Let’s start this musically: Linda Holmes takes us through The Music Man’s “Ya Got Trouble” to show all the ways this satirical ditty of a grifter drumming up a moral panic still rings true with ways people look to manipulate public opinion about what’s “wrong with kids these days.”
But sometimes the scapegoat isn’t just pool halls or jazz music. Sometimes the finger points to Satan. In an interview, Arthur Miller walks through the thought process that lead him to show parallels of the Red Scare and the House Un-American Activities Committee in The Crucible’s depiction of the Salem witch trials:
If you want to dig a little deeper on this one, Stefani Koorey gives further background about Miller’s interactions with HUAC (and the role Marilyn Monroe may have played).
Alison Stine gives a primer on the 1980s Satanic Panic surrounding Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal, along with how it was used in season 4 of Stranger Things. Aja Romano, Alissa Wilkinson, and Emily St. James discuss their memories of growing up in the Evangelical movement and reading Frank Peretti’s books about a vast Satanic conspiracy. Their conversation connects to modern moral panics, showing Peretti’s books as a kind of ur-text:
When I started reading about QAnon’s rise as a belief system, I instantly saw the same sort of thinking at play — that its believers could save the world from a shadowy and hidden cabal of evil. Even if you didn’t ascribe to something quite as fantastical as that, though, there’s a strain of this thinking in all “us versus them” belief systems: that the real truth of what’s going on in the world has only been revealed to the faithful, and their purpose is to fight the other side.
Much like Harold Hill scheming to convince a town of the necessity of a boys band, unscrupulous actors have found it’s profitable to traffic in fear. Parker Molloy examines the way media narratives shape public perception, and the rhetorical and editing tools that build fear. Amplifying moral panics has the potential to create deadly consequences when those constructed narratives are taken at face value:
Journalists and publishers need to stop acting as though their words don’t affect the world around us. Yes, yes, I know, not all journalists, but there are a bunch of them who don’t seem to care whether or not their obsessions with certain issues (see: the hyper-focus on trans issues) or their rhetorical flourishes (see: “taking matters into his own hands,” “soaring crime,” etc.) affect how the public views certain issues.
Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert studied the relationship between anecdotal evidence of society-wide moral decline and available scientific data, but came to a clear conclusion: There has been a consistent rate of people who believe that moral and ethical behavior are declining for as many years as researchers have asked their opinion about it. From their study:
The illusion of moral decline seems to be a robust phenomenon that may have troubling consequences. For example, in 2015, 76% of US Americans agreed that “addressing the moral breakdown of the country” should be a high priority for their government. The United States faces many well-documented problems, from climate change and terrorism to racial injustice and economic inequality—and yet, most US Americans believe their government should devote scarce resources to reversing an imaginary trend.
Renée DiResta suggests that derailing manufactured moral panics spread through social media requires structural network changes, and looks to group behavior of animals to better understand how these panics spread:
Biology has a word for this undulating dance: “murmuration.” In a murmuration, each bird sees, on average, the seven birds nearest it and adjusts its own behavior in response. If its nearest neighbors move left, the bird usually moves left. If they move right, the bird usually moves right. The bird does not know the flock’s ultimate destination and can make no radical change to the whole. But each of these birds’ small alterations, when occurring in rapid sequence, shift the course of the whole…
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New to Discover in Weekend Read 2
This week there’s a new batch of scripts to read in the Discover tab of Weekend Read 2: Summertime Features! Check out some new scripts including Jaws, Call Me By Your Name, and In the Heights.
Whether you unlocked the Pro version or downloaded it for free, you can check out these pilot scripts and add them to your library.
Weekend Read 2 fits screenplays perfectly on your iPhone or iPad. No more squint, pinch & zoom when trying to read on the go.
This new update to Weekend Read also makes it easy to add and share notes on a script while on-the-go, and the Read-Aloud feature lets you go eyes-free and listen to your scripts narrated in a range of high-quality voices.
See for yourself—Download Weekend Read 2 from the App Store!
WGA Strike Reading
Cale Haddon talks to WGA writers about the impact of one-step deals, and the burdens they place on writers. When studios only guarantee one draft in a contract with a writer, producers can abuse their leverage to require additional unpaid work. This can create extreme examples like one Haddon cites:
In the case of Will Appelbaum, his need to meet the earning requirements to qualify for health insurance through the WGA was used to more or less blackmail free work out of him even if depriving him of that health insurance could cost him his health and financial security.
Proposals were made during negotiations with the AMPTP to address these abuses and create a more equitable and sustainable way for feature writers to get properly paid for their work:
If your contract is for less than 250% of WGA feature minimums, you are paid 50% of your fee upon commencement and the remaining 50% is paid out weekly to you over the contracted writing period.
What this means is those of us making the least are guaranteed weekly earnings rather than waiting months, sometimes close to a year to get paid. If you’re one of the lucky bastards who make more than 250% of the minimum, you have the right to opt-in to weekly pay if you like.
What was the AMPTP’s response to this proposal before they left the bargaining table?
Won’t somebody please think of the Write Sprinters?
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Shout out to last week’s Sprinters Brian Matusz, Elyse Moretti Forbes, John Harvey, and Mark Leiren-Young!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Victoria Pynchon discusses negotiation tactics using the scene from True Grit where 14-year-old Mattie Ross gets the better of a cotton trader who initially refuses to buy back horses he sold to Mattie’s recently murdered father. Pynchon breaks down the different pivots of who controls the conversation, and highlights the ways Mattie establishes and maintains her authority throughout the negotiation.
Other Inneresting Things
Colin Nagy looks back at Dominos Pizza’s oddball 80s mascot: The Noid. To quote Bandit Heeler, “This was the 80s, man. It was a wild place.”
Filippo Ulieveri obsesses over the frequent, blink-and-you-miss-them glances Jack Torrence makes directly into the camera throughout The Shining, highlighting why these moments are so unsettling.
David Cain suggests that everything we buy has two costs: The cost of ownership and the cost of utilization:
A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price—and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.
Reading the room
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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