NIC Blog
NIC Statement on the Film “Brotherhood”
When reality is stretched to the point of breaking, not a single soul seems served. And when a film is made into a "thriller" based on the most far-fetched plot imaginable, it degrades, demeans and desensitizes.
The latest assault on fraternities and fraternity life does wear thin.
It wears thin on the patience of hundreds of thousands of honorable men.
Absurdity, urban legend, a tall tale; no matter the descriptor or adjectives of a movie trailer or online review - the summary of a storyline that began as an 8-minute short by a student filmmaker has been produced for no good cause or no good use.
The entertainment value of "Brotherhood" is even less appealing when you listen to the filmmaker and actors talk about how degrading the movie-making experience became as the exaggerated plot played out on set in Arlington, Texas.
One of the actors described it as "a degrading week." Another said "we all allowed it to happen-for real." One said he became enraged during filming. Others said they passed out while participating in the movie's required hazing that the actors endured.
The plot revolves around a pledge being forced to rob a store - ordered to steal $19.10 as a ceremonial amount tied to the year of the fraternity's founding in 1910. And all goes from worse to worn thin.
Academic success, service and philanthropy within our community, leadership development, and social skill development are the cornerstones of our standards for the North-American Interfraternity Conference's 74 member fraternities.
What inspired this filmmaker from Texas was not any thread of reality, but rather what he called "an urban legend that supposedly never happened." For the brief and fleeting "entertainment" value of a film that cheaply and sensationally minimizes the value of fraternity, we believe this is a film better left undone-and unwatched.
