March 18, 2008

Video ratings...

Being in an academic library, video ratings are not something I've worried about, especially for documentaries, which I frequently order for my subject area of Business. One of these is Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. All the reviews on the title are tops. However, in the year I've been here, I've had two complaints from faculty. There are a couple of rather raunchey scences in the film, one which takes place in a strip club, which have been off putting to the faculty members. One faculty member had seen the edited version on PBS and didn't preview it before showing it in class. I guess it was a little uncomfortable. He later requested we order the edited version. There isn't one.

The second complaint came in about a week ago. Because of the first one, I knew what the issue was. The suggestion from reference was perhaps we could put a warning or something on the DVD. Do we do this? It made for an interesting discussion and the best we could come up with was perhaps a note to preview before showing in class. We are taking this under consideration, but in the meantime, I also pointed out that we have two other documentaries on Enron. Any thoughts?

1 comment:

brooke said...

ntary have a rating? are they required to be rated? seems to me that showing something in class without previewing it is poor teaching, but in the effort of appeasing the faculty I think a note in the local record of "adult content" might be the best route to go.