A few weeks ago, a social media post popped up on my feeds from Destination Salem, our city’s official tourism office, featuring two young women dressed in garish costumes with giggly grins. They were/are wannabe “girl historians” (actually not historians at all) visiting Salem to promote their current podcast series, a comedy on the Salem Witch Trials. I was taken aback; you see and hear all sorts of exploitative expressions about 1692 in Salem, but seldom from “official” parties, which tend to walk a finer line. I reposted, along with a statement about how absolutely funny the witch trials were, and the next day the post disappeared. I had captured a screen shot, however, and here it is.
I was kind of angry when I captured the screen shot, but over the following week I just forgot about it. I really didn’t want to invest much time into something that seemed kind of silly. I tried to listen to the “girls,” but all I can say is: there are many great history podcasts, a lot of great podcasts by real historians who happen to be women, and several great podcasts on the Salem witch trials, and their podcast falls into none of those categories. But it’s not about them, really; it’s about Salem, because Destination Salem represents the City, and by extension, its residents. The photograph above kept dwelling in the back of my mind (rent-free!) and after a while I realized that it was conjuring up memories of another photograph, or series of photographs. There was a huge spread in Life magazine in September of 1949 on Marian Starkey’s groundbreaking new book, The Devil in Massachusetts: a Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials, which featured very evocative photographs of Salem sites and the “Salem girls” by photographer Nina Leen. Now these photos were dress-up promotion, just like the photo of the “girl historians” above, but what a difference! The subtlety and poignancy and starkness represent respect of a tragedy, rather than the craven commercialization of a “comedy”. The promotion of an insignificant podcast seems so small, pathetic actually, when compared with a multi-page spread in a national periodical, so much so that the event itself seems reduced in significance. Funny how that happened.
Nina Leen photographs, Life Magazine, September 1949.
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