iffem: riningear: MPAA: Don’t let the bullies...

Thursday, March 1, 2012

riningear:

MPAA: Don’t let the bullies win! Give ‘Bully’ a PG-13 instead of an R rating!

The film “BULLY” is a documentary produced by The Weinstein Company that highlights the case of a single boy who has been bullied. There had been plans by the producers to show this in schools across America in order to raise awareness.

However, there’s only one roadblock now:

The MPAA may give “BULLY” a rating of “R” for “language.”

Which, as you can guess, is probably completely ridiculous. We’re only talking about bullying of a child in elementary school - and yet the MPAA believes that there is enough “strong language” in a formal documentary about an elementary school child to constitute an “R” rating.

When a movie is released as an “R” movie, as we all know, it is restricted from minors. Legally, schools cannot show “R” movies to minors without explicit consent from the parents of every single minor. This means that the MPAA is essentially making the movie almost inaccessible to students all over the country.

A bully victim in Michigan, Katy Butler, has started a petition to be sent to the MPAA to demand that the rating is changed to PG-13. This may not be such a daunting task: at the time, over 131,000 out of the desired 150,000 people have signed. Plus, the MPAA’s R-rating passed by a one-vote margin, so this is definitely not a long shot.

So please sign and share this petition! It’s a really important film with a strong message and a great movement behind it. As a victim of bullying personally, I think that this is really a great step in helping bullying victims all over America, and I hope you support the petition - and the movie, when it’s released March 30th.

Petition / “BULLY” Official Site

seriously

what the hell