It never ends well when the geek humiliates the jock in high-school films. One minute the bespectacled boy is running rings round the football star in algebra class; the next, they’re in the playground, and the smart kid is getting punched in the face.
This reflects a profound anxiety among boys, that no matter how intellectually superior you are, physical defeat trumps everything. Even the ever-triumphant protagonists of the Revenge of the Nerds film franchise never manage to shake a sense of profound inadequacy, regardless of how many bullies they “school” by other means. And the anxiety of a boy can be formative as he grows into a man.
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