I. In last weeks journal entry I concluded by wondering what the effects of bullying are on young children. Is it just a matter of boys will be boys, or on a much deeper level? According to some studies, it is said that bullying that begins in middle school possibly doubles the chances of a child having psychotic symptoms as a teenager. What I was truly wondering though was if it is a matter of the individual, or if it is the same for everyone but it just matters on the extent of bullying that is done? With my research, it became a question of gender. When I looked at the difference of bullying between males and females the data was ultimately the same, minus a few significant differences. Apparently females that are bullied at an earlier age have a greater chance of later becoming hospitalized for psychiatric purposes or need psychiatric medicine later on. While males that are bullied at an earlier age have a greater chance of needing psychiatric medicine in their teen years. When used in a controlled experiment though, it was proven that if someone intervenes in a female child's life, mid-childhood, it will not help the need for psychiatric care later on, while males in the same scenario do benefit significantly.
Another part of my question from last week was to find out if there were a great deal of other school shootings that generated from bullying. What I found was horrific. School shootings started all the way back in 1979, and they ranged from elementary to high schools. Some wrked alone, while others had accomplices. What was interesting about the accomplices is that some that seemed to be arrested over time had nothing to do with the actual killings, they just knew it was going to happen and did nothing about it. Which in my opinion is just as bad as killing the people themselves. One school shooting that really stood out to me was on October 1, 1997. A sixteen year old boy named Luke Woodham was apparently a worshipper of Hitler. On the morning of his rampage, he killed his mother, and then went in the school to kill his ex-girlfriend and her friend and severely wounded several others.
II. This past two weeks in class, we continued to learn about and watch Bowling For Columbine, but we also started a new documentary called Michael Moore Hates America, which is by Michael Wilson. Bowling For Columbine is a documentary about how America lives in fear compared to other countries such as Canada, while Michael Moore Hates America is trying to contradict everything Moore says and does in his documentary. We continued to see a lot of the same documentary video editing techniques as in Bowling For Columbine. A common one was the phantom question, which is when you just hear a response from the person the director is interviewing but you never hear the director's question.
In my opinion, Michael Wilson isn't all that different from Michael Moore. It seems as though they both go to any lengths to get what they need for film. The only true difference I saw was Wilson's camera man. He was against trying to be anything like Moore when Wilson lied to the city manager of Davison, Michigan, in order for him to say Moore was from Davison and not really from Flint, which is one of Moore's major points in his film. Another thing I've noticed is that Wilson attempts to be more amiable than Moore comes off to be. When his cameraman becomes upset with him about the Davison thing, Wilson writes to the city manager to explain what happened in reality. Which I feel like he uses to make the people watching his film like Wilson better than Moore.
When I watch these documentaries they make me think of other things such as simple common courtesy. In Michael Moore Hates America, Wilson goes to a rally that Moore is holding at a university. When he asks Moore for an interview he declines extremely rudely which made me think if this how some wars were started, over not being able to contribute simple common courtesy to someone you may not respect or like.
(I was having technical difficulties and could not upload a picture I wanted to but the link is: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lif2cfHVp71qacxiu.jpg)
If Moore is always preaching about how we all live in fear and need to be more considerate like the Canadians, then why doesn't he show it. He's being extremely hypocritical if you ask me. Which is all that he is in my opinion, a scared hypocrite that thrives off of Hollywood.
III. Over these past two weeks I've been trying to think of a question to ask. I've decided that next week I'd like to research more about the art of documentary making. I was wondering if there was a documentary code? Or any rules that documentary makers must follow?
Sources:
(2011). tumblr_lif2cfHVp71qacxiu.jpg.
Lopez-Duran, Nestor. "Bullies and Victims: Boys will be Boys or a Symptom of Distress?" (Oct 14. 2009).
Ramsland, Katherine. (2007). Http://trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html
