"The Crucible" and "Gone, Baby Gone"...

I am in an upcoming local production of Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE and last night after rehearsal I watched the critically acclaimed film GONE, BABY, GONE.

Both touch on good and evil, right and wrong, justice and such like.

What struck me is a seeming underlying theme in both works--intentional or not--that what is right and wrong is what we make it, by appearances, or, perhaps worse, that our struggles to do what is right are ultimately futile.  Futile because what is ajudged right or wrong appears to be ultimately determined by people, flawed, selfish people, who all have their own reasons for favoring this or that side of any moral conflict.

In THE CRUCIBLE, although a great of deal criticism makes much of the power the girls wield by their accusations, ultimately they buckle under the weight of their own cruel enterprise,   They are under so much pressure to conform to the narrative myths that informed their time that eventually they do.  You can see it, in the course of the play.  They in fact take refuge in it, after John Proctor and a few others ultimately end up bearing a great deal of the burden.  Like a virulent flu bug, the blame and shame goes around and around and around again, an ever widening vortex feeding on itself.

In GONE, BABY GONE an elaborate conspiracy unfolds layer after layer after layer so as to strain credulity, but the issue is do we have the right to interfere with the ultimate destiny of other people.  Protagonist Casey Affleck seems to be fairly certain that we do not and remains true to that conviction right to the very end, despite its cost and the responsibility that comes with it.  All that shit he goes through to get the little girl back to her mother and he ends up having to babysit her because mommy has to go back out on another crack run!  Somebody should have told him, she'll get you sick before you'll get her well, but that's where the movie ends.