Entries by Josh Street

The Crucible is being performed by Theatre Charlotte as is being advertised by the local NPR station. The advertisement raises the age old claim of "a timely parable of our contemporary society."

Is there a period in history where this is not true? The fundamental genius of Miller's work is that the themes of scapegoating and social exclusivity are not in fact "once in a generation" themes, but are in fact pretty frigging constant. By way of example, an overview of the last half of the 20th century:

• 50's: Err....do I have to do this one....really? McCarthyism is so cliche!
• 60's: This one is elegant in to be honest. On the one hand, you've got the various hippy aligned movements who were ostracized and promptly struck back through the same concepts! What's that, its not the same because they weren't in power? How ya' figure? If we're dealing with issues of principle, isn't the principle of the thing all that matters?
• 70's: Can you say war veterans? Ostracized and ignored, seems like they became the scapegoats for the actual leaders to me...
• 80's: Homosexuals anyone? Sorry - I don't care what you may believe about the 80's, the hysteria and rhetoric is simple noun substitution from the 50's...
• 90's: There are lots of little McCarthy moments here, but let's pick on the goths, emos and misfits in the 90's - I mean, they were out shooting all their friends, right? Wait...that was just media-fueled hype after one or two tragic incidents?
• 00's: Err...I believe they refer to them as Arab-Americans - but let's face it, most Americans weren't so considerate as to limit their scapegoatting to such a small group - we've cleverly branched out into anyone who isn't white or black (it is refreshing that we can get over hating some differences in order to hate others...)

Admittedly, some of these are weaker than others. That said, I feel relatively confident that you could take any period of time and any given cultural context and come up with the exact same themes.

The point? Let The Crucible remain a brilliant piece of literature that explores the human condition and give up the tired old trite tale of political mob-mentality by the "bad" people.

Had a thought today - I was thinking about a single woman who is adopting her second or third child and I thought - "she works full time, what is the standard of care for these kids???" Now, I realized that was a stupid thought (hey, I'm a recovering pinhead - sue me) - she's well paid and a genuinely nice person, I suspect that those kids will have an incredibly improved life with this woman.

It gets interesting when I started thinking backwards. Why did I have that initial reaction? For some reason, I traced it back to why would someone put a child up for adoption? The old school reaction tends to be "irresponsibility." But hasn't adoption really become a way of helping ensure a better quality of life when parents are unwilling or unable to provide adequate care. In addition, many also see it as a great alternative to abortion or abandonment. But this position really only occurred after abortion and abandonment increased in numbers in the US (or arguably, as they became more public).

Now for the interesting part - can absolutism allow for change? Is it possible that the underlying, core values of an absolutist viewpoint can be maintained in the face of changes in the cultural context and result in an intellectually consistent change of "policy"? Can the responses generated from an absolutist worldview result in a shifting response? Is this another view of the conservative emergent position?