Friday, February 11, 2005

Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

The world has truly lost a legend.

3 Comments:

At 9:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can not take credit for the following, it was written by Jamie Weinman on his blog, but it is my favorite comment about Miller ever:

Unfortunately the only Cold War-era attack on McCarthyism that most people are familiar with is Arthur Miller's dreary The Crucible, whose theme, so far as I can make it out, is that there were never any real witches and therefore there were never any real Communists either. Maybe the local Wiccan organization will sue Miller for denying their existence.... By the way, speaking of The Crucible: you know how people sometimes wonder why college students are more right-wing than they used to be? I blame the practice of teaching The Crucible in high school. Teenagers suffer through that play, along with a mess of commentary about how in the '50s there was a dark and evil conspiracy to hunt Communists, yada yada. Then they get to college, start reading on their own, and discover that Communism was evil, the Rosenbergs were guilty, etc. Then they're so disillusioned with everything their teachers told them that they go overboard and start campaigning for a flat tax and wearing business suits with little U.S. flags on the lapel. So if there are any teachers reading: if you don't want your students growing up to be Republicans, I beg of you, don't teach The Crucible. You'll thank me later.

 
At 9:25 AM, Blogger Esther said...

Interesting take. Personally, I don't find college kids to be remotely right wing. Everything I'm hearing/reading shows them to be flamingly left-wing, anti-Israel and anti-American, probably because their professors are the same. But perhaps you're onto something with blaming The Crucible. ;) Seriously, where are you finding the right-wing ones? It'd be cool to have an alternative to the Duke, Columbia, Rutgers and Berekelys.

 
At 3:19 PM, Blogger Esther said...

Yep, Marty (and thanks for the links/info). My friend's daughter was one of the young girls in that film, and I remember hearing stuff about that. Also, the role of Daniel Day Lewis's wife was supposed to be played by Emma Thompson. If she and Ken ended up divorcing (which of course they did), she was going to pull out to handle that. She did and the role went to Joan Allen.

 

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