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Description
THE HISTORY BOYS, according to Miranda Devine (Sydney Morning Herald, June 4), "is a fraud. It is a pederastic fantasy about teachers who fondle their students' genitals in the nicest way and the boys don't mind at all. It's about a British boys' school in the nineteen eighties where all the students are openly or latently gay."
Bad enough, but her real complaint appears to be "that the movie's true nature has been hidden so successfully that people are mistaking it for family fare", with her real target the censors who gave the film an M rating--the same as Spiderman III and Harry Potter. She describes encountering a family friend "reeling out of a suburban theatre with his wife and two pre-teen children" when the straight boy Dakin asks his teacher Irwin "is there any chance of your sucking me off".
Ms Devine's friend felt he had been deceived by the M rating into taking his children to a grossly unsuitable film. Which is, of course, ludicrous. The M rating means the film is unsuitable for anyone under fifteen. Any teacher who showed The History Boys to primary or junior secondary students could be severely disciplined.
As for Hector's pathetic groping of his students, it is never condoned. The boys "don't mind" because they get so much more from him as mentor and teacher, but it is condemned:
Hector: I didn't actually do anything. It was a laying on of hands ... but more in benediction than gratification ...
Mrs Lintott: ... that is the most colossal balls ... A grope is a grope. It is not the Annunciation, you twerp.
Alan Bennett underscored this for the film version by writing a different last speech for Posner--the one openly homosexual boy in the class. It comes in the final scene when we find out what became of everyone:
Posner." Slightly to my surprise I ended up ... a teacher. I'm a bit of a stock figure ... I do a wonderful school play ... and though I never touch the boys, it's always a struggle, but maybe that's why I'm a good teacher ...
As an educator I was privileged to have some Posners as colleagues and friends--men of scrupulous integrity who did indeed love their students but never exploited that relationship. As for The History Boys being a pederastic fantasy; as Mrs Lintott says, "Balls". Apart from anything else the "boys" are all... |
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