MovieChat Forums > Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) Discussion > The way bullying is always portrayed in ...

The way bullying is always portrayed in America. How realistic is it?


In numerous American movies and TV shows set in high school, it seems bullying is very prevalent and visible. If you're unpopular, a nerd.etc, there's always one stereotypical bully who shoves you into lockers, calls you names, or even beats you up. I notice they dramatise things for entertainment but seriously, is this how it really is/was like for some people or do they exaggerate a lot?

I'm from Australia. I was that nerdy, shy kid but I was actually hardly bullied in high school...well at least to my face, lol. No name calling, physical abuse, or people giving me the cold shoulder or refusing to sit with me.etc. My shyness though prevented me from socialising that much. Yet there were two kids who used to push me around/playfight with me 'just for fun' and I didn't like it, but they later (well one of them, the other left) quite friendly. Anyway, maybe the fact I always went to the library and read at lunchtime helped? Indeed most of the popular kids were actually quite outwardly nice to me. There's this stereotype the popular kids are mean (e.g. Mean Girls) but I find it's often those who have their own problems that are worse. At least, I suppose, bullies whether Nelson Muntz or Brandon in this film are often shown to have overbearing parents/troubled families.

But yeah, even though I was like Dawn this definitely didn't represent my high school experience. I'm sure it hit home for some, but was bullying ever so blatant and mean-spirited? I'm 27, btw, so a few years younger than what Dawn would've mean (assuming she's say 13 in 1995).

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I can only speak from my own experience. I grew up in mid-west America and this movie was indeed a reflection of how I was bullied in Junior High School. I'm happy to hear that you weren't bullied! Maybe it is more of a U.S. thing to be bullied to this extreme?

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The most popular kids in school tend to be above bullying, and are often generally nice to the nerdiest kids, the misfit types, etc., because they're
self-assured about their popularity and don't need to show their superiority
by making others feel inferior. The bullies are more often found among two other
groups--the kids from dysfunctional families, who are abused/neglected at home and
need to take out their anger on others; and the ones from the second- and third-
tier groups, who can never quite reach the elite "most popular" group and try
to alleviate their frustration by picking on the kids they consider beneath them.



I'm not crying, you fool, I'm laughing!

Hewwo.

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I think now, nerds are considered way cooler than they were in the 80's and 90's, so this is an accurate portrayal of that time period. I'm not sure it's as bad today, with antibullying campaigns and political correctness. Nerds are more like hipsters now. But I'm sure bullying goes on. I bet you that the kids who get bullied end up being punished for sticking up for themselves. Because the bullying is on the downlow so when the kid fights back he'll be the one accused of being the bully and get in trouble. Just like Dawn and the spitballs.











SPRING BREAK FOREVER BITCHES!

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It's an interesting perspective that you have provided. I'm an American and my experience of bullying in school was very pervasive and visible. I'm talking about spit balls, stealing my lunch money and being jumped. The cafeteria was even divided, I sat at the nerd table...no surprise there. I was the quiet nice girl, so I never understood why I was a target, but yes, kids are mean. Although, in high school it became less blatant. Nice to know that this isn't a major problem for children everywhere.

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I'm American and graduated High School three years ago but I can say my experience was very much like yours: throughout middle school and high school I was very shy and hardly said anything, and in turn no one bothered me. I wasn't bullied because people didn't really interact with me enough to even know where to start: I think a lot of bullies do what they do and pick certain people because they can expect a certain reaction and they focus on the people who will give them that reaction. I didn't react to anything in school, just kept my head down, and so I don't think people knew what to expect from me. People were generally polite or nice to me, but I wouldn't say that was because they were afraid of me. As a small blonde girl I'm not imposing in the slightest, all though I did hear a lot of those "it's always the quiet one" jokes. I internalized everything and as a result I was dangerously unbalanced for a while but none of that came out during school hours. My experience hasn't been reflected in most (or any) of the films I've seen but I think that's because from the outside it looked pretty boring. I'm not someone who was remembered from high school so no one remembers my type when the sit down to make a high school movie. Someday I hope someone will though. Or maybe I'm not bothered. I'm just glad I made it out of high school alive and in the mean time I like to focus on the present and occasionally pick out the good memories I have from the time.

p.s probably important to mention that I liked this movie, even if it had nothing to do with my experience.

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It depends on the area, when I lived in the mid-west the kids were all really nice. When I moved to California I was shocked at how nasty the kids in my school were.

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[deleted]

It depends where you live and what kind of school you went to. For Northern New Jersey in the mid 90's I would say this is pretty accurate.
By the late 90's a lot of schools had "zero tolerance" policies in response to the rash of school shootings. This ensured you would face serious discipline for fighting in school (even if it was provoked by a bully or self defense) which could range from suspensions to being arrested. All this did was result in a school-to-prison pipeline for Black and Latino students.
In the late 2000's a number of schools introduced anti-bullying policies due to a number of high profile suicides by mostly LGBT students. New Jersey passed on of the toughest anti-bullying laws in the country in 2011 due in part to a gay college student's suicide.

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