I agree entirely with Thomas and Klaus, both of them in Germany. I'm an American, and frankly I'm dismayed to see this issue raised in American university teaching. It seems that what with the corporatization of American universites, the treatment of professors as "commodities," and the backlash moralization about film and textual content, "academic freedom" is not what it used to be. I'm reading the posts of my fellow professors tiptoeing around this subject--"this is complex," "we need to take this seriously." Yes it is, yes we do, but we can't let the new (?) American prudishness intimidate us. Ask your students why they are taking a film course if they cannot watch what has been treated as serious subjects in film. As I said before, my gut reaction is to tell the complaining student that he or she is free to drop the class. I'll warn him about the content of the class, but I'm not going to accommodate him. That's just crazy. I remember when we tried to pass a proposition in California almost thirty years ago about "explicit nudity" in museums and art galleries. The proposition, if passed, would not allow any museum or gallery within "x" miles of a grammar school to display explicit human nudity. Not even posters of Michelangelo's David. Thankfully, it was voted down. Are we coming back to this???? Sarah On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Klaus Bardenhagen wrote: > Quite frankly, the idea that a student could object to certain films (and > the teacher changes his course schedule) ...or even take extra time to show other films to this student, or in any way treat this student as special... seems ridiculous to me. Whoever > decides to do film studies is a) a grown-up person, b) does not have the right > to force his moral standards onto others and c) cannot limit his studies to > just the films or subjects he likes or finds acceptable. Banning "Clockwork > Orange" is like studying English literature and not reading Shakespeare, > because of the violence in his plays. Absolutely. Smacks of censorship. ********************************************************************* Sarah L. Higley [log in to unmask] Associate Professor of English office: (716) 275-9261 The University of Rochester fax: (716) 442-5769 Rochester NY, 14627 ********************************************************************* Py dydwc glein / O erddygnawt vein? "What brings a gem from a hard stone?" Book of Taliesin ********************************************************************* ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite