I have seen almost no episodes of American Idol.

I was around one evening where someone had a television, which is why I saw Adam Lambert sing on American Idol in 2009.  I didn't see all, or even most, of his performances.  However, I thought he was really talented and original, and what I was thinking was "I don't think that industry is going to be nice to him."  I don't know how I knew that; I knew almost nothing about the entertainment industry then.

I didn't watch the Oscars last night.  It is sickening to see an entire roomful of people sitting there all teared up and/or laughing and clapping for themselves and each other, so full of emotion for nobody who isn't them.  I'll be illegally filmed in the bathroom today; so will a lot of other unsuspecting people in Massachusetts, many of whom probably watched the Oscars last night, having no idea that all of the stars sitting in that room are doing nothing to stop the privacy of their fans being criminally invaded every day, in ways that will be permanent for the rest of their victims' lives and even after they die.  In addition to all of the people who are tapping into the hidden and illegal cameras that are in bathrooms in Massachusetts, the video from them is probably being livestreamed to websites all over the world.  It will circulate, reaching an ever-larger audience, forever.  

This morning, when recaps of the Oscars informed me that "We Are The Champions" was part of the opening act for the show, I was angry.  I marched somewhere that I could use my laptop so I could scold Mr. Lambert for being a sell-out, and then after reading some of his Twitter, it occurred to me that he might not know that, a few months ago, I published a blog page about the 1984 movie "Revenge of the Nerds."  "We Are The Champions" was the theme song for that movie, playing during its finale.  That movie was a lot of things, including an homage to misogyny.  Voyeurism and involuntary pornography, committed against a sorority, are prominently featured in the movie.  There was no term for "involuntary pornography" then; this is a similar situation to there being no term for "sexual harassment" before the 1970's.  

What the movie also exemplified was a social dynamic in which a marginalized and humiliated group proves that it doesn't really care what's fair to everyone; it just wants to be as powerful as the dominant group.  The criminal victimization of the women in the sorority is not only presented as live entertainment for the "nerds," who sit in their own fraternity house and watch video from the cameras which they installed in the sorority house, it is also used to emasculate the "jock" fraternity.  The nerds print naked pictures from the illegal video and use them as the lining for pie plates which they fill with whipped cream.  Then they sell the pies at a booth during a school contest.  The jocks figure out why there's a line of people for the pies by buying one.  While one jock scoops the whipped cream from the pie plate, the other asks him if it's good; the eating jock shrugs, saying "It's ok," and the other jock questions aloud why so many people are buying them.  By the time he finishes that sentence, the eating jock has scooped enough of the whipped cream out of the pie plate to see the naked picture of the other jock's girlfriend at the bottom of the plate, and says "That's why."  The other jock is visibly upset:  he says, "That's MY pie," which, among other things, is a play on words about the sorority having the letter "Pi" in its name.

What the jock didn't say was "My girlfriend is being violated."  There's no concern for that at all; his concern is for himself.  He thinks of his girlfriend, and her body, as being his property, and so do the nerds, and so do the violated women as they are portrayed in the movie.

According to the movie, what did the sorority women do to deserve to be the targets of voyeurism and involuntary pornography?  They were mean and snobby, and they did not want to sleep with the men from the nerd fraternity.  This being male-dominated movieland, not only does nobody file charges against the nerds, the leader of the sorority breaks up with the leader of the jock fraternity so that she can date one of the leaders of the nerd fraternity.  The rest of the brothers from the nerd fraternity content themselves with continuing to date the ugly and socially awkward sisters from the nerd sorority, whom years of rejection have made not only passionate but rather uninhibited, particularly when high.  This is also presented as a joke; the proverbial movie joke about ugly people having sex, from an industry which has spent more than a century commandeering all sexual activity as the province of the beautiful or of those who are able to dominate the beautiful.

How did the nerds join a fraternity in the first place?  They were accepted by the only fraternity to whom they didn't send a group picture.  This turned out to be a black fraternity; lots of jokes about that in the move, also.  No matter how smart the nerds are, eventually they need some physical protection from the results of their pranks; guess who's there to provide that?  Black men who, despite their college degrees and respectable employment, are used to evoke the physical menace attached to them by an industry for which no stereotype is ever off-limits.  

I wrote about "Revenge of the Nerds" on October 15, 2018.  I also wrote about "Porky's" on November 28, 2018.  That's another movie from the 1980's which prominently features voyeurism and involuntary pornography, and which also portrays the women being victimized as amused and flattered when they finally know about the cameras in their showers. 

It can be difficult to be articulate in the midst of the rage that takes over when I'm writing about this type of thing.