Woolly Bully

Drillbit Taylor is a completely forgetable teenage movie that taps into one of the classic school story themes: bullying. Skinny, shy and nerdish freshman and friend get crosswise with nasty senior bullies. I'm not quite sure that this is a universal experience, but is surely is common.

Aside from being skinny, shy, and nerdish, I was hardly classic bully bait - I was tall and on the football, basketball, and track teams, but I did manage to attract a few, so my guess is that being bullied is more the rule than the exception. I imagine that bully and bullied are re-enacting ancient rituals of dominance competition that go back to our apelike ancestors and beyond - chimps do it, monkees do it, and quite likely birds do it.

Natural though it may be, for many adolescents it makes life a living hell, promoting drug abuse, gang membership and occasionally, suicide and murder. Adults can ignore it, try to rigorously suppress it, or even channel it via rituals such as hazing.

Somewhat to my own surprise, I find myself somewhat in sympathy with the last approach. Under the control of a stupid or sadistic adult, such rituals can become quite monstrous, but properly regulated they can actually smooth the rites of passage. Organizations from the cub scouts to the Green Berets have adopted some form of this.

In the movie, the hoodlums reign of terror was facilitated by the school principal's policy of studied indifference. There is a fair amount of verisimilitude in this.

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