Tears of Joy Film Difficulty Ranking: 1
Tears of Joy is a 15 minute reminder that bullying isn’t a game. It is designed to trigger those who have experienced being bullied and to scare anyone related to the victims. However, its scare tactic methods prioritize melodrama over a real exploration of the subtleties of bullying.
From: Saint Kitts & Nevis, North America Watch: YouTube, Mubi Next: Where I Come From, Shaina, Hulhudhaan
Tears of Joy – The Breakdown
Similar to Where I Come From and Shaina, Tears of Joy feels like a throw-back public service announcement. Its message is very clear (bullying is bad) and it uses intense examples to convey it. These examples take up the entire short film and are designed to evoke anger/horror in those who view the bullying, and sympathy and sadness for the victim. However, the intensity of the examples, and obviousness of the bullying, out-shouts what is often subtle and concealed. The bullying is so clear to us that it’s hard to believe that the adults choose to overlook it, especially as it appears to be every student against Joy. There’s no attempts on the school kids to hide it, so it feels unrealistic that they’re not caught and reprimanded. Meanwhile, Tears of Joy also infers that bullying is brutal and obvious, ignoring its more subtle guises.
Joy and the lead bully do get brief scenes with their parents for brief moments of character development, but this isn’t enough to justify the direction each character takes. Almost every scene of this short film is taken up by footage of school kids bullying Joy, or Joy crying alone (which she does very well, kudos to the young actor). This makes the film appear more exploitative – focused on shocking the viewers rather than building on the dialogue around bullying. Less focus on showing traumatic bullying and more focus on the characters and their motivations and feelings would have been helpful to justify the conclusion of the film. Spending more time building the characters would have also helped convey the complexities of bullying and its many forms.
Ultimately, if you’re a sucker for traumatic films designed to trigger emotions with a low budget, here’s Tears of Joy. It manipulates emotion by focusing on shocks and some intense crying scenes, carried out well by Neila Jones.
What to Watch Next
Whilst these exploitative, PSA style ‘message films’ aren’t my cup of tea, there are plenty of them from around the world. For more check out any of the following:
- Where I Come From (Cameroon)
- Shaina (Zimbabwe)
- Hulhudhaan (Maldives)
- Capernaum (Lebanon)
- Kijiji Changu (Tanzania)
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