Obviously that's the point of making such a film, and for adults who see it the documentary might open their eyes to the terrorizing that happens at their kids' schools, but could it have an instructional effect if shown to kids? The Weinstein Company argues that yes, Lee Hirsch's film Bully, a documentary on the rise in bullying awareness that has swept the world in the past few years, could and should be used in schools for just that purpose. The only problem is that the content of the film has garnered it an 'R' rating meaning that it can't be shown in schools were it could theoretically do the most good. Every year there's a new case of someone challenging the (antiquated) MPAA on their inability to see the bigger picture, and there are few nobler cases than this.
There is another side to this argument of course, and that is: would this documentary actually convince bullies not to pick on kids? We'd like to think of children as rational, self-aware beings who recognize what their actions mean, but that's simply not the case. The idea that derails the Weinstein Company's argument is whether or not bullies can recognize themselves as bullies. Will they be shamed out of their cruel behavior because they see a documentary discussing how badly it can hurt people? Or would they put up blinders to the truth? Who's to say that bullies don't think their violence to be justified?
Then you have another problem, how often do we tell kids not to imitate what they see in films? There is a certain age where the impact of documentaries and the truths they hold start to hit home, but there's a problem in expecting a child to have the level of intellectual maturity to ween out the message of a film but still think that bullying another kid is okay. Assuming Bully could ever be a legitimate teaching aid to end bullying, that disparity between the ages where kids can respect another person's well-being enough not to pick on them and when they begin to take deeper meanings from the film's they watch might be too great.
Heck, if you look at the comments and reactions to the bully video above, and then consider Justin Bieber's reaction to that video (he calls it "cool") then you have to ask what kids will get from bullying lectures.
If the message can be delivered then good for the Weinstein Company for taking it to the MPAA to reduce the rating from an 'R' to a 'PG-13' or 'Not Rated'. It's absurd in the first place, even if the documentary does show actual beatings handed out by bullies, to give it an 'R'. If it's a language issue, just bleep it out, but it's probably violence. There are few instances where violence can be called educational, but this might be one of them, and the fact that the MPAA couldn't grasp that fact only shines more light on the organizations ever-increasing obsolescence.
