#bullyculture

"This series was born of the terrible things in my news feed that keep me awake at night. I felt certain that there was a common denominator to all of these crimes: against children, women, “minorities”, the poor, animals, and the earth. Five years of research into these seemingly disparate transgressions has resulted in a deep investigation of entitlement and the need to dominate. "#bullyculture" represents the first phase of this ongoing investigation, one that has become chillingly prescient.
Bullying permeates our culture and our institutions. Our country threatens any who would oppose U.S. interests. Our children grow up indoctrinated into capitalism, with fewer and fewer restraints on corporations who control workers and consumers, while destroying the planet we need to sustain us. Parents across the country pay lip service to fighting playground bullies while simultaneously tuned into the uber aggressive “Housewives of…..” reality TV show, or the football game, where huge swaths of players are forgiven rapes, and violence against animals, or their own wives and children. We teach our kids to dominate/intimidate/annihilate on the soccer field, preparing them for lives in the corporate sphere. In parts of this dystopia, open carry advocates don weapons in public, excited by the power of wielding the latent potential to mow down dozens of people in under a minute. Unsurprisingly, four months ago, this country elected the ultimate bully as leader of the free world.
The collective despair that has enveloped our country, and, I daresay, the world, is not just the result of one political party defeating another. It is that the oldest, most deeply ingrained childhood narrative, the one that allows all of us to sleep peacefully at night, the one that gives us the optimism to have babies, and to tell those babies (as well as ourselves) that “everything will be alright” has been utterly destroyed: The Bully has won.
I am interested in looking at the overlaps of entitlement and domination in our society, and in calling out the aggressors, the intimidators, and the often overlooked larger, systemic forces that encourage and reinforce this poison in our culture."