Statecraft as Stagecraft: Disneyland and the Rosenberg Executions inThe Public Burning
2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00111610009603127
ISSN1939-9138
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoAbstract Robert Coover's encyclopedic critique of McCarthyism in The Public Burning uses stage metaphors to explore the political process building up to the June 1953 executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Each character plays a role that has been carefully scripted by directors Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. President Eisenhower repeatedly utters: “My only concern is in the area of statecraft. […] The effect of the action” (230 and elsewhere, emphasis Coover's). Two major artistic decisions foreground Coover's statecraft as stagecraft: first, his choice to present the executions as an open public spectacle in Times Square and second, his use of Disney to emphasize by exaggeration the staged nature of the trials and executions.
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