Ever since I heard about the new film, Bully, which opened nationally on Friday the 13th, I wondered if I should see it. I haven’t yet. The reviews say it’s an ambitious film, and it has urged action and reactions from everybody who has viewed it, regardless of whether they are just curious viewers or have been a bully or a victim of bullying.
What concerns me is that one film can’t truly tell all aspects of the story. Reviews indicate that the bullies themselves don’t get interviewed. That would have been a great idea. The film apparently shows footage of actual bullying incidents, interviews surviving family members of those bullying victims who have committed suicide, and shows how ignorant the education system can be when faced with bullying issues. I don’t know if watching a cinematic tale, told in the limited time frame allotted to feature films, would be a worthwhile experience for me.
Bullying is one of those topics that doesn’t get the recognition or treatment it deserves. Even though society is finding a way to machete its way through the stigmatic jungles of racism, the rights of the gay community and aid to the disabled, nobody seems to really know how to handle the kind of cruelty which bullying brings out in people. It germinates in our children and polarizes the classrooms and hallways of our schools into factions of perceived power and subjugating oppression the likes of which should have been forgotten after the Industrial Age enabled the common man to read and reason independently.
Ever since the topic of bullying came out with Columbine High School, I have felt helpless in the shadows cast by these underage terrorists who look like children but speak and act like seasoned and soulless lunatics. Who are they, and how dare they. This film strives to reveal the problem and help restore the power where it belongs; to the adults who should take a stand (or, in the case of some of the ignorant ones, know better).
I hope that this one film isn’t the end of the story. I think it would be helpful to hear from the bullies and find out how they think their world should be run. It may wind up sounding like something we have seen before when somebody decides somebody else should not have the right to exist and others go along with it, but this movie is a step toward understanding and possibly ending the horror. That is a success story worth filming.
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