Bully Redux

After writing recently about the campaign to get the uptight conservatives who run the MPAA to lighten up and change the R rating they gave Bully, the film arrived in New Haven and I was there for its first showing.

No surprise, it’s powerful stuff! No surprise too, there are few surprises. The only one that really jumped out at me is how clueless so many parents are about their kids’ lives. The star of the film is a 14-year-old Iowa boy named Alex. He is tormented every day at school and, especially, on the school bus. His mother claims to be totally unaware and when she learns of the magnitude of the problem, she marches to school to complain to the Assistant Principal.

This clueless woman responds by claiming that Alex’s bus is “good as gold” and then, in an astonishing attempt to deflect responsibility, shows off pictures of her new grandchild, cooing about how precious all kids are. She’s also shown reprimanding two boys who were seen fighting, but in doing so she praises the bully and berates the victim.

This scenario is repeated by at least two parents who blame their child, at least partially, for the bullying.  You have to fight back, says one, while the other, Alex’s mom, complains that he needs to ditch the so-called friends who are hurting him.

In perhaps the hardest moment of the film to watch, Alex responds “If not for them, what friends do I have?”

There are even sadder tales: of young Tyler Long, a 17-year-old who killed himself in Georgia, where a school superintendent denies there’s a problem with bullying; and of Ty Smalley, an 11-year-old (ELEVEN!) who committed suicide rather than live through another day of bullying.

Considering all this you’d think the film is depressing. It is, of course, and I cried more than once, but that’s not the feeling with which I left the theatre. Partly because of the efforts of Kirk Smalley, Ty’s father, who started the Stand for the Silent anti-bullying program and even more so for the remarkable resolve and bravery of Kelby Johnson, an Oklahoma high school student who came out as a lesbian and refused to let the bible-thumpers run her and her family out of town.

It’s a very ugly world in Bully, but there are some amazing points of light. As usual, the kids lead the way; the adults stumble behind.