Destroying Avalon and Mean Girls free essay sample

Cyber bullying and face-to-face bullying are to major concerns in today’s society, the movie Mean Girls and the novel Destroying Avalon have themes about bullying in them. The texts show us how more people can be affected by certain types of bullying as well as how it can change behaviour and how bullying can build up to physical violence. More people are affected with face-to face bullying. This is shown in Mean Girls in a scene after the Burn Book has been seen by the school. All the female students are required to go to the hall and find a way to express their anger and admit what they had done. Miss Norbury asks, â€Å"I want you to raise your hand if you have ever had a girl say something bad about you behind your back? † (Mean Girls, 2004) and everyone raises their hand then she asks, â€Å"This time, I want you to raise your hand if you have ever say anything bad about a friend behind her back? † (Mean Girls, 2004) and again everyone raises their hand. We will write a custom essay sample on Destroying Avalon and Mean Girls or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page In Destroying Avalon this does not happen, the people bullied in this book are mostly from the ‘Group Z’ clique which is only about five or so people in the grade there are two other cliques who would receive bullying, ‘Group B’ and ‘Group C’ but these people are not bullied in the magnitude that ‘Group Z’ is. In a website that Avalon and Caleb create â€Å"It started getting hits from around the world. Teenagers from Canada, Germany, and the US (†¦)† (p. 252) but not many from their school in particular. This shows that Mean Girls had a worse form of bulling because of the magnitude affect at the school alone. Throughout Mean Girls and Destroying Avalon the bullying changed their personalities. †Hey. How was your second day? Fine. Were people nice? Did you make many friends? Yeah. † (Mean Girls, 2004) This is a conversation between Cady and her parents, it is obvious from her parent’s expressions that this is not Cady’s usual behaviour and they know something is up. Avalon had the same problem with her parents, â€Å"’(†¦) She’s not been herself,’ Dad said and sipped his coffee. ‘I think something’s going on. She’s so short tempered, she’s avoiding all of us, she’s spending hours on the computer, and she’s constantly checking her mobile phone It’s not normal. ’† (p. 102). In both cases, a bully and a victim, the bullying changed their behaviour and consequently their home lives, worrying their parents. Ultimately in this novel and film, face-to-face bullying was worse, because it also included physical violence. Since Cady was from Africa she was comparing everything to African wildlife, â€Å"It was full-tilt jungle madness. And it wasn’t going away. It was madness as described, and a lot of people were getting hurt because the person who they thought was behind the rumour was standing right in front of them, face-to-face and they wanted to hurt that person as much as they themselves were hurt Destroying Avalon did not have a focus on physical bullying but when it did it had a huge impact, â€Å"I don’t know who punched me first. But it was a king hit. (†¦) They used me like a punching bag. † (pp. 228-229). This was not even the first time Marshall had been physically abused†( ) before he punched me. My head hit the tiled wall Brett Tyson kicked me in the guts. I puked and was almost unconscious with pain ( )† (p. 219). After the first incident mentioned, Marshall then felt forced to commit suicide, as his only escape, it was not the cyber bullying that go to him it was the face-to-face. The face-to –face bullying was the bullying that caused the most drastic results. Mean Girls and Destroying Avalon show us that both forms of bullying are bad, with this match of film and book it shows more face-to –face bullying can be worse by how it can affect behaviour, it can quickly become violent and can easily affect a body of people.