Legendary author Stephen King has strongly criticized the state of Utah for banning his novella collection that inspired the movies Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that King’s 1982 collection Different Seasons was banned from all public schools in Utah. The collection features four novellas: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal; Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption; The Body: Fall from Innocence; and The Breathing Method: A Winter’s Tale.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal was adapted into the 1994 movie masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption, and The Body: Fall from Innocence was adapted into 1986 coming-of-age classic Stand by Me.
According to the SLT, Utah law requires a book be banned from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts decide it includes to “objective sensitive material.” That happened earlier this month when the Davis, Jordan, Tooele, and Washington school districts decided to remove the collection from their libraries, triggering a statewide ban on 6 July. The book had previously been available to students in grades 7-12. Utah code defines “objective sensitive material” as “instructional material that constitutes pornographic or indecent,” is “harmful to minors,” or “includes certain fondling or other erotic touching.”
On its website, Davis school district said Different Seasons “violates the standards” because it describes “genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal.”
Three pages were cited containing those descriptions, per the website:
- On page 184 the statement violates the law showing humans in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal.
- On page 251 it describes genitals in a state of sexual stimulation or arousal.
- On page 252 it again describes human genitals in a state of sexual stimulation.
It is thought that Apt Pupil is the novella in question. Apt Pupil is a dark psychological thriller about an all-American high school student who discovers his elderly neighbor is a fugitive Nazi war criminal. Instead of turning him in, the boy blackmails the man into sharing horrific Holocaust stories, leading both into a dangerous, corrupting descent into evil.
“They banned DIFFERENT SEASONS in Utah,” King said in a response issued on social media. “Contains STAND BY ME and THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, stories of friendship and courage. Readable by teens, too. What’s wrong with these people?”
King did not mention Apt Pupil: Summer of Corruption or The Breathing Method: A Winter’s Tale in his tweet.
This isn’t the first time Utah has banned a King collection — in February his 1998 horror novel Bag of Bones found its way onto the banned list. Indeed, various King books have been banned over the years across the U.S.
In January, the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah filed a lawsuit against state officials on behalf of the estate of Kurt Vonnegut and several bestselling authors, arguing that the book bans are “unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
