Places and forms of power

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I’m going to talk about the notion “Places and forms of power”. The power is the ability to control others, events, or resources; the ability to make things happen despite obstacles, resistance, or opposition. This of course leads to conflict between those who have power and those who don’t. How evolved the fear of the power in the time ? First we’ll see the religious power with witchcraft and then the political power in the United States.

In the Middle Ages, there was no separation between the Church and the government, so the Clergy was in charge of everything related to children’s education and medicine, however, in Salem in Massachusetts, women tried to cure people with other treatments than the official one. That’s why in the seventeenth century, the puritans who had very strict moral codes, called these women, “witches” and they were accused of witchcraft and were hunted, judge and usually sentenced to death. According to an image found in the movie “The Crucible”, by Nicholas Hytner in 1996; people are pointing at a scared women, i think they may accuse her of being under the influence of Satan. She must be one of the women who were accused of being witches during the Salem witch trials. During those witch trials the witnesses were urged to give the names of other suspects out of fear that their names would be further maligned. The camera angle used in this picture is a high-angle shot, we have the impression that we are looking down on the woman, i believe that the photographer did this to give the point of view of the judges who have power and  were always looking down on these women. All which is not of the religious education and the Bible is forbidden, that is why these women are considered enemies of god.

Then, during the period of prosperity of the USA in 1950, the American people knew the fear of communism. During the McCarthyism, it's a practice which happened in 1950, where people were accused of some communists act without any evidence. Celebrities have been accused and they were put on a blacklist because they could transmit their ideology through film. In the trailer for “Guilty by Suspicion,” the fictional David Merrill is accused along with others from Hollywood of being a suspected Communist. He is pressured to give the names of others in order to save his own career and possibly his life. The charges against people were groundless, innocent people were wrongly accused, people who testified just gave names, denounced people who were thought to be traitors without concrete evidence. In the comic trip “Guilty by suspicion”, the drawer retraces the American history in a simple way, to understand the most important landmarks of American historical, political, economic or social events. He tries to analyze what influenced the rise of what is called the second red scare, after the world war two, with the notion of the american way of life; but this period was marked by a large defiance towards the Eastern bloc and the 2 superpowers engaged in the Cold war, a non-military conflict. A race for the power began, with the atomic bomb during WW2, the space conquest. So each bloc wanted to surpass the other on scientific, military or technological reasons.

So, the time in history is the most obvious difference between the two events; one took place in the 17th century, the other depicts McCarthyism of the 1950s, well after America’s founding. In both cases the charges against people were groundless, innocent people were wrongly accused; It shows that in these two events, the American people was afraid of the foreigner and what does not correspond to their standards. There is a use of the power which is excessive to protect the idyllic image of their country.