©2005 UrbisMedia
Arthur Miller died the day before Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Is coincidence alone any reason for reflection on the lives of these two men? There’s the physical resemblance: both tall, big-boned, craggy-featured, un-handsome men. It’s a bit of a stretch to say that they were both, in their respective ways, concerned with the human condition and human freedom. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation remains a work in progress not only in America, but in many other nations, and Miller’s most renowned plays, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible , continue to be among the most universally-staged plays in the world.
Miller is back in the news, as a personality of moment, because of his death, after a long and illustrious career in letters, and, of course, because he was once also the husband of Marilyn Monroe. In some sense, an era seems to have passed, with the last of the triumvirs of the American stage, with O’Neill and Williams, now passed on. Yet his major plays seem more relevant than ever to the American condition. Willy Lohman, the self-deluded, insecure salesman seems ubiquitous in American society these days; in the deceived investors in stocks and pensions by corporate robbers and raiders, in the laid off manufacturing workers from outsourced jobs, and now the impending destruction of the Social Security system and other aspects of the social safety net. Lohman embraced the American Dream of success and wealth, but it eluded him. His tragedy is reflected everywhere in those Americans who voted for the rhetoric of a hollow promises wrapped in “absolute” values.
Likewise, The Crucible might well be regarded as a cautionary tale for America’s post-911 paranoia. A poignant reminder that this country was founded by people who gave us the term “puritanical,” who after escaping religious persecution in Europe, proceeded to engage in witch hunts, kangaroo trials, and summary executions of their own people in a campaign of collective madness that has a disturbing resonance in the Patriot Act and our summary detentions and sometimes brutal interrogation practices, both in Iraq and at home. Much as it was in the 17 th Century it is power-hungry clerics who help fan the frenzy of fears of the “foreign devils” claimed to be murderously bent on destroying our sacrosanct way of life and moral values. Miller himself came under scrutiny by our most recent witch hunt, the HUAC hearings of the later 1940s at which he steadfastly refused to “name names.”
Lincoln, too, has become the focus of one dimension of the prevailing paranoia afflicting America. On the occasion of his birthday there has emerged a minor media crusade to “out” the great emancipator as a homosexual. Born of the “terror” that homosexuals are accused of committing to the sacred institution of the union between a man and a woman (and the 50 percent dissolution of the same), “Honest Abe,” whose own marriage was a troubled one, apparently often shared his bed with a male friend. That, for our prevailing witch hunters and protectors of red state moral values, is good enough to put him right between the likes of Tinkie Winkie and Sponge Bob, those evil purveyors of gay prurience.
Of course, as far as Miller is concerned, you can’t get much better “straight” credentials than Marilyn Monroe.
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.12.2005)