𤳠#308 - The Bully Pulpit
What makes a bully believable to an audience? What responsibility do writers have to their audience when telling a story about bullying? We have an Inneresting think about this, and more, this week!
Looking at examples of bullying going back to A Christmas Story or Back to the Future, a few questions comes to mind:
- How have bullies changed, and does it relate to how we tell stories about bullying?
- Do the bullies we see now reflect reality, or a time-delayed version of what the writers remember bullies being like when they were younger?
- What influence does the depiction of bullying have on viewers who go on to bully others?
Nicole Martins considers the way that aggressive characters in shows and films for kids are often more well-liked by the audience, what impact this has on kids modeling these bullying behaviors, and how it might change if bullies were less frequently rewarded for their behavior (or faced actual consequences) on screen.
Maria Georgo and Alexia Georgakopoulous review 100 examples of scenes from films released between 1994 and 2016 to find the themes and patterns of workplace bullying depicted, and whether those depictions change over time. The researchers looked at the paradox of how destructive experiences are used as a source of entertainment, and how these scenes can simultaneously be useful tools in counseling and interventions while simultaneously trivializing the impact of actions once converted into a fictional narrative.
Kaitlin Petranovich, Samantha Bapty, Travis Maestas, and Victor Strasburger catalog 198 episodes of the most popular TV shows from 1960 to 2010 to categorize bullying incidents from verbal aggression to physical violence to determine if there was a change over time in the average incidents of aggression depicted. The study found no significant correlation between the year the show aired and how frequently it depicted bullying in its narrative, suggesting no pattern of increasing or decreasing aggressive content in popular entertainment.
Kimberly Walshâs thesis on Bullying in Teen Television includes analysis of the power dynamics involved in scenes of bullying, including questions such as: How does a characterâs popularity or web of support influence the likelihood of being bullied, as well as what kind of bullying theyâre targeted with? What type of motivations most frequently lead to what types of bullying actions? What circumstances most frequently see the bully punished? What circumstances are most likely to be played for humor?
Rachel Wayneâs review of news media coverage of bullying from the early 2000s to the 2010s suggests how the prevalence of stories about bullying and their focus has changed individual reactions and laws related to bullying. Part of this shift comes from the way that news about real-life bullying works against the narrative archetypes and tropes codified by fictional bullying:
âWhile most news stories use the narrative form to engage the viewer, tales of bullying have a particular tendency to appear in tragic form. The appearance of bully and victim archetypes in the entertainment media reflects the social norms that describe the bullying phenomenon, but the response to bullying interactions occurs within a heroâvillain framework. This folk dichotomy certainly plays out in news coverage of bullying, but because bullying necessarily has to reach a serious level for an incident to be ânewsworthy,â newswriters must resolve the cognitive dissonance produced by the incident through moralization.â
What about how high schoolers relate to these depictions of high school? Ryan Kim and Vivien Zhang share an editorial in their schoolâs paper about how Mean Girls exaggerates (and sometimes ignores) the high school experience, and how their experiences of bullying are more subtle and indirect.
Yhara zayd looks at Welcome to the Dollhouse, and the way that protagonist Dawnâs middle school experience of being bullied and ignored ties in to the adolescent awakening to how other people see you. Struggling to accept this idea of yourself, or fighting against othersâ perceptions becomes the push and pull defining the actions of a victim of bullying that canât escape.
Paul Morton contrasts Welcome to the Dollhouse with eighth grade, and suggests that the primary methods of bullying depicted in the media are becoming less visible to outsiders, and therefore harder for the victims to fight against.
âIn the early 1990s, the physically bullied on television were enviable. There was a clear moral marker in physical aggression, something only truly evil people committed. To be the victim of such was a mark of weakness, sure, but also nobility. On that note, I wonder if the Kayla of 2018 [âŚ.] would envy Dawn Wiener.
For unlike Kayla, Dawn Wiener has an evil system she can fight and she fights to the very end, opts fully and totally in in her search for physical intimacy, love, and admiration. Kayla looks at Dawn and sees a girl she very much does not want to be, but also a character with the opportunities to prove herself on her own terms. When Kayla does stand up to her bullies, they remain so buried in their smartphones they barely notice. Kayla may have proved more impressive in Dawnâs world. She may have realized an unqualified triumph.â
Tristan Spohn breaks down 10 bullying scenes from an acting perspective, considering the performance details from both bullies and victims that create a believable scene. A major point across all the scenes is the importance of shifting the intensity and volume of performances to make those aggressive peaks feel more intimidating.
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In case you missed it...
In the most clicked link from our last issue, Thea Lim considers how getting a brief hit of fame for artistic work can cause the artist to lose their sense of self worth, especially when chasing the visible metrics of the digital age.
What else is Inneresting?
- Dimitri Vorontzov explains the four-act structure more commonly used in Chinese films, breaking it down step-by-step through a cat-and-mouse crime drama that gradually evolves into a survival story of two shipwrecked men.
- Joshua De Schutter on finding appropriate ways to heal the adult you are now instead of looking for what would have healed the child you were.
- Rainbow Alipaca edits together examples of David Tennant's performance as The Doctor to suggest a reading of the Time Lord as neurodivergent.
And thatâs whatâs inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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