PAYSON, Utah – There may be “a bright, golden haze on the meadow,” but the stench of pornography fouled the air for seven whole seconds during a junior-high screening of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma, at least according to some parents.
Actually, only one parent of one child, who raised a ruckus on Facebook, riled up other parents, fumed at school administrators and generally created much ado about next to nothing.
The artistic endeavor at issue was the 1999 Broadway revival starring Hugh Jackman, which faithfully followed the original script and libretto. PBS filmed a live performance for television and use in classrooms. The musical is about as corn-fed as theater gets, and one certainly would imagine not even a left-wing radical organization like PBS could screw that up.
One would be wrong, according to parents at Payson Junior High, who accused the Nebo School District of exposing their children to pornography after a substitute drama teacher showed the film to between 100 and 150 students over the course of two days.
The offended parents point to a single, seven-second segment in which Curly (Jackman) examines some old photographs of provocatively posed women tacked to a wall. The image is blurry and goes by quickly, but the dialogue indicates what’s up.
“Plum stark naked as a jaybird…,” Curly says, while the camera peeks over his shoulder. “No she ain’t — not quite. She’s got a couple of thingy-bobs tied on her there.”
With that, Curly and the camera turn away from the wall, and Jud Fry (Shuler Hensley) shows Curly a presumably dirtier picture the audience can’t see.
“Whew! That’d give me ideas,” Curly says before the scene sashays in another direction.
The brief clip led one mother to generate a porn panic on Facebook: “A pornographic movie was shown in a classroom setting to approximately 125 students … among other things, the movie contained an 8-second close-up of 10 full-frontal images of 10 naked women.”
(I counted eight photographs in the clip, and only three of them showed more than a tattered corner.)
The woman has since removed the post.
Nebo School District indicated the movie’s screening violated district policy because the film was not approved by the principal beforehand. School officials emailed and called parents with an explanation, if not an apology.
“This movie was not previewed or approved and some inappropriate material was viewed by the students,” the email stated. “As parents, you may want to visit with your student about this.”
The offending clip occurs at 1:05:49-56 in the video below. The image at the top of this page is a screen grab taken at 1:05:50.
