Napoleon Dynamite

A couple of days ago, I watched Napoleon Dyanmite. This is a movie about a teenager named Napoleon, who is sort of an outcast at school. People do not like him because of his strange behavior and interests. Everyone makes fun of him and he has no friends. However, he meets aboy named Pedro, another social outcast, and befriends him.
In this movie, Napoleon and Pedro are ridiculed very much by other people. This reminded very much of Catullus' "Amici et Inimici" poems. In these poems, Catullus made fun of those he disliked. He thought that this would cause more hurt than actual physical harm, because it affect them emotionally and would ruin their reputation. In carmen 69, Catullus makes fun of Rufus for his horrible smell: qua tibi fertur valle sub alarum trux habitare caper (which claims that a hideous goat lives in the valley of your armpit). He wishes to make Rufus' life miserable by publicly humiliating him.The same is true of Napoleon. All the guys at school pick on him because of his weirdness. The want to make him seem like even more of a social outcast.
In Catullus, poems, however, he makes fun of people with high respect in society, such as Suffenus, who is labeled as witty and sophisticated. Napoleon, on the other hand, is not at all like Suffenus. He is in fact almost the complete opposite, someone who does not have any social standing to begin with.
Catullus wrote his poems to his inimici in order to hurt them internally. He wished to destroy their reputations and humiliate them, mostly by ridiculing them. Napoleon is made fun of a lot in this movie. However, instead of hurting him, it seems to motivate him. He decides to go and prove that he is not a nobody by performing a dance for Pedro's campaign. This movie made me wonder if humiliation is actually something hurtful or something that can be used as motivation to a certain extent.