Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:06:11 -0500
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Bread Puppet addition


John wrote:

>It is interesting to me that a sign simply listing the numbers of dead
>from the Iraq War can be considered information unfit for children (or
>adults) to see.  The act presenting that information does not dwell in
>violence, or condemn one side or another (at least in the versions I saw
>this past summer).  Instead, in the middle of an otherwise lyrical music
>and movement piece, a cardboard sign appears listing the numbers of the
>dead, not only Americans, whom we sometimes hear about, although with
>increasing infrequency, but also Iraqis.   Why exactly should children
>in the United States not see this information?  What functions are
>served by keeping this information secret, from both children and
>adults?

John, can we poke this a little?  The information is obviously not 
unfit for either children or adults, but imagine this: you go to a 
performance of "Romeo and Juliet", and in the middle of the balcony 
scene a cardboard sign appears listing the number of unborn children 
that get killed every year through abortion.   Would you consider 
this as purely informational?  Me no, I would feel that I had been 
inducted into the show under false pretenses, and deceptively made to 
give my money to something I  find objectionable.   Unless there were 
mitigating circumstances, I would most likely walk out and demand my 
money back.

I would certainly not react this way if the cardboard sign listed, 
instead, the number of mushrooms that spring up in the US after every 
rain.  So there is information and there is information.

-m

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