Charlie Chaplin and the Communist Party

Charlie Chapman was a popular movie-writer and actor who first became famous in 1915. His specialty was comedies and social commentaries. He was really popular in the United States until 1940, when he made a film called "The Great Dictator" that ended with a call for Americans to rally against Hitler and the Nazis. America, at the time, was strongly anti-war, so Chapman already had points counting against him there.

The thing that really condemned him was his later full-fledged supported the Soviet Union; 1942 articles written by columnist Westbrook Pegler accused Chapman of being a Communist sympathizer and, what was worse for his reputation, an immoral womanizer. The second count actually did the most damage to his reputation in the eyes of most Americans. He was eventually accused of all sorts of crimes of both illegal and immoral nature--fathering a child of an unmarried woman; owning white slaves; and, of course, being a Communist. He was innocent of all of these despite his pro-Soviet leanings (he was not a member of the Communist Party but was never allowed to testify on his own behalf when he was taken to court about it), and he eventually ended up leaving the country to live in Switzerland by 1953 to escape the intense political persecution.

To be honest, the things that most strike me about this article are the similarities between the political journalists (Pegler, as mentioned above, but also a "Hollywood columnis[t]" named Hedda Hopper) and the fictional journalist Rita Skeeter from the Harry Potter series. In the books, Skeeter was a clear villain--a journalist whose main goal it was to go after any and all scandals, regardless of their truth, as long as they sold newspapers. She was (as her name suggests) like a mosquito or a leech--sucking the juicy rumors out of the truth and publishing them for her own means. Pegler and Hopper may not have been villains, but journalists who are in business for the money and drama of stories, instead of for the truth, are like villains to their victims. Reading this article made me think more about the bias of the media and whether they should publish personal things about celebrities, as they make a habit of doing. I've heard that "the people have a right to know," but do they really? So what if Chapman really was a Communist sympathizer? He did have influence over American media, but by persecuting him as the legal authorities did, the American right of free speech was violated. That moral compromise probably did more harm for the nation than Chapman would ever have done.

Source: "What Made Charlie Run?" Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1989. By Stephen M. Weissman, MD. http://www1.american.edu/academic.depts/soc/run.html

The Crucible Act I Reflection

I like this play, The Crucible, so far from what we've read about it. The Salem witch trials have always frightened me, but this is giving us a chance to look at the individual members' psychology in addition to seeing the acts of Salem as a whole. In particular, I wonder about the mentality of the little girls who claim to have seen the witches. In modern-day interrogations, it has been shown that children can be highly suggestible when giving testimony.

Contemporary "witchhunts" take the form of accusations of things like child molesting, which (like witchcraft in Salem) often has little evidence outside of witness accounts. Psychologists who press children for testimony with leading questions like "Did so-and-so do THIS to you?" tend to result in the mental phenomenon known as false memories--a child wants to please the questioner and thus convinces him/herself that whatever he/she is being asked about really did happen. When pressed for details, the child will search his/her mind until they "remember" things that in actuality did not happen. Once he/she have said that it is true, though, the child stands by his/her decision (for the child does not want to believe him/herself a liar) even in court. And who would disbelieve the testimony of an innocent child who has even convinced him/herself that what he/she is saying is true? In this way, guiltless adults can be convicted of unfathomably terrible crimes that they under no circumstances would commit.

I believe that this is what was happening to many of the child witnesses in Salem, at least in the play.

Another person involved whom I am interested in is Tituba. She comes under fire from all sides but is shown a way out through accusing other people. I don't think we can justifiably blame her, at least in the way we would blame an evil villain in a story. Her motives are sympathetic at least--she's a victim who's scared out of her mind and says whatever she can to keep herself away from the noose of Salem's "justice." Of course what she did was wrong, but she didn't have a lot of time to think about what she was doing--she reacted in the middle of a swirl of terror and panic. Once again the idea of leading questions comes into play--the people she eventually accused were the ones her interrogators suggested for her.

All in all, I think that the play so far is very interesting in terms of mob psychology (as discussed in class) as well as that of the individuals involved.

As I walk in a pitch-black Night

(A poem--written in the Puritan style of Anne Bradstreet.)

The eve tonight is cold and dark
The only thing that bids me hark
Are crickets singing in the grass
As if lamenting, "Ah, alas--
"The sun is gone, the night to stay
"'Til dawn shall break another day."

No moon lights up the cloudy sky
No twinkling stars to nav'gate by
I see no path beneath my feet
And so I wander off the street
Until my neighbor's light I spy
And find my way with now-keen eye

The neighbors ours, they walk alone
No stepping-path to them is shown
It is our duty and our joy
To those in the world's grim employ
To show them truth and light their way
'Til their dark night turn into day.