I’ve been thinking about Christmas carols.

Shut up.

I’ve been thinking about Christmas carols, and I’ve decided that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is bullshit.  It’s either the most condescending Christmas carol of all time or it’s even more of an asshole to Rudolph than the other reindeer were.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen…

Why the hell do I know these assholes?  Prancer ain’t never done nothing for nobody.  All Donner did was inspire a bunch of cannibals.  And the less said about that slut Vixen the better.  But, sure, OK, I know the reindeer.

But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all?

What?

Back up here.  We’ve just established that I know all of the asshole reindeer, the ones who never saved Christmas and were all, Damn, it’s foggy, guess those kids just get to cry tomorrow morning then.  How the hell do I know about Blitzen and I don’t know about Rudolph?  What, do you think I’m a moron?  That’s like knowing Pavel Podkolzin’s jersey number and never having heard of Michael Jordan.  Yes I know about Rudolph.

Shit.  It’s like the song’s making fun of you.  Either that or it’s all a giant piss-take on Rudolph and calling him “the most famous reindeer of all” is supposed to make him feel bad or something.  This song is a jerk.

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We had a field trip today; took the kids to see Bully, which the corporation is screening for every seventh-grader in the district.  I am not going to go on my normal bullying rant, but I did not like this movie very much.  I would not have thought that the subject of bullying really deserved the fair-and-balanced treatment, but Christ, this thing makes Michael Moore look sober and evenhanded.  They have either staged a large portion of their film or found the worst school district in America to film their documentary in.

Furthermore, they appear to have found the worst school administrator in American history to serve as their whipping child for the “SCHOOLS DON’ DO NOTHIN'” portion of the film.  She is literally unbelievable, as in I do not believe that she is real, or if she is, she is such a victim of editing that I can’t believe she hasn’t killed herself in shame by now.  And one of the five-or-so kids spotlighted in the film is brutalized so thoroughly while the camera is running that my reaction was not to feel sorry for him but to doubt the veracity of the entire film.  You know why?  Motherfuckers act different when cameras are pointing at them.  If you’re a bus driver and you know there is a camera filming a documentary about bullying on your bus, maybe you don’t let eight or nine kids do a dog pile on the kid with the obvious birth defects while you’re driving them home?  There’s no hidden camera nonsense going on here; the cameras are clearly handheld, by a person, and quite obviously pointed directly at this particular student, and everyone’s still beating the shit out of him, all the time, and absolutely no one is doing anything about it.

No.  I don’t buy this, not at all.  I’m sorry.  And if this isn’t staged, then the filmmakers are monsters for not doing anything about it themselves and letting this kid get brutalized so they can make their fucking movie.  Your entire damn movie is about how kids are killing themselves because they’re so viciously bullied that they can’t take life anymore and you’re literally filming it happening because your movie is more important than this kid’s life?

Fuck you.

Two more things, somewhat unrelated:  first, a frustrating thing about this film is that it provides no answers whatsoever at any point to what to do about bullying in schools.  Nothing.  Not a single damn thing.  And, incidentally, the role of religion is completely ignored.  I know why the gay girl in fucking Oklahoma is getting bullied, guys!  These fuckers think Jesus told them to!  This isn’t complicated!  The film’s main purpose is to get you really sad over dead kids– not, in itself, a difficult task– and then to wave hands about how schools should do something and… well, shit, we only had funding for an hour and forty-five minutes.  What should we do?  Stop bullying!  How should we do that?

Crickets.

Second thing:  Again, I’m convinced that at least portions of the bits with… Alex, I think?  Adam?  were staged, and if they weren’t, well, refer to the few paragraphs above.  And this is going to sound like I’m victim-blaming here.  I’m not.  I am, however, really angry with Adam-or-Alex’s parents.  It becomes abundantly clear at about the 2/3 mark of the film that Adam-or-Alex thinks that at least some of the kids who are picking on him and beating him up every day are his friends.  There’s a point early in the movie where a kid says something terrible to him and walks away.  Adam-or-Alex’s reaction is to follow that kid.

The boy was born months premature, and has obvious developmental issues literally written all over his face.  He seems very sweet and intelligent but he is also plainly and clearly Not Quite Right and regardless of the rightness of the matter it is apparent from the second you lay eyes on the boy that he is going to get picked on in his life.

Maybe, just maybe, you as parents need to recognize that your kid’s going to have some challenges in life, and try and find a way to equip him with the social skills necessary to deal with them?  I have no trouble believing that this kid’s school is a buzz saw, and it’s a particularly poorly-planned one at that; he’s maybe in seventh grade and there is one point where a hulking older kid who has got to be a senior in high school is literally threatening to cut off his face with a knife on the bus, while the cameraperson sits by and quietly records the whole thing and the bus driver merrily drives along.  What the fuck these two are doing on the same bus is incomprehensible.

The interaction with the two began when the boy looked at the older kid and said “You’re my buddy, right?”

The school’s fucked, right?  I get that.  I understand.  But the school is not the only thing that’s fucked up here.  I blame his parents for tossing him into an abattoir when he is clearly not socially or emotionally capable of dealing with the kids around him.  It was abundantly clear to me that a big part of Adam-or-Alex’s problem was that he didn’t have the social skills necessary to even recognize when he was in danger, much less avoid or minimize situations likely to put him in said danger.

Maybe do a little bit less screaming about how other people should protect your kid and, y’know, protect your kid.

Bah.

(Also completely absent from the film?  The parents of even one of the bullies.  Or, really, more than a sentence or two of dialogue from any of the kids themselves.)