Earlier quoted context omitted.
A film about sadistic behaviour isn't necessarily a celebration of it.
It set up a false dichotomy between being abusive to students in order to achieve excellence and softballing them with praise so they'll never work hard. Most people I've talked to bought into this dichotomy after watching this movie, thinking that there is some kind of tradeoff between greatness and abusiveness. The movie legitimizes this false dichotomy, not by condoning the abuse, but by implying that it is the un…
Interesting. My thoughts were this was the weak half-rationalisations of a teacher taking out his anger at himself for his own career having plateaued on his students. I think that's a shame that just because the film doesn't explicitly criticise this viewpoint (apart from through the whole narrative of course -- he ends up dropping out of school when he could've been happy being a good gigging musician with a girlfriend -- and someone commits suicide) people internalize it. See Fight Club I guess.
