This is what comes of thinking too much about bad laws, I suppose.
Our topic today is Shakespeare and how he can still be taught in schools in the light of www.ifea.net/cipa.html"]The Children’s Internet Protection Act, hereinafter referred to as CIPA.
I quote:
Pretty vague stuff. The concept of patently offensive' is particularly debatable: My beautiful Goya is your filthy porno rag. In the context of the play, Romeo and Juliet are most certainly in lust. They're as horny as jackrabbits, actually, and Shakespeare makes sure the audience knows it. Even though it's a play, and all the references are perforce simulated,’ the CIPA still pertains (see my emphasis).
So, the meat of the CIPA:
So if they don’t implement filters that would reliably block such things (and if they can’t magic such filters into existence), they lose funding. Simple, really, if you can wade through the subheadings.
And here’s the question: If the foregoing is true (and it has been Rubberstamped by SCOTUS), how can a school library allow the youngn’s to access Romeo and Juliet without losing funding? Especially in the light of Juliet’s tender years: At 14, any mention of her being lusting at Romeo is, by all reason, child pornography.
What about the Romeo and Juliet movie that we had to watch in 9th grade English class? Not only did it show Romeo and Juliet having sex, it showed both Romeo’s bare ass and Juliet’s nipples. And I wouldn’t have minded, but they showed Romeo’s bare ass much longer than Juliet’s nipples.
I suppose he meant the Franco Zeffirelli movie version from 1968. We watched that in ninth grade too, but that scene was cut out by the school’s A/V department…though they left snow in its place, so we knew we were missing something!
The version of R & J that we read in ninth grade was “bowdlerized” to remove many of the ahem good parts. I took a separate Shakespeare class in eleventh grade in which we read the unedited play. I think that the difference was that the ninth grade class was a required class, whereas the eleventh grade one was an elective…if parents really objected to their children reading unedited Shakespeare, it wouldn’t be too difficult to find another class that they could take.
I think that paragraph C in your first quote was put there just to keep Shakespeare, etc. from running afoul of the law.
If fourteen-year-olds in lust is considered “child porn”, then the average middle school is probably much more mind-warping than Shakespeare could ever be.
In our class, we were watching it on video. Shortly before the scene with Juliet’s nipples, our teacher - who was a nun, by the way - was called out into the hallway by another teacher. So when Juliet got out of bed, the boy nearest the VCR pounced on the remote control and hit Rewind - Play - Rewind - Play… I think he got through four cycles of this before Sister could make herself heard over the commotion: “Okay, the nun’s back, people! Somebody open the window and cool the boys down!”
Thank you. Actually, it was in the second Shakespeare class where I learned the word. Our teacher claimed that the version in the ninth grade English textbook had been “bowdlerized”, and that we would be reading the intact version from the Riverside Shakespeare book in this class.
So, yes, according to him, the ninth grade version had been censored for us. It was probably also edited for length and understandibility by the average ninth grader as well. And, I think that he mentioned the fact that it was edited so that we’d sit up and pay attention listening for “good parts”.
I was never able to compare the two versions side by side, so I don’t know what was cut. Nurse did seem a bit raunchier in eleventh grade, though.
