THE BOY GAME: A Look at Bullying Through the Lens of Masculine Gender Norms, A Study Guide to Accompany the Film

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Brion-Meisels, Steven
  • Clarke, Maura

• The Boy Game video is a dramatic scenario developed from off-the-record interviews with boys nationwide, then scripted with young actors. Shot like a documentary, it’s a snapshot of boys’ experiences designed to highlight key moments of pressure that lead to action or passive fear. The Study Guide is rooted in a few important values and frameworks. We begin with the belief that people are more than the roles that they play. Like all humans, boys are complex, even contradictory; they hold the full range of human resources, needs, emotions, ideas, fears and hopes. Social and cultural expectations, traditions, stereotypes and pressures can constrict who they are – forcing them to play specific roles: the boy code is only one of them. These codes may look different across different contexts: city, suburb, or rural; working, middle or upper class; White, Latino, Asian, African-American or other cultural heritages; school, family or community. All the boys in this film are complex – whether they are “target,” “perpetrator” or “bystander’ – and they are all affected by the constraints of hyper masculine norms.

• Date created

  2014-12-04

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Stereotypes
  • Social groups
  • Social pressure
  • Social influence
  • Group dynamics
  • Study and teaching

• Type of Item

  Learning Object

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3RX93H87

• License

  © 2014 Steven Brion-Meisels and Maura Clarke. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original authors and source must be cited.