House Un-American Activities Committee

Two major events in Hollywood history altered the direction of the filmmaking business in America. These events were known as the Paramount decision and the Hollywood Blacklist. Both had a significant impact on not only the way movies were produced, distributed and exhibited, but also affected people directly, such as screenwriters, actors, directors and musicians as well. In both cases, laws were being broken, and the rights of individuals were being violated. The shift in direction came…

“If we are to claim and win our rightful place in the sun on an equal basis with men, then we must not insist upon these privileges and prerogatives identified in the past as exclusively feminine.” (SMITH, Margaret Chase | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives) Margaret Chase Smith believed in equal rights between men and women. However she did not want her gender to get her into a higher position. She was a political role model for women all over the world. She was not afraid to…

The actions taken by the United States for alleged protection from communism were far too extreme for the circumstances and challenged the values of democracy. The overall fear of communism within the United States began in 1919, where which Americans…

McCarthyism and The Crucible In 1952, Arthur Miller published his play, The Crucible, which follows the real events of the Salem witch trials, three hundred years earlier. During the time that Miller wrote the play, America was in a period of fear. The Cold War had just begun and citizens of the United States were terrified of communism. Senator Joseph McCarthy didn’t help with the turmoil when he claimed that he had 205 names of people in the country who were a part of the Communist Party.…

Mob Hysteria is defined as the heightened and extreme emotions that can be experienced by people in a large crowd. There have been many outbreaks of Mob Hysteria in history. For example, just recently, the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri created mob hysteria that spread like a wildfire throughout the city. Blacks in the city became scared and angry; they started riots, burned buildings, and vandalized. The Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy Era are two more instances of Mob…

produced by Arthur Miller in 1953, which is about a witch hunt that took place in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, but Arthur Miller talks more about McCarthyism and Communism in 1950s in this play by founding many parallels between the House Un-American Activities Committee”s crusade against supposed communist sympathizers and the seventeenth- century witch-hunt in Salem, Massachusetts. So in fact, although The Crucible is a play about the Salem Trail, it is more about McCarthyism. And because of…

“When Miller was summoned before Senator McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, he, contrary to Kazan, did not name any names. His experience led him to write his play about the Salem witch trials, … He considers that the play is still of alarming relevance, speaking directly about religious fanaticism… What happened in Salem in 1692 should be seen in the context of the puritan dream of recovering a lost paradise, even if in an austere and vain way. The devil appears precisely in…

many people were questioned on Communist activity, and would be kept under the watch of the government. This is just like the situation…

Colonel Cathcart says of the name Yossarian, “It was an odious, alien, distasteful name, a name that just did not inspire confidence. It was not at all like such clean, crisp, honest, American names as Cathcart, Peckem, and Dreedle” (Heller 210). This notion that something such as a name could be American or “Un-American” is likely a nod to HUAC. Joseph Heller was influenced very clearly by McCarthyism and the Cold War while writing…

top “competitors” for this race was the Soviet Union, or the U.S.S.R. The American government feared a nuclear war with another nation right after a world war, so the government had the House Un-American Activities Committee watch and monitor suspected communists sympathizers and spies. This is one of the many characteristics developed by the U.S. concerning extreme political movements. The groups that most affected American society include communists, neo-Nazis, and Jews. Communism is the…