Bullying: a great leap forward?

The Boss and I recently watched “The Parts You Lose”, on Netflix. Set in a cold, snowy North Dakota, the film looks at events from the perspective of a young deaf boy, Danny. He lives out in the sticks with his mum, a younger sister, and a father who has little time for him. He attends a school for kids with disabilities, where he is bullied. One evening he comes across an injured and unconscious man. We learn that the man was a robber who had been injured following a shoot-out whilst holding-up a local bank. Danny loads the man onto a sled and drags him back to an empty barn where he tends to the man’s wounds and feeds him.

As the man slowly recovers we gain an insight into the characters’ personalities. Danny’s father appears to resent his son’s deafness. He works away for extended periods, spends

by Wyn Evans

a lot of time down the pub and is not averse to using his fists against his son. Danny’s mother fluently communicates with him using sign language; she also mediates her husband’s rough, volatile moods to protect her children. The injured bank-robber learns some basic sign language from Danny and they connect emotionally, the former advising Danny how to stand-up to his bullying class-mate and, through playing games of draughts together, shows Danny that winning requires some real effort and skill.

Relax folks! Nothing I’ve written above will spoil the plot of the film for you, nor shall I write anything about how the plot pans out. It’s an atmospheric, understated little movie; well acted, beautifully shot, and insightful in the ways it deals with different forms of, and

failures in, communication. But there was one aspect of the film that I want to say a bit more about. When Danny is shown in his classroom at school we see that he is bullied. The bully stands and stares at Danny; he sneers at Danny; he picks his nose and wipes the snots into and through Danny’s hair, first making sure that Danny gets a good look at the offending booger. All this is done in full view of the rest of their class, who snigger and laugh.

I attended Preseli County Secondary school, in Crymych Pembs, from Year 7 to xmas of Year 10. (Or, as we used to say back in the day, from Form 1 to Form 4.) It was a mixed-sex school with precious few fights and, happily, there was very little bullying. When I was fifteen years old my family moved to Carmarthen and I joined the single-sex Queen Elizabeth Boys’ Grammar school and that was a whole other ball-game. There, I was bullied from day one. The class hard-boy sat next to me in maths class – we had the old fashioned wooden desks, mine closest to the wall, his next to the aisleway. He raised his desk lid and from behind its cover he swung a vicious right elbow into my cheekbone which sent my head ricocheting against the wall. He’d made his point and had evidently told his groupies of his intentions beforehand since he turned around to them with a ***t-eating grin and gave them a big thumbs up. I was physically slight until my late teens and had only ever had one fight in my life. To say I was unprepared for a campaign of terror would be an understatement Occasionally, I tried to hit him back but this was like trying to stop a charging bull with a red towel. I’d like to say that I ‘manned-up’, put my tormentor in his place and kept my self-respect. I’d like to, but I can’t. This went on for a whole term and ended when he left school at the end of that year. Looking back, there were probably far fewer actual incidents of hands-on bullying than I ‘recall’; it was the general atmosphere, the threat of violence that hung over us that was so enervating and horrible.

I thought of these long-ago events whilst watching ‘The Parts You Lose’. Regular readers will know that my fifteen year old daughter, The Girl, has Down Syndrome (DS). They will also know that The Girl will be moving from Cardiff High School to Whitchurch High School to attend lower and upper sixth form (Years 12 and 13). This is because CHS only offer ‘A’ level options at 6th Form while WHS offer a range of options for kids with DS and other learning disabilities. I do not for a minute think that when The Girl moves schools she will have to face what I did when I moved to ‘the Gram’. Indeed, she has only once had to face bullying and that was verbal back in year three or four when a brat told her mum and me that The Girl spoiled all the games because she couldn’t play them as well as the brat could. Brat’s mum and I were more upset than The Girl was.

Strangely, however, the bullying in the film left me perversely elated. Why? Because Danny’s bully in the film was a boy with DS; a young actor with DS playing a bully with DS. I have written columns here previously in which I have noted how actors with DS, like Line of Duty’s Tommy Jessop, have taken leading roles. And, whereas only a few years ago there were essentially no parts for people with DS, in recent years films (such as ‘The Peanut Butter Falcon, ‘Any Day Now’, and ‘Where Hope Grows’) and TV dramas (like ‘The Mare of Easttown’, ‘Call the Midwife, ‘Coronation Street’, ‘Eastenders’, ‘Afterlife’, etc) have changed the scene beyond all recognition. But what was unique about the character with DS in ‘The Parts You Lose’ was that he was the bad-kid, the bully: that actors with DS can now not only feature as leads in films but can also be shown as the baddie without fear of typecasting or special consideration. I think this is a great development!

So, the movie’s title is ‘The Parts You Lose’, but it is just one more recent example of the parts that actors with Down Syndrome can now gain. May there be many more!