In director Lee Hirsch’s Bully, a heartbreaking Oscar-worthy documentary, he spends the 2009 school year following five abused kids, two of them who ended up committing suicide. A father of one of the kids who committed suicide says in the film, “Kids would throw his books on the floor and say ‘Pick em up, bitch.’
The movie was originally slapped with an R rating as the teenaged bullies in the film used the F word more than twice in the film. Why would the MPAA have such an idiotic rule? The language is the real thing, not read from a fake script! So in the end, the distributors decided to release the film unrated.
Thus, Bully will not be seen by the children that would most benefit from seeing it. “Imagine that a bully turns 17, finally sees the film and thinks, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that when I was a kid. Why didn’t someone show me this movie (back) then?” (Corliss, Time Magazine).
“I wish this movie could be shown in every classroom in America,” tweeted Ellen DeGeneres. Unfortunately, it won’t be, due to its R rating (update 04/06/2012: The film has since been edited slightly to now get a ‘PG’ rating).
Kids, get your parents to see this movie, it may change your lives! (FYI, I will be taking my 10 year old daughter and 12 year old son as soon as this comes out) (March 30, 2012 in select cities only).
According to the film’s website, over 13 million kids will be bullied this year alone.
- Even after Tyler’s suicide, kids in an Ellen interview (see below) say the bullying has not stopped at the school.
- 12 years have passed since Columbine, hundreds of millions invested on anti-bullying campaigns in the past decade, but bullying is still rampant in schools.
- 86% of students in a national survey said, “other kids picking on them, making fun of them or bullying them” causes teenagers to turn to lethal violence in the schools.
UPDATE Apr-06/2012: The Weinstein Company, which is releasing the film, agreed to remove three of the six F words, if it could keep the other ones in the scene it considered essential. The MPAA agreed to the cuts, and the movie will now play in theaters permitting children to see it unaccompanied. The new rating of ‘PG’ should also encourage educators to show the film in schools.
Watch the interview by Ellen of the parents of one of the boys who committed suicide:
April 1, 2012 at 7:17 am
Reblogged this on sarahlougordon.
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April 1, 2012 at 9:22 am
I’m glad this film is being talked about. My only complaint of the It Gets Better campaign was that there are children that are not gay that need to be reminded that they can get through this and high school will not last forever. My brother was tortured in school for being different and the school did nothing for years until they eventually asked to transfer to another school because he was “in too many fights” despite the fact that he was being jumped by people he didn’t know.
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April 7, 2012 at 8:46 am
I’m glad that your brother was able to survive… I was also bullied in elementary school (grade 3)… Kids do have it hard. And it’s hard for the clueless parents to catch on in time. These kinds of films MUST be seen.
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