Murder by a teddy bear!

Yes, I know, the title itself is ridiculous. But look at this article.

In short, the article describes a scenario with 4 male students who create a film starring a group of stuffed animals, where an 'evil teddy bear' orders other stuffed animals to murder a teacher who coincidentally has the same name as the students' real-life math teacher.

To be honest, when I first saw this, just the idea of the film struck me as comically absurd. I wanted to break out in laughter. Just look at the title of the article: Teacher sues kids over teddy bear movie. Seriously, it's absurd. This is what makes the news these days.

Actually, this whole issue got me to thinking about how many times I have heard people around me express 'hatred' for a teacher or professor, and how many times I have heard comments about how happy they would be if the teacher 'crashed his/her car and died' or something else of the sort. The only difference between what these students say and what the boys in this news article did, is the fact that one group only voiced these comments, and the other group actually expressed it in a visual format.

The article fails to state how old these four boys are. The age may/may not make a difference in this case. Surely, it would provide a few more arguments both supporting the boys and going against them.

I wonder how seriously this movie would have been taken had it been 10 years ago. It seems recently, the slightest violent notion, if caught, is turned into a largely dramatic case due to a combination of world/national/local events revolving mostly around terrorist acts that have dramatically increased today.