The Night Before Christmas
"Do you think they've wrapped the puppy yet?"
The Witches of Salemville
One day, back in the Dark Ages – I think it was around 1975 – we kids were shown a movie in Social Studies about the witch trials of colonial New England. There was a scene in which the girls making the accusations against their neighbors started acting as if they were choking. As if on cue, sitting in a darkened room of 200 fourth graders, I threw up.
I saw the movie in full some years later, although I am still not sure what it was. It may have been a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), perhaps one of the ones made for television, but I have an inkling that it was something different. It doesn’t really matter. What stuck with me was the feeling that I had watching all those young women – they were actresses, after all – pretending to be attacked by some invisible enemy. And having everyone in the room – both on- and off-screen – believe them.
Fast forward to the summer of 2017. You all know what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. A motley group inclu…
I saw the movie in full some years later, although I am still not sure what it was. It may have been a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), perhaps one of the ones made for television, but I have an inkling that it was something different. It doesn’t really matter. What stuck with me was the feeling that I had watching all those young women – they were actresses, after all – pretending to be attacked by some invisible enemy. And having everyone in the room – both on- and off-screen – believe them.
Fast forward to the summer of 2017. You all know what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. A motley group inclu…
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F.B.