The Cold War
Following World War II, the U.S. government was not relaxed about national security. Although the continental United States had escaped invasion and air attacks throughout the war, the fear remained. In the years after World War II, there were bomb-shelter manias, air raid drills, and instructional films on how to "duck and cover" and how to scrub well under your fingernails if you happened to be in a fallout area. Grade school children in the 1950s learned to tell the difference between the fire alarm and the air raid alarm. Special drills were practiced where children were marched to the basement of the school with their coats and instructed to lie on the floor—on the left side, to protect your heart—alternating boy/girl. This last was supposed to protect us girls by having a strong male nearby. Or maybe it was so that if half the building was bombed there wouldn't be only girls or only boys dying.2
Without a group to intern during this time, fanatics went on a hunt to ferret out Communists. This was a huge fear in post-war America. The idea lurked everywhere that the "Reds" were coming to destroy our way of life. To this end, Senator Joseph McCarthy made it his personal mission to identify each and every Communist and Communist sympathizer within his reach. He extended his reach through intimidation, forcing people to "name names," ultimately jeopardizing the careers and freedom of many Americans. The more prominent of these were people in the entertainment industry. Once a person had been "named" he was blacklisted and could not work—at least under his own name. Hollywood writers made it through this time by hiring "fronts" or other writers to submit scripts under their names.
This is an embarrassing chapter in American history. Once again, motivated by fear, peoples' baser instincts overtook reason and what is right. One person who zeroed in on this was playwright Arthur Miller. His drama, The Crucible, utilized the Salem witch trials of the 1600s to illustrate how hysteria can lead to disastrous results. Published in 1952, the play soon found its way to Broadway in the 1953 season where it enjoyed box office and critical success despite losing out in comparison to Miller's previous Death of a Salesman. It was no secret at the time that Miller targeted McCarthy but critics upheld the play's integrity as a self-contained work that highlighted the witch trials in American history.3
In his eighties, Miller adapted his play for the screen. The major adjustment to the action was the playing out of the dancing in the woods. In the stage version this is past action reported by Abigail and others. The film offered an irresistible opportunity to show the event as the inciting incident. Performances by Winona Ryder and Daniel Day-Lewis drive this film, but, not surprisingly, it was not as well received as the play. Critics note the distance between the McCarthy Era and today's society as the reason. If this is true then the play's power as integrated drama does not bear out. However, in the light of this new Terrorist Age, the American public, and definitely the students, should once again be reminded of the terrible price of profiling, whether it is racial, ethnic, or any other arbitrary classification one can discern or invent.
America in the 21st Century
Today's students remember 9/11. The threat of terrorism is ever-present as an open-ended war with no declaration of war or any specific country to attack. These conditions make everyday situations seem threatening. Every day, students at my high school must pass through a metal detector and are monitored in the hallways by cameras. At airports, not only are our bags checked, we must submit to removing jackets and shoes. What will happen in the future on security matters and how important is this specifically to today's students and their ability to enjoy the liberty so hard won by their forebears? Many students will not have thought much about their civil liberties before, and even those that have will be thinking about them in a more personal way at the end of the unit.
Comments: