The power of Ignorance “Bully”, a documentary by Lee Hirsch follows the life of five grade school students and projects their difficulties while being bullied in and outside of school on a daily basis. We can witness bullied children and its consequences on their social interaction throughout grade school age groups in today’s society. The documentary "Bully" highlights the cruelty and committed violence by the bully kids who are considered as our near future workforce. This cruelty and unexpected child's behavior could be developed through family settings or the child's public interactions. Lack of supervision of school principals and teachers provides a comfort zone for bully kids to implement their unexpected behavior by bullying fragile students.
Analyzing this delicate matter, David Denby, a staff writer and film critic at The New Yorker magazine mentioned in his article that “rather than offer us charts and graphs or interviews with experts, the filmmakers Lee Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen tell the story of five children in rural and suburban areas of the Midwest and Southwest." Sad and challenging story of the bullied children captured on film shows the importance of this worldwide issue while informs the audience with solution awareness for this delicate matter.
Twelve years old boy, Alex has grown up in a healthy family in Sioux City, Iowa. He is a thoughtful and caring kid and has never done wrong or hurt anyone. Alex was prematurely born and his long face figure is an easy target for the bullies and he is known as the “fish face” among the kids in school. Alex has trouble making friends and his solitude makes him an easy target for the bully kids to insult, choke and even stab with a pencil on many different occasions. “I am Mashayekh2 happy when I am at home with my family...I feel kinda nervous going back to school.” Alex describes. “Sometimes they take it so hard on me that I want to become a bully.” Many kids fantasize hard revenges to get through their day but the very first problem is the absence of their confidence to fight back and stand for their rights.
Kellby Johnson, a homosexual teenage girl is another example of bullied kid in this documentary. Kellby is discriminated by the students, instructors and other school staff members. Even many people in her neighborhood would not accept her sexuality and believe that she is an evil human being. Homosexuals are not being treated equally in today's society while their choice of sexuality segregates them from many other people in their communities. Others believe homosexuality carries infected diseases and homosexuals need to be quarantined and isolated.
Watching Alex suffer in the school bus and his lack of confidence focused my curiosity on implementing effective self-defense strategies that would benefit kids like Alex in recognizing their rights, but it is not a solution for this problem. “The idea of schools as places where children have to overcome their physical fear and learn to fight in order to survive psychically and avoid further pain sounds downright hellish.”(David Denby). I believe kids that are suffering from bullies are highly in need of a friend or someone to express their voice while being acknowledged and respected for who they are as a person.
Kellby and many other kids like her should learn to overcome the suffering pressure from society’s unfair predictions where a gay person would face from very early teenage years. Considering the emotional distress, in many cases it is too much to ask from a teenager while being treated as an abnormal person. Racism, sexism, equal human rights and many