13 thoughts on “Brokeback Middle School?”

  1. Content aside, R-rated is not for children. The lawsuit – hmm I don’t know – sometimes those are filed to raise awareness to the public and not so much for the punitive outcome.

    IMO – the school needs to pay some retribution as well as the school district so that in the future they are putting protective measures in place for themselves and thus they can’t just shrug their shoulders and say “We had no idea!”

  2. I agree it’s outrageous — on the basis of content but not subject matter. No R-rated film should be shown for anyone under the age of 17. That should be a no-brianer, but unfortunately it’s not.

  3. I’d sack the teacher. Showing the film was certainly not in the curriculum.

  4. Maybe it’s just a Texas thang….but no R-rated movie would ever be deemed appropriate under any circumstance. The theme is irrelevant.

    I don’t agree with the lawsuit, but there’s just no context in which those kids seeing an R-rated movie makes any sense whatsoever to me.

    Good grief. This is public school. We’ve got curriculum….. but R-rated movies incorporated into that curriculum……no way. Ever.

  5. I agree with Timothy and David. Some people will be upset that the movie was gay-themed. I am more concerned with the graphic, anti-gay violence (catration, murder, etc) than with the sexual themes or images. In any case, I will take a “wait-and-see” approach to see what really happened here.

  8. I’d say the lawsuit is outrageous. However, given that there is a judge suing a dry cleaners for $65 MILLION over a lost pair of pants, it’s not surprising.

    While I do agree it was wrong to show the movie without parental consent (or even notice apparently), I haven’t read enough about the situation to say the blame is entirely on the substitute teacher. Was this part of the regular teacher’s lesson plan? Did the substitute just bring the movie to show on her own? Did she talk to the principal or anyone else about it first?

  9. Since I’m a public school teacher (and a middle school teacher at that) my first response is “What an idiot!”

    I guess there are many potential scenarious as to how the school district could have allowed someone with such total lack of BRAINS to manage their students for any length of time, but ultimately, it’s the substitute who’s responsible and should face an appropriate consequence for the action. I think an appropriate one would be some sort of order that would ban that person from managing kids of any age, as well as an unappealable revocation of any certifications she may hold.

    We don’t show R-rated movies at school. End of story. How difficult is it, really, to just follow the rules? And what message is THAT sending to ALL the students if she is not punished in some significant way?

  10. Which part? The lawsuit (sort of over the top), or the substitute who felt she had the right to show a movie which is not recommended for anyone under the age of 18 years? As a parent, I would be extremely upset if any movie with that rating were shown to my 13-year-old during school, without my consent. We seem to have forgotten the difference between minors and consenting adults, and given schools the right to parent our children in any circumstance. As such, I understand the feeling that a statement, however extreme, needs to be made. It has nothing to do with the movie or its content/themes, but instead with the assumption that if it happens in school, it must be okay and condoned by all parents.

  11. Any of those parents should be upset. I have not watched the film because of the nudity and sexual scenes.

  13. We can certainly agree that showing an R-rated film to 12 year-olds without parental permission is completely inappropriate. That particular film has nudity and sex scenes (of which the heterosexual were the more explicit) as well as an abundance of foul language.

    I happen to believe that Brokeback Mountain is a beautifully written, beautifully filmed movie with excellent direction, cinematography, and acting. I do believe that it lost the Best Picture oscar to Crash out of the reluctance on the part of some Academy voters to give the biggest prize to a movie with a gay theme.

    It is also a very old-fashioned movie. It’s a story about people (real people rather than those rather shiny beautiful creatures with laughable problems whom Hollywood seems to so often give us) facing the conflict between what their heart wants and what they can have. Maybe that’s why the audiences so often had a large percent of seniors (at one showing I saw two elderly women helping their much older friend with her oxygen tank).

    But though I (obviously) love this film, I wouldn’t show it to a kid. Yeah I know kids can see worse on standard cable and hear worse on every playground… but not in the classroom. Totally unacceptable.

    Now I suspect the grandparents are not being truthful when they claim psychological distress – I don’t believe it for a second. Nor should they get money. They have a history of complaining about what they don’t like and this seems more of a publicity stunt than a genuine effort to pay for their granddaughter’s counseling.

    But they are right to bring this to the school board’s attention. The substitute teacher should be fired and lose whatever teaching credentials she has. Someone with judgment that poor should not be in charge of children.

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