A high school classroom in the bucolic hills of West Virginia was a little more exciting than usual this week thanks to a screening of portions of “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
The taxpayer-funded screening of the 125-minute tour de smut — and sadism, and bondage — starring the private parts of Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan occurred at Hampshire High School in Romney, W.V. (pop: 1,796).
Students in the class convinced their teacher to show the film as a year-end reward for good work. The unidentified teacher was somehow unaware of the content of the movie, reports the Charleston Daily Mail.
“Fortunately, an assistant principal walked by and saw what they were doing,” Hampshire High principal Jeff Woofter told the capital city newspaper. “They got there 10 minutes after it started and shut it down.”
It’s not clear how the eagle-eyed assistant principal was able to recognize the movie so rapidly.
In any case, the students roughly got to see the opening credits, a montage of two people dressing in business clothes and an overbearingly sexually-charged interview between the two principal characters.
The students did not get to see the multiple shots of Johnson’s breasts, her pubic hair and the butts and bondage galore in the later parts of the film, which has grossed some $600 million worldwide.
“We don’t do that,” principal Woofter explained.
“I will say it was an extreme lack of judgment from an otherwise very capable teacher,” Woofter also told the Mail. “The teacher didn’t do a background check on the movie or even ask about it.”
The principal would not say if the teacher of the students would be facing any disciplinary actions.
The R-rated movie is based on the richly pornographic, massively successful “Fifty Shades of Grey” novel by British author E. L. James, which has spent weeks upon weeks on Amazon’s top 100 books list since it was released in 2011.
In addition to creating considerable wealth, the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon has hit some bizarro cultural sweet spot. It comes up in the news like clockwork.
Last year, for example, researchers at Michigan State University announced that women between the ages of 18 and 24 who have read “Fifty Shades” are likely to enjoy a good binge-drinking session and have already racked up at least five sexual partners in their brief but exciting lifetimes. They are also more likely to suffer from eating disorders and have had boyfriends or husbands who have yelled at them or stalked them. (RELATED: SCIENCE: Reading ‘Fifty Shades’ May Make You a Slutty Boozehound Who Dates Stalkers)
The release of the “Fifty Shades” movie saw a smattering of protests by radical feminists around the world. One such protest and also an attempted boycott occurred in Madison, Wis. (RELATED: Of Course Madison Feminists Are Protesting And Boycotting ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’)
In February of this year, police arrested a freshman student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) on charges that he tied up a fellow student with belts in a dorm room, whacked her with another belt several times and then smacked her repeatedly upside the head. The male student said it was all just an agreed-to reenactment of “Fifty Shades.” (RELATED: Cops Say College Freshman Tied Up, Whipped And Punched Woman For ‘Fifty Shades’ Reenactment)
In 2013, a Philadelphia high school teacher bought the book for a freshman to read in class. The student’s mother was angry. (RELATED: Mom Wants Teacher Fired Just Because He Bought ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ For Ninth Grader)
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