The event that gets the ball rolling in the TV series Salem is a young woman’s abortion. You see, she’s pregnant, and we see some guy getting branded for fornication and I think we’re to infer that his girlfriend is hanged, and so our main villain (eventually), being pregnant, unmarried, and with her beau hated by the village leader and leaving for war, decides she has no other choice than to turn to witchcraft to get rid of the baby. (See Republicans? Defund Planned Parenthood and you will only unleash a new rash of witchcraft upon an unsuspecting world!)
Now, I’m sure the point the writers had in mind was to say: “See? Without access to safe abortions, look at all the bad things that can happen.” But when you really look at it from how it’s presented, what it really looks like it’s saying is that abortions are the work of the devil, and only evil will come from them. (Anyone who has been watching Salem will immediately know what I’m talking about.)
Now, I find it interesting that this issue can be read both ways, as that’s kind of rare. But if my instincts are correct, it was never meant to be like that, and the whole abortion issue was intended to support abortion, rather than condemn it. But I could be wrong in another way, and it’s possible the abortion thing was only intended to show how a young woman could be forced to take drastic action due to the injustice of the town, and that made her turn to the dark side, and that it was never intended to push a political issue. (But that’s rare too, these days. Most entertainment seems to push political views.)
But one thing is for sure here: while Satan is alive and well and active in the TV series Salem, God is surely dead there, and even his supposedly pious representatives are all sadists, whoremongers and hypocrites. I have read about Cotton Mather, and I believe he was historically responsible for the deaths in the witch trials, because tests were done to verify witchcraft, and one of the accused passed the tests, but when the mob was ready to release the innocent, Cotton Mather said the devil can trick people, so they were executed, and the witchcraft hysteria continued. That’s pretty reprehensible, but I seriously doubt he was a whorehouse client. And in a town where people are pilloried, tortured and worse for sexual dalliances, I seriously doubt a house of ill repute would have been tolerated within the town itself, or even within the same vicinity. (But don’t think about that!)
So while the abortion thing may not have been a political message, there is definitely a hit job on religion and conservative hypocrisy here. It seems like they’re trying to say that religion is bad or something just because it got a bunch of innocent people killed, and served as a foundation for hysteria, torture, repression, all while the supposedly pious people had double standards regarding their own behavior. But is that really such a bad thing after all?
But all jokes aside, I don’t think the creators of this show are targeting religion per se so much as they are showing how it is something that gives humans power that can be abused, with horrific results. And sadly, this plays out throughout human history (and the present).
