(Image: Weinstein Company)
A movie about children being bullied should, one would think, be designed so that children could have access to it. Disturbing? Yes. Dealing with a ubiquitous topic? Yes. This is nothing, unfortunately, that our children aren’t aware of. Even though the Motion Picture Association denied the ‘R’ rating for ‘Bully‘–the Weinstein Company decided to take the rating away altogether. This means it might become more difficult to distribute the movie to middle America who have less access to art film houses.
But who is to say that it’s just middle America that’s in need of this movie? In my middle class town (we’re just 30 minute train ride to NYC) a group of girls got caught creating a Facebook page to intentionally make fun of and bully another girl. This ‘closed’ Facebook page rolled on for over a year. How did the girls get caught? The Queen Bee of the group decided to invite the subject of ridicule to the closed Facebook page–that’s right, she invited a girl to a closed page where the intention of that page is to make fun of said girl.
The bullied girl immediately reported it.
What was Queen Bee’s mother’s reaction after bullied girl reports the incident to school? “My daughter’s Facebook page was hacked.” Excuse me while I sneeze bullshit.
The school’s response? Girls sit in detention to eat lunch.
This is a school with a bullying liaison.
Motion Picture Association, you’ve done a disservice to children all over this country by not making sure this film was accessible to EVERYONE. This movie should have been distributed to schools as a requirement. This isn’t a time to shield children from what they already know just because of a few F-bombs. This is a time to use common sense.
Read A.O. Scott’s review of ‘Bully’ here.
Miriam Novogrodsky
March 30, 2012
just the trailer to this movie was heartbreaking. despite all the bully awareness and prevention programs in my kids schools, there are still, of course, social pecking orders and bullying – the fact that seeing this movie isn’t mandatory for kids let alone only available in limited release is absoulutely disgraceful. Kids bully, kids swear and kids play horribly violent video games and watch sex, violence and swearing on TV and in movies ~ ALL the time. But a real issue that is messy and painful? Let’s protect them? Makes me furious. Thanks for the post. miri