School Board Rules On Complaint Against 'Inherit The Wind' [creationism vs. evolution]

The Kansas City Channel ^ | 3:03 p.m. CDT June 3, 2003

[yonif]

An Academy Award-nominated film can remain in a school district's library collection.

Earlier this year, a biology teacher showed "Inherit the Wind" at Shawnee Mission East. The film portrays the trial of a high school teacher and the clash of creationism versus the theory of evolution.

A Shawnee Mission School District committee recommended the film remain in the school's library, but did not recommend the video be used as an accurate resource for science classes. The committee said the material is dated and may be potentially offensive.

However, the committee also said teacher discretion should be the qualifier for which materials are used in class.

[Texas_Jarhead]

if ever there was a piece of propoganda...

[drlevy88]

but did not recommend the video be used as an accurate resource for science classes. The committee said the material is dated and may be potentially offensive.

And how about just plain phonied up.

[Greybird]

And how about just plain phonied up.

Nope. Well over half of the courtroom-scene dialogue is taken verbatim from the Scopes trial transcripts. In both the movie and the original Lawrence and Lee play. Authors can rarely think of material that good.

Yes, the characters are fictionalized. But not by much, and then mostly by name. Fredric March was a dead ringer in appearance and bombast for Brady/Bryan, Spencer Tracy evoked the rumpled spare manner (if you subtract 30 pounds) of Drummond/Darrow, and Gene Kelly absolutely nailed (if you add 30 pounds) the sardonic Hornbeck/Mencken.

"He got lost because he looked for his God too high up and too far away." Drummond's words about Brady apply in full to most of the Christians I know.

[society-by-contract]

H.L. Mencken on the Scopes Trial:


http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/menk.htm

[drlevy88]

Bowling For Columbine has much more "taken verbatim" material than this. Yet it is clearly a mockumentary.

[gcruse]

The Monkey Trial lives on. You'd think people would have learned enough in the last eighty years of scientific advance to provoke a different outcome. Kansas proves it ain't necessarily so. Ignorance can be fixed, but superstition goes clear to the soul.

[drlevy88]

The biggest superstition of all is materialism.

[Greybird]

"Inherit the Wind" never pretended to be a documentary. It takes the Scopes trial as a starting point for a fictional and more dramatic -- though not much more! -- treatment than real life provided.

Yet to suggest, as was done in this thread, that it misrepresents the essence of the controversy involved, or the scientific and religious matters bearing on the plot, is entirely specious.

[drlevy88]

The political and civic setting is "enhanced" to slant sympathy towards the evos.