I once taught "Sunset Boulevard" in a film class and had to explain to my students that William Holden's character was being kept by Gloria Swanson and that they were having sex.
I remember a similar incident - albeit in literature - in my high school English class freshman year. None of us realized that Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" was describing the aftermath of an abortion. I think there's a general assumption in the way this material's taught in secondary school classrooms that during the postwar period, all sexuality in mainstream TV shows was suppressed by the censors, that moral conformity was so omnipresent that no one dared to come up with some sort of subversive code that could pass muster. Each generation has its symbols, and without knowledge of those symbols other generations miss out on all the subtext.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-19 08:36 am (UTC)I remember a similar incident - albeit in literature - in my high school English class freshman year. None of us realized that Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" was describing the aftermath of an abortion. I think there's a general assumption in the way this material's taught in secondary school classrooms that during the postwar period, all sexuality in mainstream TV shows was suppressed by the censors, that moral conformity was so omnipresent that no one dared to come up with some sort of subversive code that could pass muster. Each generation has its symbols, and without knowledge of those symbols other generations miss out on all the subtext.