Mc Carthyism Elia Kazan On the Waterfront Yr

Mc. Carthyism, Elia Kazan & On the Waterfront Yr 12 English, 24 th August

Joseph Mc. Carthy

� American politician who served as a Republican U. S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. � Claimed there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. � Granted almost unlimited powers to investigate alleged communist subversion in the government. � Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.

Mc. Carthyism � The practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. � (The 1952 Arthur Miller play The Crucible used the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for Mc. Carthyism, suggesting that the process of Mc. Carthyism-style persecution can occur at any time or place. The play focused on the fact that once accused, a person had little chance of exoneration, given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the courts and the public. Miller later wrote: "The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties. “)

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) � An investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. � The committee's anti-Communist investigations lead to the Hollywood Blacklist. � Blacklisted artists lost their jobs and were ostracised by the entertainment industry, some, like Charlie Chaplin, even fled America. (No direct involvement of Mc. Carthy)

Elia Kazan � Was a member of the American Communist Party in New York, for a year and a half in the 30 s. � Was called on by HUAC to identify Communists from that period under oath. � He initially refused to provide names, but eventually named eight former Group Theatre members who he said had been Communists. � Kazan later explained that he took "only the more tolerable of two alternatives that were either way painful and wrong"

On the Waterfront � "On the Waterfront'' was, among other things, Kazan's justification for his decision to testify before the HUAC. In the film, when a union boss shouts, `You ratted on us, Terry, ' the Brando character shouts back: `I'm standing over here now. I was rattin' on myself all those years. I didn't even know it. ' That reflects what some feel was Kazan's belief that communism was an evil that temporarily seduced him, and had to be opposed. " (Roger Ebert)