Bully is a Lee Hirsch documentary originally slapped with an R rating. The Weinstein Company, distributing the film, fought to have the rating lowered, and ultimately won a PG-13. Thank God for that, because it pretty much kills any social implications this documentary could have if the audience that so desperately should be watching cannot. And there is no question that in today’s culture where bullying leaves the playground and seeps onto the Internet, where guns trump fists, this film should be standard classroom material.
The guy in front of me was crying the entire time, and I thought about what a baby he was… and then I realized this is the problem. More often than not, our natural tendencies lead us to vilify things we see as signs of weakness. And to be fair, although I’m not much of crier, Bully is definitely emotionally exhausting.
TANGENT: I watched Bully immediately after laughing my ass off at The Three Stooges, 90 minutes of three guys insulting and beating the shit out of each other. Talk about a buzzkill. Don’t ever watch these movies back-to-back.
We follow Alex – nicknamed Fishface, and to his sheer misfortune, yes, I can see where it came from – who accepts his role as the human punching bag on the school bus, unable to find a comfort zone in school. In a handful of instances, all I wanted to do was jump into the screen, shake the shit out of this kid and yell, “STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!” His father echoed similar frustrations with his son’s overly passive attitude, and in one heart-breaking scene, Alex tells his mother, “I don’t think I feel anything anymore.” He’s not even 15.
As sad as it is this boy so willingly accept his fate, in the back of your mind, you think he’ll end up as one of the other children mentioned in the film, Ty Smalley or Tyler Long – both suicides – or Ja’Meya, a young Louisiana girl who was so fed up with being tormented that she brought a gun onto the school bus. Alex’s story has little resolution, so it feels like the time bomb silently ticks away, and that’s tough to bear.
The hard feelings don’t stop there, as you’ll be frequently forced to sit through the idiocy of Alex’s assistant principal, Kim Lockwood, an indifferent school administrator whose head is so far up her own ass she eats her lunch twice. Forget Loki from The Avengers, or Batman’s Bane, this lady is going to be the cinematic villain of 2012. Totally inept and incompetent. In a somewhat kharmic twist of fate, the same Internet that has ruined so many tweens’ and teens’ lives is probably on the brink of giving this woman a massive headache, too. Some would say such a headache is well-deserved. I would be one of those.
Trying to watch this as the 13 year-old me, I wonder if kids will truly grasp the gravitas of Bully, or do what they already do naturally, flippantly dismiss and poke fun at it. Either way, its worth a shot to see if the movie can make any sort of difference, as its apparent schools like East Middle in Sioux City, Iowa, don’t even make the attempt.