History repeating.The Great Pink Scare * June 6 * PBS PBS in full Public Broadcasting Service Private, nonprofit U.S. corporation of public television stations. PBS provides its member stations, which are supported by public funds and private contributions rather than by commercials, with educational, cultural, On Labor Day Labor Day, holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada on the first Monday in September to honor the laborer. It was inaugurated by the Knights of Labor in 1882 and made a national holiday by the U.S. Congress in 1894. weekend 46 years ago, Massachusetts state troopers arrested Newton Arvin Frederick Newton Arvin (b. 1900 in Valparaiso, Indiana, d. 1963) was a literary critic, historian, and academic. Life and work Frederick Newton Arvin studied English Literature at Harvard and was inspired by Van Wyck Brooks. , a noted professor of American literature at Smith College, along with 14 others, as part of a purported "homosexual smut smut, name for an order of parasitic fungi (Ustilaginales) and the various diseases of plants caused by them. Smuts produce sootlike masses of spores on the host. ring," as newspapers of the era called it. The "smut" in question was a stash stash Drug slang noun A place where illicit drugs are hidden of "physique" magazines that wouldn't raise an eyebrow today. Why such a destructive ruckus was created back then is examined in vivid detail in the new documentary The Great Pink Scare. Through vintage footage and contemporary interviews with Joel Dorius and Ned Spofford, two Smith faculty members who were Arvin's alleged cohorts, filmmakers Tug Yourgrau and Dan Miller bring back those dark days with striking impact. Historians Barry Werth and Martin Duberman also appear in this study of ruined lives and personal betrayal--Arvin (who died in 1963), in an outburst of abject self-loathing, turned on his friends and colleagues. Those who imagine that such a thing can't happen today are advised to study the Patriot Act--and to take a good, long look at themselves in the mirror. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion