In every group in our society we
find someone “out of” the group. They fail to join the others in the group and
always tend to be alone. It seems almost impossible to prevent those “outsiders”
spring up, but there are differences between those who are “alone” and those
who are bullied.
In the movie Ben X, there is a boy who is bullied by
his classmates because of his autism. He is bullied so badly that he considers
quitting school even though his grades are good. Looking other students laugh, making
fun of his being confused with his pants pulled down by the mean boys, I
thought of a girl in my middle school who was bullied badly by boys.
Her “reason” for
being bullied was her economic situation. When the boys found out that the
economic situation of her family was not very good, they started making fun of
it. Their mischief became severer and severer that they even spit on her hair
or kicked her with their feet. It took almost the whole year to get over, even
with the help of the girls in the same class. It must have been a terrible,
traumatic experience to her that she would never forget throughout her life.
After witnessing that, I have always been against bullying, even though those
who bully always say that it is for “fun” or that they have a “reason.”—nothing
is for fun when the one who is experiencing it doesn’t feel fun, and nothing
can be a reason to bully someone.
I do not think
that it is possible to prevent someone being out of the group. Though it might
sound inhumane, it is a natural tendency of humans to find someone who doesn’t
fit in to the group. Yet, it is possible to prevent bullying. In the movie, we
see no concrete and realistic solution searched to prevent Ben from being
bullied. The teacher only yells the boys to stop, but doesn’t come up with any
fundamental approach to the problem. This is same for some of his classmates
who pity him. Only when Ben decided to shock people by coming up with a
powerful, persuasive solution did the problem seemed to be solved. Ben imagines
committing a suicide every day. He even attempts to do it, but realizes that it
would not make any change, and changes his plan. Ben decides to pretend that he
committed a suicide, and videotaped it. The video was screened in front of the
entire school, which made everybody feel sorry and guilty, and then he revealed
that actually he had not died.
Imagine that you
bullied someone for fun and he suffered so much that he committed suicide. Is
that still fun? Ben said he learned to “die without quitting” and to “quit
without dying.” It was a fortunate solution in that he didn’t commit suicide. We
should always keep in mind not only not to bully others but have interest and
care for those like Ben, coming up with clever, fundamental approach to save
them from the “hell” they are in.
