Paranoia In The Crucible

Anchor: Good evening to our listeners and welcome back to our popular ‘Great American Literature' here on ABC. A personal favourite of mine, our guest has adapted the 1950’s classic scripted by Arthur Miller, The Crucible, transforming the witch-hunt trials of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 into a visual masterpiece; ladies and gentlemen Sir Nicholas Hytner! Hytner’s film uses Millers script to show relevance between the strong correlations between society and paranoia and how unsubstantiated accusations has placed fear on a pedestal throughout multiple eras.
Anchor: After directing the film, would it be fair to hypothesise that intentions of The Crucible, was allegory between the Salem witch-hunts in 1692 and the communist paranoia of the 1950’s,

The Crucible shows how fear can be manipulated within society to influence certain agendas. Abigail’s unsubstantiated accusations and deceit was utilised to turn Salem’s community against John Proctor’s wife, to rid of the wife of the man she had affection for. Arthur wisely used this character relationship to liken this to his relationship with McCarthy and himself, where those who were honest but did not have the backing of the greater community were wrong done. Judge Danforth and Reverend Parris are characters that are heavily corrupted in order to save their reputation and save face within their society when they realise the falseness of the entire ordeal. This can be compared to many high placed individuals in the workforce who utilise their power in order to cover their blunders in attempt to evade any negative

A major motivation for me to film this piece was that increased fear of technology and how the advancements and current stature of technology in the late 90’s would be affected by the Y2K theory. At this point we saw the manipulation of fear and deceit from media outlets, corruption from companies attempting to scam worried citizens. As a result I felt that I needed to recreate this play into film as it would began the topic of paranoia and how it has been manipulated by lustful corporations. Now in the present day the worlds widespread fear and paranoia has now situated itself against that of the Islamic faith and religion. Due to few abhorrent actions by a radicalised amount of individuals claiming their faith of ‘Islam’ journalists and news anchors found another means of perpetuating irrational fear into every single household. Similar to Abigail group of girls the media’s power has increased marginalising the voice of reason (Proctor’s) within the community! As you can see, through each various scenario of unnecessary fear and paranoia the world faces, there can never not be an Abigail, a Danforth and a Mr. Proctor character