Older Brother Characterizations

Corrie and I recently watched two different movies from streaming Netflix that, strangely, had the main character's name as the first word of each film's titles, and each of those characters were the younger siblings of a pair of boys. It seems like in America's contemporary story-telling landscape (for hacks), the "older brother" is at first a villainous bully.

In the first movie I'm talking about, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Jason Segel plays Jeff, a 30-year-old stoner living in his mom's basement. She's played by Susan Sarandon, while Jeff's older brother is played by Ed Helms, an asshole who repulses his wife, demeans his brother, and bickers with his mom. Guess what his name is...

It's Pat.

The movie follows Jeff and his bong-addled brain interpreting "clues" that lead him to some kind of action. Part of the day's activities consist of Jeff helping Pat interrupt his wife's act of infidelity, and we're led to believe that the journey was about Jeff helping Pat. Of course its bigger than that. Susan Sarandon has her own B-story, and the ending is an odd coincidence in a mostly enjoyable if unbalanced effort from the brotherly writer/director team of Jay and Mark Duplass.

The second movie is Lars and the Real Girl. Ryan Gosling plays Lars, the younger brother to Paul Schneider's Gus. Their mother died during Lars' childbirth, and their father died many years later, having lived a quiet life of disappointment. Gus and his pregnant wife Karin have moved back into the boys' childhood home, causing Lars to voluntarily move out to the garage.

The premise of the movie is that Lars, socially awkward and with a distaste for human contact, orders a highly realistic and anatomically correct doll, and introduces "Bianca" to people as his girlfriend. At first Gus, the older brother, is reluctant to play along, and gets a little hysterical in the privacy of his and Karin's bedroom. But Gus gets introspective and ends up supportive before it ends.

Eventually the whole rural upstate Wisconsin town, out of their feelings for Lars, go along with him and his delusion, and everyone finds themselves affected by their various relationships with Bianca. Never once is the story played for lurid jokes, making it a very gentle study of sadness and responsibility.

Gus is much more nuanced that Pat, but both start out gruff wankers. Pat is an ass, but Gus is only frustrated. Pat's transformation seems a little more forced and unlikely, but that's because he's more of a caricature.

That's the easy characterization I'm talking about: making a character likable by making them an underdog is a natural thing, and making someone an underdog naturally by giving them an older sibling to berate them is a lazy way to staff a movie. That's an opinion, of course.

Jeff and Lars are the star characters of those respective movies, as are Jason Segel and Ryan Gosling. The more touching story all around involves less caricature in general, but that's not specific to the older-brother dynamic.

I thought that it was interesting to have the range in the characterizations of those two older brothers, Pat and Gus, while having them starting out very similar, as the stereotype older brother. That stereotype: asshole.

As the older brother of only two boys, am I keenly aware of what stereotype into which I'm to fall?