Protest Poster

It took some time for me to land on the issue I wanted to protest for this assignment.  I didn't want to talk about "Obamacare" or other social issues that are widely discussed on social media platforms.  I finally landed on an issue that I feel has been wrongly portrayed by almost all forms of visual media I can think of:  bullying.  And when I say bullying, I am talking about the most traditional and physical kind experienced mostly by young people between the ages of about 6 to 18 years old.

The reason I thought of this issue was that in almost every film I can think of featuring protagonists of this age, some form of physical bullying occurs to a misunderstood and mistreated boy or girl, with very few exceptions.  I actually searched for films that feature bullying on Google.com and the number of results was astounding.  Some of the results that support my idea are as follows:

List of different movies that feature bullying
Another website listing some of these movies

My motivation for creating a protest poster to this issue is that, in my own life, I have never witnessed bullying to the extent portrayed in these films, or met anyone who has complained about it, or expressed that these portrayals are an accurate description or portrait of the teenage experience in school (especially public school).  While in elementary school, junior high school, and even high school, I can never remember anyone being picked on maliciously because of their fashion prerogatives, sexual orientation, interests, heritage, race, or hobbies.  I never witnessed physical abuse, badgering, or fighting on the basis of being different.  While I have witnessed verbal and even physical fighting, it was largely a result of issues such as school rivalries, protection of a girlfriend or boyfriend, and acts of revenge.  I never saw anyone have his or her lunch money stolen, a “kick me” sign pasted to his or her back, etc.

Of course exceptions occur, but my point is that too many television programs and films are often trying to illustrate a real-life teenage experience or capture the heart of adolescence and they often miss the mark.  In a real way, just as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie described in her speech about the danger of a single story, they support stereotypes that teenagers care about being popular more than being happy, that boys who play sports ridicule and physically abuse the scholarly students, and that trendy girls constantly gossip and backbite.  While some films such as Mean Girls are satirical commentaries on the interactions of young people, most forms of media include these roles and characters in a matter-of-fact fashion to try and immerse viewers into the teenage world and experience, and I never saw this type of experience occur while I was growing up.  In a way, I feel that media has unjustly portrayed the young people in our society as a whole.  While certain kids are more intelligent and wise than others and some are more kind than others, for the most part, young people aren’t cruel.  They don’t seek to hurt or harm others for sport.  Most young people don’t care about fitting into a certain clique outside of their genuine friends.  There aren’t enough forms of media showing teenagers and young people doing good, being kind, getting along fine with their classmates, etc.  The media has polarized young people into those that oppress in some form (physical and verbal) and those that are oppressed.  I also found other news reports and articles that say that even real statistics of bullying may be misleading (see this article here or this one here).

In reaction to my poster on my social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, I have found that people's reactions mostly confirm that my peers experiences were similar to my own.