Bullying isn’t merely child’s play

HIRSCH. Cathartic project.

Lee Hirsch’s documentary, “Bully,” isn’t easy to watch. It is especially disturbing because it chronicles how physical and psychological abuse affects the lives of the five young students it follows. People see them getting bullied, but they choose to keep their disapproval to themselves to avoid “rocking the boat” or shaking up the status quo.

Their parents are haunted by their inability to protect their children, while their teachers and the police want to help them but don’t know how, because there are no bruises to prove their allegations. When one of the students tells his teacher that he’s been stabbed with a pencil, she inspects his scalp and casually says, “But, there’s no hole.”

A teenage girl sees her popularity at school take a dip overnight after she comes out of the closet. Another girl is sent to a correctional facility, then to a mental institution after she stands up to her abusers—with a gun!

Worse, two of the documentary’s subjects, Tyler Long and Ty Smalley, eventually committed suicide—because they didn’t know whom to turn to! They’re just five of the 13 million kids who are bullied in the US every year.

Hirsch knows whereof he speaks. In fact, he says that making the film was cathartic for him—because he was also bullied as a child! He explains, “I felt that the hardest part of being bullied was communicating, and getting help. I couldn’t get people to support me.”

Thanks to “Bully,” people are now taking the matter seriously!

“TVM Filipino” at Teatrino

Speaking of advocacies, the Filipino version of Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play, “The Vagina Monologues,” will have a special performance on Nov. 23, Friday at 4 p.m. at Teatrino in Greenhills, San Juan—for the NGO, Forum for Family Planning and Development, which aims to draw support for the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill. It stars Pinky Amador and Madeleine Nicolas.