A bunch of parents with sand in their vages banned a Steve Martin play about the nature of creativity, intelligence, commercialism, and art from being performed at the high school (with a 4-3 vote by the school board), because the play contained allusions to alcohol and sex. So, a local college stepped in and said the students could perform it there. Kickass.
From
the article:
The La Grande School District Superintendent got a complaint from a parent and a petition signed by 137 people and banned the play, which has references to sex and drinking, features the characters of Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso meeting in a Paris bar in 1904, as both were on the verge of breakthrough work. It deals with themes of artistry, genius and the nature of the 20th century.
Since when is an allusion to either sex or drinking a problem in performace? Seriously.
It's not because they're "children." They're highschoolers. Teenagers. They're a couple of years away from 100% unfiltered reality and being free'n'able to blow someone's head off in war, but sex and alcohol is too much for them to handle? Up until the 80s they were able to buy and drink alcohol, and it was outlawed
only due to the now-proven-incorrect belief it would end teenage
drunk driving, so their knowledge of it or alleged glorifying of it is immaterial, since they're clearly not going to be possessing it, drinking it, or driving during the course of the play.
The country supported outlawing it solely to prevent them from harming others--
not due to the alcohol, the consumption of alcohol, the idea of alcohol, or the glorification thereof. We tried that nearly a century ago with extremely poor results; organized crime and violence significantly increased until prohibition was repealed, at which point violence and crime levels returned to pre-prohibition rates. We don't want to re-live the first part of that, right?
The second half of this is sex. Again, they're not kids. Their metaphorical (and in half of them, literal) balls have dropped, and sex is totally natural. Everyone living is the result of it.
For the parents to assume their children don't already know about sex is truly frightening, because it means they've completely failed as parents, and even worse, they don't give a crap enough about their kid to inform them (or are too ball-less to do so), while at the same time disallowing a play to do the job for them. More shocking is that the parents are assuming that their kids aren't already having sex and don't already talk about it between friends— that's mind-bogglingly ignorant.
So, I guess the only reason for forbidding the play is due to the artistic tastes of parents. That, too, is also immaterial. If a parent doesn't like the art his kid enjoys, then the parent needs to shut the hell up and remember how rock'n'roll, jazz, nudism, and pretty much every new art form on the face of the planet spurred significant negative criticism by "parents" during their respective periods. Then again, I guess they would have been reminded of that once they had seen the play that their kids would have performed (that's part of the content of the play) but instead the parents essentially ban themselves from seeing it, plugging their ears and drowning out reason with their baseless screams.
In the end, if the goal is to shield your kid from the world until the second they've been thrust head-first into it, or if your goal is to stagnate art, halt progress, hasten the collapse of creativity, and force the country to fall behind as the rest of the world develops on, then by all means, ban the play and everything else you don't like. Good luck. All I ask is that you simply come up front and say that instead of masking it as a problem of an artistic work referencing drugs, alcohol, sex, harsh language, or some other vague, arbitrary and unfounded crap about "the children."
Really, I should be thanking the parents. As a result of their actions, I'm willing to bet that countless high schools across the country will be performing the play in the near future. People are like that. Censor something, and it's seen by everyone. I guess it means that the world isn't completely mindless...
...yet.
