More than feuding families in 'Romeo and Juliet' lawsuit

There was a time in education when high school students experienced a remarkably fixed canon of writers and works, regardless of where they went to school.

Ninth-grade English was especially moribund. The curriculum often included “The Most Dangerous Game,” that classic short story about hunter versus prey; To Kill a Mockingbird, a treacly tale of racism in the 1930s that focuses more on the white attorney and his family than the actual victims; a selection or two by perennial horror and sci-fi favorites Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury; and, of course, Romeo and Juliet, the perennial story of love in bloom across two feuding families.

And chances were good that if students trudged gamely through that last work, listening to parts of it and reading other parts aloud, haltingly and in “accents yet unknown” as Shakespeare himself once wryly forecast, they were rewarded with a viewing of the movie.

Romeo and Juliet has been adapted multiple times by Hollywood, yet saying “the movie” is appropriate because the one to rule them all (to paraphrase Tolkien) is the 1968 version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey as the star-crossed lovers. It’s fast and colorful and full of action, the script shaving off much of Shakespeare’s language in favor of visual spectacle.

But if you’re a teacher, one scene gives pause, sometimes literally.

In Juliet’s bedroom just after the couple’s wedding, viewers spy Romeo’s buttocks and Juliet’s breasts. This scene, too, is fast and colorful and full of action, guaranteed to wake up all but the most deeply sleeping students.

Some teachers exhibit the film as it is, trusting their students to be mature enough to handle the content. Others know exactly where to mute the screen to avoid the naughty bits. One teacher I knew created an edited version on videotape that cut out those few frames altogether.

As a teacher of freshman English for many years, I followed all three paths at various points, even borrowing the VHS version once. Early in my career, I just rolled the film uncut. Ironically, several of these screenings were in a private Catholic high school.

Later, when the times had become more conservative, I opted for muting the screen, much to the consternation of students, who wanted to “see it all.”

In the last few years, however, many English language arts curriculums have diversified, and Shakespeare is often taught by excerpt only, if even then. Additionally, fears that Romeo and Juliet somehow glorifies teenage suicide (a perspective that can be easily rebutted by even a casual reading of the text) has further relegated the work to the sidelines.

But even if the above changes and concerns did not exist, and even in districts that still enshrine R&J as canon, a recent lawsuit brought by the two stars might give teachers who still show the ’68 version pause.

The lawsuit alleges that director Zeffirelli took advantage of Whiting and Hussey’s naiveté when filming the love scene, telling them that they would be clad in flesh-colored bodystockings, and later that the scene would be edited to obscure their body parts. Neither option occurred.

Using a temporary suspension of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse in California, the two actors are citing emotional and financial damages in the decades since. The lawsuit is seeking $500 million in restitution.

That’s more money than the Capulets and Montagues were worth combined and will almost certainly be reduced as the studio and the actors’ lawyers wrangle inside and outside court.

The two stars were underage at the time of filming, making the situation even more fraught and leading to a series of questions for teachers.

Is showing the PG-rated film tantamount to supporting child pornography? Could it lead to potential liability for educators and districts?

(One could also argue that showing the film at all in a public setting is likely a violation of the license extended for private home viewing, but that’s a matter for another time.)

It is possible that the film could be a jumping-off point for an honest discussion of consent and how minors cannot give it. And how the entertainment industry sometimes takes advantage of young actors and profits from their lack of experience. And how a gross overstepping of boundaries, such as filming two underage actors in the nude, could be glossed over and hidden in plain sight for so many years.

All of which are discussions that could be had without viewing the film, but merely by sharing an article about the current controversy.

I won’t speculate about the merits of the lawsuit and whether the film victimized them repeatedly for 54 years and simultaneously diminished their box-office appeal in other projects. 

But I would no longer feel comfortable showing the film to classes, even if I were still teaching freshman English. Maybe the Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes version from 1996 (which I haven’t seen all the way through), or one of the West Side Story renditions, instead.

Or, better yet, I would students stage some of the scenes themselves, in “accents yet unknown” at the time of Shakespeare’s writing. That’s more creative than staring at a screen, anyway, and less likely to embroil teachers in a controversy.