The documentary “Bully” came about like a thief in the night. Filmmakers Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen made this film with the good intention of raising awareness about the problem of not only bullying but the lack of discipline that certain schools [do not] enforce on their students.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) released an R rating for the movie before its release due to harsh language. This caused a media backlash from filmmakers as well as parents and even celebrities to change it so children could see its amazing impact. After weeks of fighting, the MPAA made “Bully” unrated and let parents make up their own minds about letting their children see it.
I have to say, the filmmakers should be thankful that the MPAA caused so much media to get involved because otherwise, I don’t know if the film would be so popular.
Being out of high school for some time now, my memories of classmates getting bullied are kind of a blur. After seeing this film, however, I am amazed at the lengths children will go to make themselves seem more powerful. The violence has definitely gotten more brutal and the verbal abuse children inflict on each other in the film is unbelievable.
The documentary follows 5 teenagers who each experience their own kind of daily torture from classmates. One boy hung himself at 17 years old because of the ridicule he faced every day. Another boy, 11, shot himself because he couldn’t take the abuse. A girl, 14, gets so fed up that she brings a gun on the school bus to threaten the bullies to leave her alone. You get the idea.
The amazing thing about this film is its guts to go against the system. It shows countless evidence of school administration’s neglect to protect their students. An assistant principal’s sheer stupidity on the bullying in her own school is appalling. After a student goes up to her, holding the back of his bleeding head, he proceeds to tell her some kids pushed his head into a nail that was sticking out of the wall. Her response: “I bet you didn’t like that, did you?” (I, personally, love my head to be shoved into a nail.) It is no wonder that the children in the film feel like they can’t talk to anyone about getting bullied, because they feel nobody cares anyway. Which, unfortunately, I’m sure really happens in schools all around the world.
This is not your feel-good movie, or your kick ass special effects movie. It is, however, remarkably simple and its message speaks volumes to anyone who has ever been bullied or has been a bully themselves. I highly recommend it, but it is a tear jerker at times and does cause numerable counts of anger at school management and faculty members in the film.