Junior High Accused of Showing Students Pornography After Screening of OKLAHOMA!

Broadway isn't always the cleanest artistic medium, but pornography is certainly an unexpected word used in reference to a specific show. But according to The Salt Lake Tribune, a Payson Junior High is facing accusations of having shown their students just that after screening the Hugh Jackman led OKLAHOMA!

In the filmed stage version of the classic musical, Jackman's character has a scene in which he looks at erotic photos of women. The camera is aimed over his shoulder, allowing the audience to glimpse the images, which Payson is now considering 'pornographic' (IMDb disagrees, stating there is 'no complete nakedness').

If the school had this reaction to the content, then why did they allow a teacher to show it to students? The answer is the larger concern in this situation: the teacher never got the film approved. The district's policy states that any film shown in its entirety must be approved by the school principal. The teacher screening OKLAHOMA! never did this. Payson is now reaching out to parents to explain that their students may have seen erotic images; the parents, however, were not initially told that the images were seen during OKLAHOMA!

For more from The Salt Lake Tribune, click here.

OKLAHOMA! spins the tale of the high-spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys in the Indian territory of Oklahoma at the turn of the twentieth century. This provides a colorful background against which Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out their love story. Nominated for Seven Tony Awards and winner of a Pulitzer Prize, it's filled with some of the most recognized songs in theatre, including "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top," "People Will Say We're in Love," and of course, the resounding "Ok-la-hom-a."