How is a lawfully married man missing his wife somehow worse than the song I remember from Hunchback of Notre Dame, the one about hellfire and damnation that I recall thinking was a thinly veiled reference to the sin of masturbation?
“See, honey, the priest-man is thinking bad things about Esmerelda, because she is a gypsy and therefore sinful and trying to lead him into temptation. You go right ahead and watch it … gasp But burning for his wife! It’s impossible to think one of our founding fathers had a loving marriage! How ribald!”
I just added that last part because I really like the word “ribald.”
Ha ha haaa! I love that movie. “Richard Henry Lee of Virginia!” I was reading some of Ben Franklin’s writing for my boring American Lit class and randomly yelling “Frank-LIN!” in my best John Adams voice. And the DVD has Cool, Cool Conservative Men, which I constantly hum when I read some threads in the Pit.
I thought Jefferson didn’t take up with Sally until after he was a widower. Anybody got the Straight Dope on the timeline? Or at elast a date when he and Sally’s first child was born?
The same sort of thing happened to myself and my 5th grade class @ Harbor Elementary School in 1977.
Two classes from the 5th grade and two from the 6th went on a field trip via bus about a mile or so down the road to the Junior High School to see the film 1776. It was being screened in their auditorium and we who were visiting from the local elementary school had to sit up front.
About a half hour thru the film, the teachers summoned their 5th and 6th graders to get up and leave. We all did as instructed, and got the following reason from our teacher upon returning to our classrooms.
(Paraphrasing here, it was 27 years ago):
I don’t know exactly why I remember that day so clearly. It wasn’t all that Earth-shattering an event. But as I look back on it now, (and having seen the entire film a couple of times since), I appreciate the fact our teacher had us leave the JHS auditorium and go back to our classes. From the small part of the film we saw that day, I do recall coming away with the notion that Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, et al. were a bunch of morons. I was 11 years old and even though I knew the difference between reality and fiction, I didn’t have enough knowledge of the true history to draw and other conclusions about our founding fathers.
I realize the OP’s cite had to do with middle school students (grades 6 thru 8), whereas my experience had to do with 9 to 11 year olds. I also concede the point our teacher’s stated reason for not letting us watch the film had nothing to do with “* sexual innuendo and language*”. But that being said, I’m still not certain a musical that uses colonial Philadelphia as its backdrop is really all that valuable as a tool for teaching history. Even if my class had been taught the textbook version of that period prior to seeing the film, I don’t see much value in the film itself.
The only metaphor that comes to mind would be taking students to see Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” or the musical “The Sound of Music” as an accompaniment to teaching European History under the Nazis.
Disclaimer: It’s either that, or it’s just my internal bias against musicals: they are on a whole a genre I so very much despise it may be having an affect on my opinion-making processes
Yea, but Franklin really was that randy and I believe John Adams was known for basically being incredibly obnoxious. Pretending the Founders were Giants Who Walked The Earth does nothing to enhance their reputation and is a disservice to them. The fact that they were, basically, just men of their times makes their story that much more powerful. If not for quite a few lucky breaks, they’d just be a bunch of rebellious traitors in a British history book.
I lived in Fairfax Virginia for the first sixteen years of my life. It is the eastern love handle of the Bible Belt.
I remember at least one attempt to ban Charlotte’s Web from public schools. A local Christian group held that the idea of talking, thinking animals was blasphemous.
I’m just getting a big kick out of the fact that, of all the sexual innuendo in the movie, that’s the example they used. The movie mentions whoring and drinking, fondling slaves, Ben Franklin keeping a tryst, and an epidemic of “the French disease”, and they get upset about a man missing his wife? Or maybe that’s the only part she felt she could mention.
The teachers at my kids’ conservative parochial school have borrowed our copy the last few years to show the junior high classes. It doesn’t seem to have horrified anybody yet.
Let’s hope that these kids never get a chance to read actual letters that John Adams wrote to his wife during their courtship.
From The Spirit of America edited and with commentary by William J. Bennet, pages 106-7
Do you think it fair to say that he burned for her? There’s another letter to her that requests that, as he’s given “two or three Millions [kisses] at least, when one has been received”, he deserves to be given “as many Kisses, and as many Hours of your Company after 9 O’Clock as he shall please to Demand”. He calls her “Miss Adorable” in that one.
I really don’t like the book that this letter came from very much, as it displays some ideas that are rather contradictory to my own personal philosophy. But the chapter of love letters – oh, they are lovely and go a long ways to humanize these giants of history, as someone else called them.
This is what I got out of this show the first time I saw it - on stage in the early 70s. It suddenly hit me that these bigger-than-life historical figures in the grand portraits were just a bunch of guys trying to do the best they could with what they had. A real “DUH” moment, but it was the first time I really considered that. Were they really special men or just ordinary men in special circumstances? One could ask the same of anyone.
For that reason alone, I think this movie has value.
I think you folks are overreacting. If we refuse to protect The Children from broadly implied dead white guy sex what will we protect them from? Really, it would be to everyone’s advantage if we all conducted ourselves as if it were the 18th century, instead of just learning about the 18th century, minus any powdered wig porn.
As an educational tool, 1776 definitely has value.
A great many of the lines are paraphrased or are exact quotations from the characters who speak them. All of Washington’s letters are genuine. Adams himself was responsible for his personal epithet of “obnoxious and disliked”. The list goes on and on. Hearing these lines spoken in their proper context makes them all the more meaningful and memorable.
As stated, the play/movie helps dispel the myth that the founding fathers were demigods. They were ordinary men in extraordinary times, endowed with the same prejudices, the same rivalries, the same pettiness that has always been the mark of the politician. They drank, they fooled around, they often acted out of selfishness rather than nobility. They were PEOPLE, damn it. And yes, some of them WERE buffoons.
The Declaration of Independence was not passed with the wholehearted support of all the delegates. In fact, it’s something of a miracle that it was every approved at all. Every time I see the movie, and Mr. Thompson says “The resolution on independence…is adopted,” I am struck by the enormity of the achievement. It passed by a hairsbreadth. And pondering just how different our world would be had Mr. Wilson refused to change his mind is, it’s almost overwhelming.
Many of the names permanently enshrined on the declaration are brought to life in a way that few textbooks could ever hope to achieve. When I first saw Delaware’s state quarter, I was thrilled by the tribute to Caesar Rodney. My first thought was that the man might actually be remembered by people other than historians and fans of 1776. As it is, I’ve had to explain to at least two dozen people who the man was and why it was important. I majored in history, and did a lot of research on the Revolutionary War era. But the only reason I knew who Caesar Rodney was was because of the movie.
It sickens me that today’s social hypersensitivity prevents so many students from being exposed to things that challenge them, that force them to confront their own beliefs. That teach them to think, dammit!