"Bully" Movie Rating Outrage

           This article was about a movie called "Bully" to be released at the end of March. It supposedly is about 5 teens who are bullied and their stories. One scene uses the F word In "rapid succession" so the MPPA gave the movie rating as rated R. Producers think that its a poor decision. In my personal opinion, I think making the movie rated R makes it much less accessible to its target audience. If they wants teenagers to watch it they should change the words or cut the scene so that the MPPA's standard for PG13 will be met. I also don't agree with one scene including a few certain words affect the whole movies rating. I mean, to be honest, any kid who goes to high school has heard the F-bomb get dropped- they will survive. The director doesn't want to cut the scene because its a "real situation" and he thinks the country is sugarcoating bullying and need to see just how bad it is. I'm curious to see what happens.
          The article uses a lot of pathos to get people on board the anti-bullying and this-will-be-a-great-movie train. I'm not sure if its something anyone will watch because, put bluntly, it seems depressing and preachy. It sounds like one of those anti-bullying presentations all high schools receive every year. If those seminars worked, we wouldn't be having this issue. I think it might need to be addressed in a different way, I'm just not sure how. A technique the author used was opening the article with recent accounts of suicides or school shootings to show the relevancy of the issue. I thought that was a good technique to use. Overall, I agree with the author when he says "teenagers themselves are not living in a PG-13 world" (Chandler 1). They should find a way to change the rating, or else I don't believe it will be a successful movie at all. They have to reach out to their target audience, or the whole thing will be pointless.

http://entertainment.salon.com/2012/02/29/the_mpaas_bully_outrage/