I recognize it from Orwell's classic novel "1984" (which I read for the first time while in Straight, Inc. in the year 1984. How's that for irony?)
I also read "A Clockwork Orange" while I was in there...
How funny. I read 1984 when I was at CEDU. A rather subversive teacher snuck it to us, in addition to Lord of the Flies, Childhood's End, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.
He got fired. Along with his wife, who was the journalism teacher. (Not because of our reading assignments, but because his wife confronted the "academic chair" when he bumped up all of the grades she had given the students to As.) I swear to god, those were the two coolest people I had ever met at that place. God bless the both of them.
I had actually read 1984 years earlier, since it was one of my favorite books.
Believe it or not, we had a library, with a pretty decent sci fi section. (That's where I read Eye of Cat, my favorite Zelazny book.) The only thing we had to watch out for was reading "too much", because then we would be accused of "hiding out", and you would be put on bans from the library, or reading altogether. Needless to say, I hid out a lot. I acquired a taste for some of the worst hack sci-fi writers out there. Namely Anne McAffrey and Piers Anthony. It was great that I could escape into something other than the CEDU-sanctioned writings of Jack London, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Walt Whitman, especially since I had several of London's books on the shelf by my bunk, since it was on the CEDU recommended Christmas present list... right next to my never opened copy of The Prophet.
You can only read about dogs so much before it gets boring.
One intriguing incident I do remember is that one of the students found a book in the library on gestalt, and did a paper on that, basically stating that Mel didn't come up with any of this shit on his own, it all originated with gestalt.
They removed the book from the library when they found out about that.
But seriously, this was interesting about CEDU. They put themselves off as a "cultured" environment, by promoting literature and art with their own slant. A lot of their philosophy was visibly referential to existentialist (and other kinds of) writers, no matter how much the original work had been twisted. We were always quoted a passage from visionaries such as Martin Luther King Jr., or writers such as Ghibran or Hemmingway. (or pure drivel such as Jonathan Livingston Seagull.) When the academic building got finished, they even named rooms after writers. Even the fucking bathrooms were called the Louisa May Alcott suite with Little Men on one side and Little Women on the other.
Because of this, lots of interesting, more subversive stories and books seeped through the cracks/sentries and into our hands. Such as the gestalt book, and some great (and not so great but fun to read) sci-fi. In addition to some rather inspirational stuff such as Naked Came I, which was actually recommended to me by that sleazeball Dan Earle. I even think one of my dormmates was reading "The Great Gatsby" at one point.
I think another reason is because the staff truly didn't feel that any of these books were threatening. (Except for the gestalt one, that hit too close to home.) Especially the anti-utopian novels such as 1984, F451, Brave New World, etc. Because they truly believed that the school's philosophy was fighting the fight against this type of oppression. If CEDU was one thing, it was super-hippified-pie-in-the-sky idealistic in its ideology. You know, the child within, and all that crap.
We had art, too, and I was one of the resident artists, but all of our work was censored and compromised. (and in my case, taken advantage of, since I would be commissioned to do pretty much every fucking thing the school needed done art-wise, and if I didn't do a good enough job, I'd get talked to about it in a rap. Fortunately, that only happened once.) I'd be embarrassed to show any of that stuff now, but thank god I at least had that outlet, because a lot of times, that and the library were all I had.
Of course, if you violated the terms of CEDU, you could have those "privileges" taken away, despite the fact that these things aren't privileges to begin with, they are rights. It was the one thing I was defiant about at that place. One of the staff confiscated my drawings when I was in lower school because she felt that they looked like devils. (they were elves.) She threatened to take away my drawing privileges. I said no fuckin way. She didn't. And I went back to drawing "devils", even though I wasn't supposed to.
I think part of this is maybe what attracted so many celebrity parents to the CEDU chains. You know, art fags really dig this kinda shit.
Plus, it's more in line with the hippie/new age cult template, as opposed to the gulag/detention facility template such as WWASPS.
Which is what strikes me curious as to the evolution of Straight, since it evolved from the Seed, which was a full-blown cult. Yet their punitive system and environment was sooo different from CEDU's. Was it merely an issue of how two men differed in ideas on how to fuck with young minds? It makes me wonder what were some of the key philosophical differences between Art Barker's way of thinking and Mel Wasserman's. Art was from 12 step, Mel was from Synanon, yet Synanon is credited as having started both entities.
Wait a minute. What the fuck WAS Mel up to before Synanon, anyway? Of course, we can't even get a straight answer as to what he was doing *while* in Synanon, either. If someone published a bio on that asshole, I sure as fuck would read it. As much of an evil person as he was, he sure was fucking interesting. In the same way Koresh was.
As for movies, I love that family guy episode which talks about "Momento".
"Yeah.... it kinda loses its punch the second time around."
