Description:
The “justified” bully. Conceptions of bullying drawn from schoolcinema activities. The present paper addresses how bullying is co-constructed among teenagers in a Swedish school. The ethnographic data consist of pupilproduced film manuscripts, essays and video recordings of pupils’ group conversations, made after they had watched one of the films Evil or About a Boy during school hours in Years 8 and 9 of compulsory education (age group 14–15). The films and the follow-up work were presented by the teachers as being about bullying. The use of fiction as an educational tool was shown tofree the pupils from possible real-life experiences of bullying in the discussions. Being perceived as different was seen as a reason for being bullied; however, the pupils admitted that the “real” reason would be not liking someone’s personality, i.e. because they had too much self-esteem or were scared. The bully was discussed as either being “evil”, i.e. wanting to exercise power, or “justified”, i.e. claiming rights. Both the evil and the justified bully were seenas products of circumstances, rather than as responsible for their actions.