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Films
Bad Education
Thomas Wartenberg thinks darkly fraternal thoughts while watching a movie by Pedro Almodovar about sibling rivalry and the appalling results of Bad Education.
As someone who has had trouble with his younger brother, I've been struck by how widespread the theme of brotherly betrayal is in narrative fiction. So, for example, watching a performance of Shakespeare's comedy, As You Like It, performed by Shakespeare and Company in the hills of Western Massachusetts this past summer, I realized that, although the major focus of the play is on the nature of love, there are two spiteful brothers who knowingly wrong their siblings. The idea of sibling rivalry is one that most of us accept almost without thinking, as if the presence of two children in a family gives rise to animosity as a matter of course. And it isn't surprising that children who have no choice but to share the love of their parents wind up developing a competitive attitude, each seeing the other as depriving him of the affection he believes he alone deserves. But this doesn't explain why brothers are so prone to this form of enmity, nor why they are willing to act in heinous ways to assure getting what they take to be their just deserts.
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