I watched Bully today
In case you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Bully is the documentary about kids who are bullied sometimes to the point of death. At the heart of the movie is a gutsy, sweet, but let's be honest, weird and limited young man named Alex Libby whose school experience is a sliver of Hell served up daily; and a young man, named Tyler Long, who killed himself after being bullied for years. In a couple of subplots from Oklahoma Kelby Johnson is an out lesbian who is literally treated as a non person at her small town school and an 11 year old who killed himself.
Alex, for all his limitations, is one of the bravest kids you will ever meet. His bus ride to school is a living hell of abuse both physical and mental. He is beaten, strangled, threatened, called vile names for the entire ride. Kelby was run over by a mini van and has had teachers talk about burning faggots in class. Students literally flee her presence. She is also one of the bravest kids you will ever meet. Alex is incapable of expressing either the reality of his feelings about the reality of the horrors of his daily life. In order to try to process his reality he has convinced himself that his tormentors are his friends and only teasing. The scene where his horror stricken parents explain to him that friends don't behave that way his crestfallen face as he says then what friends do I have is heart breaking. Both Kelby and Alex have moved from the schools that they were at at the beginning of this film and are apparently doing better now, than during this film but that doesn't negate the very real horror of what they have gone through.
This is by no means a pleasant film. Instead it is a harrowing journey that will be hard to forget. I whole heartedly recommend seeing it.
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Can I PPV it somewhere tonight, or is it theatre only right now?
Thanks for the review. 
They did a very good thing! 
There was a thread about this young woman here. Likely, she was not the only one, so shout out to her and any others who had a hand in this.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11379047
people verbally abused and degraded (e.g. Judge Judy), shows in which people are shown in degraded situations and viewers are invited to feel superior (e.g. Cops, Lock-Up, all those Jerry Springer type shows), shows in which people submit to degradation in order to win some stupid prize (e.g. shows where slime is poured on people or similar things and it's called a "challenge"
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Not to mention the increasingly test-driven and competitive nature of society in general, in which children from even kindergarten now are divided into the 'sheep' and the 'goats' in the competition for a limited number of decent places in society -- from cradle to grave.
When I was younger there was a movie, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" about dance marathons during the Depression. Unlike the present moment, that was a time when class and capitalism was actually discussed in the MSM, and the film was widely acknowledged to be a comment on how capitalism degrades people, forcing them into positions of suffering and using their suffering as "spectacle" -- the bread and circuses of our time, encouraging people to defuse their hostility onto those beneath them in the competitive struggle, rather than those above them manipulating the action.
The same structure is inherent in institutionalized racism, apartheid, etc.
On edit I'll add that I even see bullying behavior here at DU.
It's great that bullying is being talked about, and good that children should be taught not to bully. But the fact is that bullying is modeled widely in society, and that we are taught from the cradle that some people are "better" than others, and that the "best" deserve things that the others don't deserve, that the homeless and jobless just aren't as good as the housed and jobbed, that minimum-wage workers are failures, that low-lifes tazed for minor offenses "deserve it," that people should work in unpaid internships in order to "get a foot in" the job market, etc.
And an examination of the general lessons life in modern America teaches, and the possibility that bullying has intensified as life has become more competitive and more cruel, is verboten. Kids won't be discussing that in school and it will get little play in the MSM. Meanwhile, social cruelty increases, the surveillance state grows, etc.
So I predict that films like this and anti-bullying programs will have a very limited effect, because the behavior is not just a matter of a few bad individuals who need to be taught better. The behavior reflects the *real* conditions of life in our time, for everyone, and is present to a greater or lesser degree in all individuals.
Only a few people get to have a face like a lion. Own it child.
But I think I probably should. I wasn't bullied, because I wasn't an out lesbian and I had the benefit of having a fairly upper middle class family to back me up. I also wasn't going to public school.
I still knew at 15 that I was gay. I've been femme all of my life so I pass fairly easily - until I open my mouth and my viewpoints come out that is 
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