What you don't know won't hurt you, what you don't show will kill you

This past holiday weekend I spent 2 hours watching one of the best animated feature films of all time, Beauty and the Beast. I've loved this movie for my whole life but after reading The Crucible, I saw one specific scene in a new light. When Belle returns from the Beast's castle to help her ailing father, a mob comes to their house to take her father to the "Asylum de Loons". Belle, trying to save her father, shows the mob the Beast on her magic mirror. When they see it they are immediately frightened and begin to head towards the beasts castle in attempts to loot and destroy the castle and all it's inhabitants, including the beast. As they head towards the castle the mob sings "if you're not with us you're against us". This lyric is almost an exact quote from Danforth in The Crucible where he says ""A person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between"(87). It puts people into a black and white catergory and polarizes those on the outside of the mob, like Belle and her Father. It also shows the closemindedness of a mob mentality, that if you don't agree with everything they mob believes, you're on the outside and theres something wrong with you because you don't fit in. Its interesting to see how so many people can get swept up in one mindset and how it snowballs into what happened in The Crucible with the hangings of "witches" and "wizards" and in Beauty and The Beast with the storming of the castle (but because it's Disney, everyone lived happily ever after).


PS- The title of this post are the lyrics from the Butch Walker song If (Jeannie's Song) off his album Left of Self-Centered. His website is on my "People Worth Following" tab, check him out.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret Messages

Friday night I stood in line for 3 hours to see the 7:30 showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. These books were my childhood, me and my friends from 1st grade until 3rd grade pretended we were characters from Harry Potter every day during recess. So, I was clearly beyond excited (ask Emma, I was jumping up and down for a solid hour in line). When the movie finally started, I was struck by something. If you aren't familiar with the story line of the 7th book here's the Reader's Digest version. Harry and his friends are trying to fight the resurgent Death Eaters under the command of Lord Voldemort. The Death Eaters are attempting to kill all "muggles" (non-magic folk) and mixed blood wizards and witches. When first reading these stories, I thought of it as an allusion to the social order in England, where J.K. Rowling calls home. But while watching the movie, I saw something much more sinister at play.
In the scene where Harry, Ron, and Hermione use a polyjuice potion to pretend to be ministry workers when Harry is trying to sneak into Dolores Umbridge's office to find the horcrux Harry's Godfather's brother used to have. Outside her office sat hundreds of people (presumed mixed bloods) printing out propaganda that was pro pure blood wizards and witches. When I saw this I got chills. The propaganda they were spreading was almost the same sent out by the Nazi's in WWII against the Jews and for the Nazis. I realized the entire Second Wizarding War is a complete allusion to WWII and the Death Eaters and Voldemort are the Nazis while the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter are the U.S. and England.
This really threw me because I really had never seen it like that until now. Critical thinking I suppose, but my childhood book and life came into reality and I was definitely thrown for a loop. It's very interesting to see what movies and books you liked when you were a kid might be hinting to or about subliminally.

Parallels and Contrasts (sadly only one not three)

I was at a loss for what to post about today. I have spent the past few days off disconnected from reality really, I've hung with friends and watched Blue's Clues (See previous post) and thats about it, so I went to NPR and tried to find something current to talk about. I reach the main page and BAM! I am hit in the face with the most provocative header:

Out Of The Closet ... In The Pulpit Of A Megachurch

When I think of a Megachurch in the South my mind goes straight to what I saw in the movie Jesus Camp, a large community of people with the same, very conservative values. I also think about the Assembly of God church services I see on GMC on sunday mornings; a very passionate preacher who engages a very large audience with sometimes offensive statements about gay rights, other religions and faiths, and even hurricanes (see here for statements made by John Hagee, John McCain's pastor). So when I saw and subsequently read this article about Bishop Swelley coming out of the closet, I was shocked. He was very brave to come out in his position in his Church, but I got to thinking, where is the line between religion and your life? Personally, I am not a very religious person, so maybe this question could simply just come out of not having a certain religious text I believe in. Even though the Bible teaches that homosexuality is wrong (prime example being Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorra), Swelley was brave enough to come out of the closet and be open and honest with his church and maybe even change some minds about homosexuality. Swelley, like many others including myself, believes that homosexuals are born with their sexual orientation and that it is not a choice, contrasting with the views of many of his followers. This man has devoted his life to the words of the Bible, but disagrees with some of them because he knows he did not pick this life for himself. Where then, does he he draw the line between the bible and his life? If now he believes that the Bible is not always correct, where will he know where to follow the words of God and where he can stray from the path laid for him because he knows it is not right for him? Personally, I wouldn't quite know what to do. I guess you just gotta have faith.

These are a few of my favorite things

I got home from my athletic training meeting today and was at a complete loss as to what to do. I caught up on my most recent recorded episodes of my favorite shows (glee and gilmore girls), talked with my sister, and was about to get started on some homework so I could have the whole 4 days off to do what I please when I came across my old favorite tv show on my channel guide.



This show got me thinking about my other favorite things from when I was growing up, like the little disney figurines I played with, my legos, and my rock tumbler (yeah I was a cool kid). I thought of my old shows like Dinosaurs (best show ever by the way), Sesame Street, the Wonder Years (not exactly from the time I grew up but I watched it all the time when I was little), and Happy Days (again, from a while ago but I was a huge Fonz fan).

Anywho, this got me thinking about what kids growing up in the Massachusetts Bay Colony looked back on as their favorite things from their childhood. In class we looked at what was used to teach their ABC's, a very religiously biased alphabet story board type of thing. Personally, besides my parents and teachers using books, I learned my ABC's from Elmo which always gives me a warm fuzzy (and slightly red) feeling inside to have something cute to look back on while writing a paper... or a blog post. But what did these kids have to look back on? Personally, I don't get a warm fuzzy feeling from a strict schooling and a structured childhood. It really interesting to think about how differently everyone's childhood is. I was reading a site on children from around the world and seeing how each child celebrates holidays and spends their time. All the kids celebrate so many different things and each of their societies has different values but they all love playing ball and hanging out with their friends. I guess that no matter where children come from, they still enjoy the same things, if they're from the 1600's (i'm a 1790's girl myself ;]), the 90's, or from a small village in Kenya. Kids will be kids.

What do we really see

The Crucible is all about hysteria and false accusations, rumors and perception. I feel like it is a lot like high school. We all are guilty of gossiping, even unintentionally. We all make assumptions about people by how they dress and act in the hallways. We judge them on what rumors we hear about them from the past weekend at that one crazy party or who they're friends with. But are we all Mr. Putnam's at heart? 

I feel like sometimes, no matter who we try to be, a star athlete or a philanthropist, a leader or invisible, we can't help but make assumptions and judge people. We judge them based on the small part of them we see and take that as who they truly are. But in The Crucible where does this get the characters? Does it advance Mr. Putnam in his society to make assumptions, does it make him a better person? Does it make us any better to judge our peers based on their actions? I am as guilty of judging people as anyone, but I really don't know where it gets us. Maybe we just want to feel superior, maybe we don't want to be judge ourselves so we try and draw people's attention to others like Mr. Putnam, or maybe we just like putting people into categories, to keep our lives organized. Maybe its a smattering of all of those, I don't know. But what I do know is that when we spread our judgements, we could be starting our own witch hunts.