Robert sez,
Students at New Rochelle School High School are going to find it difficult to complete their next assignment: comparing the film adaptation of "Girl, Interrupted" to the best-selling book. In the book,
Kaysen recounts her confinement at a Massachussets mental hospital in the 1960's.Pages from the middle of the book have been torn out by the school district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials due to sexual content and strong language. Removed is a scene where the rebellious Lisa (played by Angela Jolie in the movie) encourages Susanna (played by Winona Ryder) to circumvent hospital rules against sexual
intercourse by engaging in oral sex instead."The material was of a sexual nature that we deemed inappropriate for teachers to present to their students," said English Department
Chariperson Leslie Altschul, "since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing.""Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also
does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud
perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."
Now Playing in New Rochelle, "Book, Interrupted"!
(Thanks, Robert!)
