Horror films screened in eighth grade, illness in the classroom and protests – Lombardy

Now hole, substitute teacher in the classroom to supervise the boys, from whom the proposal starts: “Prof, shall we watch a film?”. The teacher gave his ok and left the kids free to see the film they wanted. They chose a splatter released on October 13th, forbidden to minors of 18 years, ‘Terrifier’, a particularly tough and violent 2016 film, perfectly hinged on the model of the eighties films, which has Art the clown as the protagonist, a murderous clown serial.

Result: faced with director Damien Leone’s slasher movie, full of scenes of butchering, blood and bloody serial murders, many of the students felt bad. Someone solved it by leaving the classroom or turning away, others complained of nausea. And the screening was stopped. Too late, however, for the controversy not to explode. It happened in recent days in a third of a middle school in Cremona and now, inevitably, the anger of the parents is mounting. With some who have written to the head teacher asking for explanations. And asking how it was possible to allow the viewing of a film of that type, intuitively capable of offending the sensibilities of pupils who, at least in large part, even just because of their age, are easily impressionable and unprepared to handle that type of emotion. The manager preferred not to comment, limiting himself to explaining that the school administration “acted in the manner prescribed” and organized a discussion between parents, teacher and students.

Giovanni Schintu, manager of Filo, one of the cinema-theaters in the Lombard capital, also intervened on the case. «Really speechless – he commented – the superficiality with which the teacher consented to the viewing of the film without even inquiring about the typology, then leaving the students themselves the final choice of what to see. And this suggests that cinema, unfortunately and too often, is considered by many to be a trivial moment of entertainment. In particular, it is disconcerting that, in defiance of any legislation, a film has been shown that absolutely does not respond to the concept of viewing for school use”. Schintu’s conclusion: “This story demonstrates, beyond the specific case, how viewing of a film, whatever it is, made out of any context, not presented in the right way and not contextualized, can only cause discontent and damage. In this case, unfortunately, also psychological”.