of nerdom always end up doing something dumb, like tarnishing a tense computer-based drama with idiotic and unusable (but oh so very sexy) 3D interfaces. Yes, I’m talking about the IRIX 3D filesystem featured in Jurassic Park.

Where War Games showed a likeable kid who hacked simply because he wanted a peek at new games, the other movies portray computer nerds as socially inept at best. At worst, they paint computer nerds as dysfunctional, “let the world burn” anarchist types. Over the last 10 years, I’ve met thousands of people who, like me, describe themselves as computer nerds, but I’ve yet to meet a single anarchist hacker. Maybe those guys are all holed up in their moms’ basements, but my hunch is they’re just another fictional stereotype, manufactured by Hollywood to explain anything it fears or doesn’t understand.    

I want to see some more good movies about people like me, computer nerds. Have I missed any forgotten classics? Is there anything I need to bump to the top of my Netflix queue? Let me know!

COMMENTS:8
TAGS: column, will smith, release notes, ed word, columns, hollywood, nerds, war games, geeks
COMMENTS
avatar I surprised out that it

Submitted by lucycat on Mon, 05/18/2009 - 6:31am

 I surprised out that it was to funny

 

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hiphop rappers

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avatarAbout your speculation on

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Mon, 09/29/2008 - 1:23pm

About your speculation on Star Wars. It's not really a bad thing that Lucas tried to do. I remember in Art classes my instructor always told me to fill the scene. No open areas fill it up. Leave no part of the scene empty. More is better. Make it intricate I was always told when it comes to painting and drawing and in all aspects of art including movie making I'm sure the same thing was drilled into Lucas' head at film school.

This is why films have a set that has lots of stuff in them and they are almost never out of focus so the audience has the whole set to take in as well as the subject actor or actors. If the set wasn't important then movies would be made on an empty stage with no back grounds. You would focus and derive all of your entertainment from the actors but we need to see what the charcter sees to understand the scene and the music tone to help set the mood.

So George Lucas is a genius. I don't blame the way he makes his movies for sucking. I blame the story. He needed a better story than the ones that he came up with and ultimately made movies for. The movies were artistically awsome but and the acting was great. The stories sucked.

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avatarYour answer questioned (or your question answered).

Submitted by Jipstyle on Wed, 09/24/2008 - 10:43am

There is a very simple reason that nerds, geeks and hackers are not common in Hollywood:  they are boring to everyone who doesn't belong to the group.

 Nerds have this fantastic ability to destroy a conversation at a party by attacking someone for a random, off-the-cuff comment that peripherally mentions technology.  For instance, when a nice looking girl mentions that her car has an mp3 player, some dork always feels the need to point out that the eight-inch jack in her car doesn't actually play anything.  Somehow, the awkward nerd at the dinner table always manages to crash the discussion with an inane comment about linux ("Well, of course your PC crashed .. you're running Vista *snort*")

 Technology is fantastically interesting to some, but in most it only produces an emotion that wavers between fear and uncertainty.

 There is another reason.  New technology, whether it is a new PC, hybrid car or your fancy new iPhone, is only a tool.  Geeks forget this.  A good movie needs a good story and good stories that are based on tools are pretty damn hard to write.  The Bond franchise does it right:  Bond gets fancy gadgets to help him defeat the bad guys.  The gadgets aren't the movie;  Bond is the movie.  The newest Star Wars movies do it wrong;  the movies feel like an advertisement for LucasArts' ability to CG anything.  Things like plot, acting, story telling and characterisation all disappear in the frantic race to put more aliens, explosions and glowing swords on the screen than were present in the last movie.

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avatarLive Free or Die Hard Way

Submitted by codepath on Wed, 09/24/2008 - 5:41am

Live Free or Die Hard

Way over the top, but as much as I would like to say that the Die Hard franchise is worn out, I still catch myself watching them.

codepath

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avatarWell Will there are some

Submitted by Keith E. Whisman on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 11:26pm

Well Will there are some bad nerds out there. They love anarchy and write worms and viruses to make it happen.

I always thought there should have been a sequel. Matthew Broderick in federal prison for his deeds gets released and gets back into hacking.

Also the one thing that bothered me about the film was Matthew the nerd had a girlfriend. That would never happen in real life.

Don't forget the movie Swordfish with John Travolta and Hugh Jackman and my girlfriend Halle Berry. Hugh Jackman was a hacker and a good one at that. Remember his first interview with Travolta how he had to hack a government server all while being timed and the stress of having a cute gal go down on him while a bunch of guys and gals watched. Best hacking scene ever.

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avatarAlly Sheedy

Submitted by fake gordon mah ung on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 4:19pm

War Games... perhaps the last movie in which Ally Sheedy could be considered hot.

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avatarI agree

Submitted by avanish11 on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 2:39pm

I agree with you 100% about hollywood giving nerds a bad name. I tell people I'm a nerd, and they're like "no your not. You don't wear suspenders, pocket protectors, and you dont have a fancy calculator" and other people, who are even more nerdy than most of us here on MPC say that they're not nerds. Yes... You are.

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avatarNet Flicks to get:

Submitted by Nastyman on Tue, 09/23/2008 - 2:08pm

You have to see "Sneakers" it is a lot of fun and computer geeks and nerds abound.

Another good film is "The Net" this is more of a thriller and really can happen to you! Once again a nerdett ( girl nerd ) gets into trouble without really trying.

 Nasty

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