The Salem Witch incident is adapted from the true historical record of Massachusetts in 1692. In Salem, where religion controls everything, strict rules and strict rules, women and children are not allowed to speak up, and even entertainment is forbidden, a few little girls have the right to speak for the first time because they identify the devil. They continue to complain, and more and more people are taken to religious courts, either plead guilty or hanged. When justice finally arrived, nineteen people had been hanged for refusing to violate their conscience. It was not until 1957 that the charges of these people were overturned and the law began to be perfected.
Westerners regard this drama as a metaphor for McCarthyism, alluding to the persecution of the masses by the US government in the name of arresting communists during the red panic period. I don't know much about it, but I know the Cultural Revolution.
Seeing ordinary people being pushed onto the gallows in the movie, what appeared before my eyes was China in the 1960s. In the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, nearly 2 million people were tortured to death, and those who survived by chance but experienced this long torture... My heart hurts, it hurts.
Just like Salem in the movie, when turmoil comes, everyone in the entire country cannot escape. Those who were in the 1960s cannot erase the fact that in this frenzy, we are either murderers or victims.
My grandfather, when he was young, was a drama actor in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution, he was labelled as a capitalist roader, and he was transferred to the northeastern countryside, my hometown: Jiangqiao Town. For the next thirty years, he dared not do anything except farm work, and he dared not say anything except Chairman Mao's quotations. He is in the black five category, so when my father was born, in order for him to live a good life, grandpa had to give his son to the poor peasants. No one can imagine how much suffering such a family would have to go through before it can get back on track. The impact of the Cultural Revolution on every Chinese is deeply rooted.
So we need a story like this. It can't entertain the public, but it can break through the darkest corners of human nature, so that we won't repeat the same mistakes. The story of Salem repeats itself over and over again today. People are persecuting others unscrupulously for their own sake, violently and madly for bloodshed. The Turkish girl in my class was fidgeting at dinner today, checking over and over the news about Turkish militants controlling the government. She is so worried, so scared, but can't do anything. Yesterday, Nice, France was attacked. In the video, people asked "Qu'est-ce qui se passe?" again and again, "What's wrong? What happened?", but they were powerless to change everything.
I am not a saint, and I often make selfish decisions. I don't believe that human nature is good, but I hope that in every game between morality and selfish desire, conscience can prevail. History has been written, but the future can change. Maybe God is dead, but human nature will not be extinct.
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