Crude Language (The Bully Incident)

Swear words

You know them. You say them from time to time. Don't try to deny it. You probably say/said them in school sometimes too. It's not particularly nice but every day school kids are going to hear nasty words in the hallways. 

Bully is an independent documentary about the bullying epidemic that plagues American middle and high schools. It features quite a lot of footage of actual school children being absolutely horrible to each other and the tragic outcomes of such actions. It was meant to show the effect that bullying can have in the hopes that kids might think about what they're saying to each other. Needless to say, there is a lot of nasty language.

Something you folks should know: If a film uses a word like "fuck" more than four times in a film, it will automatically receive and "R" from the MPAA. The tagline for the "R" rating is "Restricted. Children Under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian".

Bully received an "R" rating for it's realistic depiction of the language used by American school kids. This rating would prevent kids from seeing it without a parent present, and from being shown in public schools.

Naturally the filmmakers tried to appeal the rating to the MPAA board. There were numerous petitions to have the rating changed (you may have received a few emails from Change.com about it, I know I did). The appeals failed and the filmmakers ended up running the film as unrated and later released a PG-13 version with much of the swearing cut out.

This is, I think, the best example of how the MPAA's power can be used to prevent an important message from reaching the public. Whether it was intentional or not, the MPAA's rating would have kept a very good documentary about a difficult issue from reaching the demographic that needed to see it most.