Anti-Bullying: Bully (animation short)

I have been researching different animations that have been made on the topic of cyber-bullying but I thought it would also be worthwhile looking at anti-bullying animations too as this is still very close to cyber-bulliyng of course.

I came across Bully (2010) an animation short that is on YouTube. This animation depicts two boys at their schools desks doing some work, the small nerdy looking boy is seen to be working away while the bigger tougher boy is sat picking his nose. A bee flies round each of them with the small boy carrying on his work whereas the bigger boy kills the bee. He then looks over and sees how the small boy is doing loads of work so decides to throw a rubber at him to disturb him. When that doesn't stop the boy from working he progresses to throw a sharpener to knock over all the small boys pens. The small boy does not react, he simply picks all the pens up placing them back into the pot with a smile on his face. This just angers the bully further, he turns his attention to a football he deliberately plays with by the small boys face before dropping it onto the table.

The animation then uses a montage to show all the ways the bully then tries to disturb the boy. I like this idea of being able to reflect everything without having to go into detail for each time he does something. I could use this technique for in my animation, when the people are posting nasty things to my character I can end up with the comments just piling up in a montage of clips. This would show the extent of the problem and the amount then girl has to deal with in a stylistic way.

Eventually the bully manages to get the small boy away from his desk so that he can scribble all over the boys work. The small boy is then seen looking horrified, the bully has finally gone too far, a bell chimes a few times to enhance the doom felt by this boy, his facial expression turns to anger. The animation zooms into the small boys face then shows the bully laughing and mocking him. The next thing we see is a corridor with the sounds of someone being beaten up, the bully then appear flying out of a door. The small boy is then seen with a determined expression picking up a pencil and continuing his work.

I like the way that this animation narrative shows how bullies keep on as they want a better reaction from their victim but eventually the victim will be pushed to the limit and snap. This animation shows the victim snapping and getting his own back, he is therefore a very strong character. A problem with this animation is that not many victims are strong, it has been said that the only way to ditch a bully is to stand up to them but then this narrative is promoting violence. The way in which he succeeds is through beating up the bully, which is not a message we want to teach children really. This has helped with my research into different endings of bullying animations as for my own I originally thought of using suicide but I have decided that just is not an effective ending as it shows no solution to the issue at hand.