Madi McLaud facts vs entertainment

Facts vs. Entertainment

Madison McLaud

2^nd hour

            Love can drive you crazy but how crazy? Abigail Williams was head over heels for John Proctor but how real could this statement be? Witches bewitching you, dancing around the fire casting spell for young love to thrive but instead it causes more panic than a small town can handle. The Crucible a film about the Salem Witch Trials with more drama than you can handle switching up the facts for the story we want to hear about love and witches. Even though they have switched up the story with more elaborated details the movie was able to show a lot of symbols as having things shown in groups of threes. Overall to address what is real or fake does take more than just some time spent watching a film written about a historical event because clearly not everything is true.

Movies that are based on true events in history or movies based off of books tend to have a little more dramatic changes or exaggeration; this gives a little more spice or understanding to the film. In the movie The Crucible they had really altered the character Abigail Williams from who she was in real life, for example she is only an eleven year old girl but to add a little more drama to the movie they made her a seventeen year old girl.  The director could have changed her age in the film due to the fact she was known to have an affair with John Proctor who she was currently was working for but was kicked out of the house by Johns wife Elizabeth when she began to grow paranoid. Although in reality Abigail was never their maid it was always Mary, they would make this change because it’s interesting and much disapproved in those times for an affair and still today affairs are very frowned upon. Abigail was always known to talk about the devil lustfully but in the film she talks to John lustfully which also gets you wondering how much change is really thought into.

            There are plenty of stereotypes towards witches such as a cauldron, toads, and dancing around fires all of this was portrayed into the movie to better connect to the viewers because it’s what we know. Even though the play doesn’t mention this instead of Tituba conducting the dance to charm the girls she does this in the kitchen and they don’t dance to try to get their “lovers” to fall for them she reads their palms so the young girls will find out who they are going to marry because what girl wouldn’t want to know all such truth to their future. The movie starts off with the  girls giving Tituba items like herbs and other offerings and asking for spells for their ‘”lovers” to fall for them as I once said before, the girls get caught dancing and they all turned it onto Tituba saying she made them do such things because they figured she was a very easy target because she is a slave from another country, but we’re able to believe that there is a bigger picture because even though Abigail is to be seventeen they have her character playing such a childish role accusing those who are innocent to protect herself which is a very childish thing to do but also very stereotypical in teens. Kids will do everything possible so they can to avoid getting in trouble or they will use it for getting what they wanted.

            We are always just assuming that when movies are based upon real historical events that they completely accurate, but in most cases they are not. As we really look into the articles and more research we had found that may of this movie was altered to spice it up and make it more interesting for the audience. Like in the movie Pocahontas John Smith was rumored to have a romance with Pocahontas but she was only a at the age of ten to twelve and with John Smith as a grown man this would have been very messed up, just as shown in The Crucible with Abigail and John  the age different was huge. Furthermore we have the understanding of many films trying to blow out the love stories to spice up the drama but little do we know make accurate films not so accurate anymore. Even they will change facts into more relatable situations like the do with the dancing around the fire because witches are known to woods, fire, toads, and dancing really gets more connection to who is watching the film but it is also untrue. In conclusion to all the facts and switching around details it really does get the message out there about the trials  and the time period and what it was like back in the past.