Local production of To Kill A Mocking Bird Canceled

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http://www.playbill.com/news/article/14 ... Production



It's wonderful to know that everything has to be PC.

*Shrugs

Not remotely surprised.

That just blows.

Same here. I've always wondered how these books were allowed to be part of the middle school English curriculum despite the use of such a controversial word. I remember also watching a really heavy war movie in Grade 8, where at some point I just walked out of the classroom (we were allowed to) because I couldn't take the extreme violence. I also remember watching Scary Movie in the classroom in middle school, which is laden with sexual jokes.

Wasn't too happy about it at all.

I do love the book, though. I just don't see why it can't be taught at a higher level. And the play should have been put into production. After all, there is the movie...

Last edited by MathGirl on 08 Nov 2010, 8:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Why don't they ban -Gone With The Wind-?

ruveyn

That really is horrible. The message conveyed in that drama is timeless and still needs to be shared with contemporary audiences.

You want to talk about the evils of PC...

I took the part of a contentious white man in a production of "Playing Juliet/Casting Othello." GREAT play, but I was disturbed at how much red tape the community theater board of directors flung at us to program it. We must have gone through 3 castings before we got people dedicated enough to put it together, not to mention all kinds of delays for one reason or another trying to kill it. When we finally set a performance date, we had one performance for area high schools, but otherwise it seems it was scheduled for a time when people would LEAST likely want to go to the theater. So much for making a social statement.

People need to get over commercial pressures and political correctness. Performance art seems to be inherently anti-PC, as it should be. Literature like "Mockingbird" helps us focus on the lessons of the past so hopefully they'll never have to be repeated.

If they were that concerned they could have swapped the N with another less harsh word. Anyway, if you're doing a play set in the 30s you're going to have things like that duh. There was no need to cancel it, I doubt the black people in the play actually cared.
At school we read of mice and men and "N" was used throughout the book, but the teacher still had no problem reading it since it was written a long time a go and it's going to have the terms and phrases of the time. By reading it it's not insulting anyone because this is what the characters are saying to each other, you're not calling a real person those names.

This could be dramatized into a lifetime movie called To Kill To Kill a Mocking Bird.

Good point. If I remember correctly, that word was only used once by the little girl (name forgotten): "Daddy, do you defend n-----s?" But yes, that word would have been commonplace at the time.

And ^ the above post.

Don't give them any ideas...

What. The. f**k?!

Do people really believe that bigotry will disappear if they prevent people from hearing any words associated with it?

Sometimes* I despair of my species.




* A few times a day.

Scout.

The problem is that by censoring works like that you violate copyright laws. To be honest, I was raised (this was back in the 80s) to believe the n-word was unacceptable. It didn't matter if my grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins used it in casual conversation. It didn't matter if my dad said it every other word. UNACCEPTABLE, and I would have gotten beaten to within an inch of my life if I ever said it (it happened a time or two).

Now, of course, I understand why its offensive and I'm not so casual about saying it IF I ever say it at all. When I taught at a predominantly black school, I had a number of class clowns who had all the respect in the world for "that white teacher" and caught me making cultural references to certain types of music (trying to find the right PC word). One of them said, "you can say n***a, it's ok. We say it all the time, it doesn't bother us." I was, like, "NO." So one of the white kids got up and start shouting "I HATE THEM DAMN n****rs." The rest of the class just laughed at him because they knew his brain was probably fried. So they tell me, "See? We don't care." I simply explained there are just certain things teachers can't get away with and moved on with the topic.

So, no, I'm no racist and harbor no ill feelings towards anyone based on race. I'm also sensitive enough to know better than to use that kind of language, and I understand WHY certain things ought to be censored.

But I also know that "Mockingbird" is anything but hateful towards black people. In fact, it sympathizes with them, especially considering racial imbalances in administering justice. Little things like that, not to mention being a great drama and valuable piece of literature full of teachable moments--not to mention cross-disciplinary dialogue between history and literature--serve as gentle (and not-so-gentle in some cases) reminders of a time when things weren't so great between two races. If we want to move forward, it's best we keep one eye on where we've been so we know not to go back there again.

I was looking forward to seeing that movie, and now those PCers took that away from us.

People always take things to their illogical ends.