Pagan Movie Assessment: The Crucible Part 3

The Crucible Video Cover

A few last words and links…

Check out this marvelous essay by a descendant of the real Rebecca Nurse.

These are questions from her page:

1.  It may not matter if one’s sole interest is in Miller work as literature or theater, but what happens when people only know history through creative works of art and not from primary sources and facts, letting someone else pick and choose between which facts to include and which to alter for their own artistic purposes and political arguments?

2. What are the current-day implications of the racial misidentification of Tituba as “black” or “African” in many high school history books and Miller’s play written in the 1950s, when all of the primary sources by the people who actually knew the real woman referred to her as “Indian”? What would happen to Miller’s story if Tituba were not portrayed as the well-worn American stereotype of a Black slave woman circa 1850 practicing voodoo, but as a Christianized Indian whose only use of magic was European white magic at the instruction of her English neighbors?

3. Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean Black Magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred?

4. As a result of reading Miller’s play or seeing the movie, are you more interested in what actually happened in Salem in 1692, what actually happened during McCarthyism in the 1950’s, or what happens when an illicit teenage lover is spurned? What is it about Miller’s work that prompts your interest in that direction?

Salem
National Geographic has put together this amazing interactive site about the witch trials.  See how you’d fare.

Read Robin Wood’s When, Why … If  for more information on ethics for the modern Pagan. You can buy her book off of her website at:  http://www.robinwood.com/

Please read Ronald Hutton’s “The Triumph of the Moon” for more about the history of Witchcraft in Britain

Pagan Movie Assessment: The Crucible Part 2

The Crucible

Now we move into the questions of the “burning times.”  Again, this material was created for an online mailing list that I participated in years ago.

Go read: The Great European Witch Hunt
The author, Jenny Gibbons has an M.A. in medieval history and minored in the history of the Great Hunt. This is an amazing article on the history of Witch hunting. Please, PLEASE read this. If you never read anything else on this blog, read this.

The discussion topics for the essay “Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt” by Jenny Gibbons were extremely hard for me to figure out. There was just too much information and all I did when I first read the essay was say, yep, really?!?, oh man I’ve been so wrong, yikes! hooray someone’s finally gotten it right, etc… So here are a few discussion topics. (Only 11 questions, so don’t be scared by the length!)  All quotes are from the article.

“…”Community-based” courts were often virtual slaughterhouses, killing 90% of all accused witches. National courts condemned only about 30% of the accused. …Witchcraft cases were usually surrounded by general fear and public protests. “Community-based” courts drew their officials from the community, the group of people affected by this panic. National courts had more distance from the hysteria. Moreover national courts tended to have professional, trained staff — men who were less likely to discard important legal safeguards in their haste to see “justice” done.”

1. In the Crucible, the court judges came from out of town. Yet they were not really national courts either. Why do you think the court went along with the community hysteria?

“…panics clustered around borders. France’s major crazes occurred on its Spanish and eastern fronts. Italy’s worst persecution was in the northern regions. Spain’s one craze centered on the Basque lands straddling the French/Spanish border.”

2. While we don’t think of America as having borders. Salem was certainly on the frontier at the time of the trials. What role do you think living on a border has in relation to witch trials?

“…In fact, in Spain the Inquisition worked diligently to keep witch trials to a minimum. Around 1609, a French witch-craze triggered a panic in the Basque regions of Spain. …Although several inquisitors believed the charges, one skeptic convinced La Suprema (the ruling body of the Spanish Inquisition) that this was groundless hysteria. La Suprema responded by issuing an “Edict of Silence” forbidding all discussion of witchcraft. For, as the skeptical inquisitor noted, “There were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about.”

3. It only took one Inquisitor to stop the hysteria in the Basque region of Spain. We saw one Judge try and stop the hysteria in Salem. Why do you think he failed?

“…We can isolate certain factors that increased a person’s odds of being accused. Most witches were women. Many were poor or elderly; many seem to be unmarried. Most were alienated from their neighbors, or seen as “different” and disliked. But there is no evidence that one group was targeted.”

4. Salem executed its “different” and “disliked” immediately. Then it went on to execute many upstanding citizens. How did/do the trials get so out of control?

“…theories on who the witches were. Margaret Murray … proposed that witches were members of a Pagan sect that worshiped the Horned God. Murray’s research was exceptionally poor, and occasionally skated into out-right textual manipulation. She restricted her studies to our worst evidence: witch hunting propaganda and trials that involved copious amounts of torture. She then assumed that such evidence was basically accurate, and that the Devil was “really” a Pagan god. None of these assumptions have held up under scrutiny.”

5. I’ve been wrestling with this paragraph for ½ an hour. And I still don’t know what to say. I think this paragraph is one of the most important ones in the essay. Here is one of my attempts:

Margaret Murray is on so many pagan “recommended reading lists” that it is difficult to fight the belief that the witch hunts were fueled by the Church’s desire to combat paganism. It is also difficult to fight the belief because so many of us would like it to be true. It “feels” right in some way to us. Yep, I’d love it to be true too, but it isn’t. And I know it isn’t. The fact is that there weren’t any pagans worshipping the Horned God or the Goddess during the time of the witch trials. These are false constructs. (Read Hutton’s “Triumph of the Moon” for more information) However, the overthrow of the Murray thesis doesn’t mean you have to lose faith. Just because it didn’t happen in history doesn’t make the theories and practices less valid in the present. The worship of the Goddess and the Horned God are very real and very valid in the present, in their own right. The need to use history as a way to gain authenticity is not necessary.

“….”midwives were more likely to be found helping witch-hunters” than as victims of their inquiries. How did witches become witch-hunters? By blaming illnesses on their rivals. …When they [male doctors] did diagnose witchcraft, doctors almost never blamed a particular healer or witch. They were trying to explain their failure, not to destroy some individual. …Folk healers regularly blamed illnesses on magick and offered counter-spells to cure their patients. Many were even willing to divine the name of the cursing witch, for a fee.”

6. This is another popular belief circulating in the pagan community. It is easier to explain away the witch trials as attacks against specific groups, than it is to understand how so many could have died because of mass hysteria. Have you ever been caught up in a “witch hunt”? How about at work? Did you chime in and agree that so and so was a you know what because of gossip? Did you know better, but still give in to the group mind?

“…One basic fact about the Great Witch Hunt stands out: most of the people accused were women. … approximately 75% -80% of the accused were women. … In several of the Scandinavian countries, equal numbers of men and women were accused. In Iceland over 90% of the accused were men. … Central Europe killed the most witches, and it killed many more women than men — this is why the overall percentages are so badly skewed.”

7. Why do you think women are more frequently the target than men? Why do more of them die?

“…When the first trial record studies were completed, it was obvious that early estimates were fantastically high. Trial evidence showed that witch crazes were not everyday occurrences, as literature suggested. In fact most countries only had one or two in all of the Great Hunt. … To date, less than 15,000 definite executions have been discovered in all of Europe and America combined. …it is now clear that death tolls higher than 100,000 are not believable. … Brian Levack … estimated that 60,000 witches died. … Ronald Hutton estimated that 40,000 witches died…”

8. Can I just say WOW. I had totally the wrong number in my head about how many died. Though I think any number is one too many. This is another piece of information that we need to circulate widely!

“[A]n enormous gap has opened between the academic and the “average” Pagan view of witchcraft. We continue to use of out-dated and poor writers, like Margaret Murray, Montague Summers, Gerald Gardner, and Jules Michelet. We avoid the somewhat dull academic texts that present solid research, preferring sensational writers who play to our emotions. For example, I have never seen a copy of Brian Levack’s The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe in a Pagan bookstore. Yet half the stores I visit carry Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s Witchcraze, a deeply flawed book which has been ignored or reviled by most scholarly historians.”

9. What is our responsibility as pagans/witches for historical research. What can we do to get publishers, editors and authors to use better sources or do better research? How can we get bookstores to invest in better books?

“Few Pagans commented on the haunting similarities between the Great Hunt and America’s panic over Satanic cults. Scholars noticed it; we didn’t. We say “Never again the Burning!” But if we don’t know what happened the first time, how are we ever going to prevent it from happening again?”

10. What is our responsibility now that we know more of the truth about the witch hunts.

11. Who else had their “pet theories” and “regular beliefs” uprooted by this essay? Which ones?

Pagan Movie Assessment: The Crucible Part 1

The Crucible Video Cover

Again, I orginally developed this for a pagan mailing list. Here’s Part 1.

Greetings,

To begin I would like you to watch the movie. Yes I know it’s disturbing and sad. Personally I had to watch it in 10-15 minute segments. Then I’d get up and do something else for awhile and come back to it when I had calmed down. I probably spent 4 hours watching the movie.

The movie is useful for several reasons. It allows us to look at the whole burning times issue. It gets to the point of history as it really happened, history as it is portrayed in fiction, and history as we would like it to be. And the behavior of the characters in the play give us ample opportunity to think about ethical decision making.

Refer to this Wikipedia article and plot summary to refresh your memory if need be.

This critical review was written not by me but by masterplots. I have broken the article into 6 topics and have inserted questions into each topic section.

TOPIC 1: “Group Think or How to Lead the Masses”

“Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” was first presented at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York on January 22, 1953, when Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House committee on Un-American Activities was casting a pall over the arts in America. Writers, especially those associated with the theater and the film industry, came under the particular scrutiny of the committee. Those who were blacklisted as communists were banned from employment. Guilt was a matter of accusation, of being named. The parallels between these two periods of social and political persecution in American history were obvious to playgoers in the 1950’s. In both the witch trials and the committee hearings, people were summoned before an unchallengeable authority, interrogated, intimated, and frequently coerced into the betrayal of others in order to escape being persecuted themselves. Miller’s work may also be examined for its intrinsic merit rather than for its status as a political tract. With the passage of time, it becomes clear that “the Crucible” is more than a polemic. It transcends its topical boundaries and speaks of universals common to the human condition. In “The Crucible”, Miller balances the social tragedy of the Salem community against the personal tragedy of John Proctor, who’s triumph over self restores a sense of moral order in a community torn apart by ignorance, hysteria, and malice. The superstitious ignorance of the Salem villagers transforms a youthful escapade into a diabolic act. Despite Ann Putnam’s staunch religious beliefs, she admits to having sent her daughter Ruth to Tituba to conjure up the souls of her dead babies so that Ruth, her one remaining daughter, may discover the cause of their seemingly unnatural deaths. Abigail Williams’ motives are darker yet. She seeks Tituba’s aid to put a curse on Elizabeth Proctor’s life so that she can replace her in John Proctor’s affections. The villagers’ religious beliefs are so suffused with superstition that they readily accept the notion that the girls are bewitched. No one questions the assumption that the girls are under the spell of supernatural forces except John Proctor, whose challenge takes the form of oblique dissent, and Rebecca Nurse, who asserts that teenage girls often go through “silly seasons””

I keep thinking how pervasive the belief in witchcraft was. Everyone seemed to believe there were witches, but so many on both sides of the accusations knew the accusations were false. Do we see any of this today? A belief that is so pervasive as to be taken as a given and yet could be totally false?

TOPIC 2: “Ethics or the Lack of Them in Light of Self Interest”

“When the Reverend Parris discovers the girls cavorting in the forest, it is not surprising that they feign illness as a means of hiding from the accusations of their superstitious elders, for they have broken terrible taboos. When Abigail Williams seizes upon the device of accusing others to deflect blame away from herself, she sets in motion the forces of envy, greed, and malice. As the hysteria spreads, the townspeople turn on one another, profiting from their neighbors’ misfortunes, wreaking vengeance for real or imagined grievances, substituting spite and fear for love and trust.”

It bothers me that so many allegedly religious and moral people would get caught up in such an unethical situation, as liars, as accusers, and as advantage takers. Do you have any thoughts on this? Are we creating a society now that has even fewer moral restrictions and therefore could turn volatile? Or is the moral restriction part of the problem?

TOPIC 3: “Witch Hunts and Homogeneity”

“The court, an extension of the governing theocracy, was meant to ensure stability and social order. It is tragically ironic that as the court grows in power, the community disintegrates. Crops rot in the fields, cows bellow for want of milking, and abandoned children beg in the streets. Having fled England to escape intolerance and persecution, the Puritans establish a community so narrow and closed that deviation from the norm is regarded as sinful and dissent as diabolic. As “The Crucible” so forcefully dramatizes, such a community must implode. Narrow minds cannot be allowed to prevail over the Proctors and Nurses of this world, who are condemned for their generosity of spirit.”

(Homogeneity n 1: the quality of being similar or comparable in kind or nature) Again, I think we see in the McCarthy Anti-American trials and in the Salem Witch Hunt a need by the community at large which is mostly homogeneous to take it one step farther. To push all radicalism, difference, and unusual people out of the society. But John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse where members in good standing in the community. Is it perhaps their goodness, their being “better” than everyone else in some way that makes them different and therefore targets? Any thoughts?

TOPIC 4: “Ethics, Ethics, Ethics”

“John Proctor is a reluctant hero. He knows that the court has been deceived by Abigail’s seeming virtue. He hesitates to expose the fraudulent proceedings, however; to do so means he must reveal his adulterous affair. When he finally bares his heart to the court, his confession is in vain. Unable to believe that he has been deceived, Deputy Governor Danforth sends for Elizabeth Proctor to discover if she supports Proctor’s charge. She knows that Proctor is a proud man who values his good name, so she denies her, knowledge of the affair, unaware that in telling her first lie she will condemn Proctor as a perjurer. It is at this point that John Proctor breaks with the community, damming the court’s proceedings and all the hypocrites associated with it, not unaware that he is including himself within the compass of his curse.”

IF Proctor had come to the court immediately after speaking with Abigail could it all have been prevented?
IF Proctor had come to the court after things had gotten under way and told them about his affair with Abigail and what she told him about what happened in the woods, could more deaths have been prevented?
IF Elizabeth had told the truth about the affair could more deaths have been prevented?
IF One judge had taken a clear stand against the lead judge?
IF One girl had held firm?
So many ethical/moral forms were broken by so many of the people.
How important are personal ethics to us as Pagans and/or Wiccans? How do you feel about the rede?
What do you think you would do in Proctors situation?
What if you were called upon now as a witness?

TOPIC 5: “Tragedy”

“Faced with hanging, Proctor protests to Elizabeth that for him to “mount the gibbet like a saint” is a pretense. Sainthood is for the likes of Rebecca Nurse, not John Proctor. Yet Proctor refuses to let the court keep his signed confession, for it is hard evidence of a lie. Like his predecessors, Oedipus and Hamlet, Proctor insists on the truth even if it means his destruction. Rather than sanctify his name on the altar of duplicity, he becomes a martyr for truth, and in doing so preserves the sanctity of individual freedom.”

The tragedy of this just gets in my way for topics. Is your name worth dying for? Is your religion? Is anything?

TOPIC 6: “It Can Happen to Anyone”

“In “All my Sons” (1947) and “Death of a Salesman” (1949), Arthur Miller explored the erosion of family structure in the wake of materialism, and audiences were moved to compassion. In “The Crucible,” his exploration of the destruction of freedom by an ignorant and despotic society moved many viewers to anger. The themes were too close to home, and for Miller, ironically prophetic. In 1956, summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Arthur Miller was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to name names.”

Not only can anyone become a victim, but anyone can be called upon to victimize others. Has anyone been put into a similar situation? What about divorces and child custody cases?

All quoted material comes from: Masterplots, Revised Second Edition, Salem Press: Pasadena CA 1996, vol 3 pages 1410-1413

You Might Be Giving Pagans A Bad Name If

Fall Leaves

Here’s a bit of a quiz.

Score one point for each question unless otherwise indicated

* You insist that your boss call you “Rowan Starchild” because otherwise you’d sue for religious harrassment.
(Score double for this if you don’t let that patronizing bastard call you “Mr. or Ms. Starchild.”)

* You’ve ever confused the Prime Directive with the Wiccan Rede.

* You’ve ever cast a spell with twenty-sided dice.

* You said it was bigotry when they didn’t let you do that ritual in front of city hall. It had nothing to do with the skyclad bit.

* You picketed The Craft and Hocus Pocus, but thought that the losers who picketed The Last Temptation of Christ needed to Get Lives.

* You’ve ever publicly claimed to be an elf, alien, vampire, faerie, or demigod, and been genuinely surprised when not everyone took you seriously.

* You’ve ever publically claimed to be the reincarnation of Gardner, Merlin, Aleister Crowley, King Arthur, Cleopatra, Morgana Le Fay, or Jim Henson, and been genuinely surprised when not everyone took you seriously.

* You’ve suddenly realised in the middle of a ritual that you weren’t playing D&D.

* You’ve failed to realise at any point in the ritual that you weren’t playing D&D.

* You’ve suddenly realised that you ARE playing D&D.

* Your Book of Shadows is a rulebook for Vampire: The Masquerade with notes in the margins.

* You’ve ever affected an Irish or Scottish accent and insisted that it was real.

* You talk to your invisible guardians in public.
(Score double if you save places for them in crowded restaurants)
(Score triple if you admit to having sex with them)

* You’ve ever claimed to have met the Vampire Lestat or Dracula.
(Score double if you got into a fight and escaped)
(Score triple if it was no contest)

* You own a ceremonial bong.

* You’ve ever tried something you saw on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.

* You’ve ever had to go along with someone’s ludicrous story because it was twice as likely to be true than most of the crap you spout.

* You expect your employer to exempt you from the random drug testing because of your religion.

* You’ve won an argument by referencing Drawing Down the Moon, knowing damn good and well they haven’t read it either.

* You’ve ever referenced the Great Rite in a pick-up line.

* Someone has had to point out to you that you do not enter a circle “in perfect love and perfect lust.”
(Score double if you argued the point.)

* You claim to be a famtrad (hereditary), but you’re not.
(Score double if you had to tell people you were adopted to pull this off.)

* You claim to be a descendant of one of the original Salem Witches.
(Score to a lethal degree if you don’t get this one.)

* Someone once lost their boat delivering your ritual incense from Mexico.

* You’ve ever used tongue delivering the fivefold kiss.
(Score double if you did it more than once.)

* You’ve ever used reincarnation as the intro for a pick-up line.
(You may deduct this point if it worked.)

* You think it’s perfectly reasonable to insist that, since every tradition is different, and no one tradition is right, there’s no reason not to do things your way.

* You request Samhain, Beltaine, and Yule off and then bitch about working Christmas.

* The thing that drew you to the Craft was the potential to dance with naked members of the opposite sex.

* You strip in a club like the one in Porky’s under your craft name, and consider it highly appropriate.

* You’ve ever been psychically attacked by someone who conveniently held a coven position you crave, and suddenly had a glimpse into their mind so you could see how evil they were.

* You’ve ever achieved position or influence in a coven by sleeping with half of it.

* You claim yourself as a witch because of how early you were trained by the wise and powerful such-and-such. Of whom nobody has heard.

* You complain about how much the Native Americans copied from Eclectic Wiccan Rites.

* You’re not a hereditary witch but you have a good disposition to it because your ancestors (the ones before your german parents) were Native American or Irish.

* You don’t know the difference between Irish and Scottish, and you alternately claim to be either.

* You think it’s your Pagan Duty to support the IRA, not because of any political beliefs you might share, but because, damnit, they’re IRISH.

* You think the number of Wiccan books you own is far more important than the number you have read, regardless of the fact that most of your booksare for beginners.

* You hang out with people who each match at least fifteen of these traits.

* You recognize many of these traits in yourself, but this test isn’t about you. But, boy, it’s right about those other folks.

The higher the score, of course, the greater the likelyhood that…

You Might Be Giving Pagans A Bad Name