BACK ROW MAFIA

Bully brings 5 highly personal, devastating stories. The film depicts information we can no longer afford to avoid about the emotional abuse rampant among young kids, and it depicts it in such a way that will stay with you. Geographic and socioeconomic commonalities among the families may leave you with the notion that violent bullying isn’t happening in more affluent parts of the country. Maybe to a certain extent, that’s true, but bullying likely is happening in different and equally damaging ways in those communities.

Despite those shortcomings, this documentary capitalizes on two filmmakers’ power of persuasion to effect change whose time has come. Rather, change that is decades overdue if you ask director Lee Hirsch, who cites bullying during his own childhood as an inspiration for creating Bully. It Gets Better is a heartwarming notion, but ultimately, some children can’t afford to wait for it to get better. Just ask the countless parents whose children have committed suicide after years of bullying.

Bully will demand of you this: we need to foster a culture of kindness and compassion, and not allow a culture of violence and emotional damage to persist. We need to empower children of all ages to stand up for themselves, sure, to a certain extent. As one victim of bullying in the film notes, the bullying stopped when he stood his ground. More importantly, though, we need to empower children to stand up for others.

We should stop telling victims of bullying they need to defend themselves. After all, some personality types are simply not designed to fight eye for eye, and they shouldn’t have to in order to comfortably attend school each day. In fact, producer Cynthia Lowen mentioned to us that anyone who inhibits a child’s ability to attend school is in direct violation of that child’s civil rights.

Pictured above is Alex, one of the victims of bullying whose story is followed in the film.

Don’t see this film if you don’t believe these change is necessary, imminent and possible. You’ll just be depressed and devastated by the information therein. But, if knowing that, you do see it and you cry when you watch the home videos of a father kiss his baby and lift him up to a basketball hoop to slam dunk, knowing that father found that very same child hanging from a shelf 15 years later, ask yourself what was lost on his peers who mockingly wore ropes around their necks to school the next day. This is the culture Bully will force you to confront.

Visit http://action.thebullyproject.com/ to learn more.