In Search of History - Salem Witch Trials (History Channel) (A&E DVD Archives)

Because I am no longer able to use VHS in my English III classroom, I wanted a DVD copy of Salem Witch Trials. The copy I bought is perfect for classroom use.

I teach high school English and this was a great suppliment to The Crucible. My students enjoyed it and asked many questions after viewing it. Highly recommend.

I wanted to watch this video, because I knew very little about the Salem Witch Trials. Even though the video is 45 minutes, I found it to be very interesting, and it really clarified for me what exactly happened back in 1692 in Salem. One thing I didn't know was that no one was burned at the stacks, the accused were hung. I also didn't know that those brought to trial, in the initial outbreak, were accused by several young girls who would go into demonic like fits in the courtroom, and this is one way the court would know that those on trial were guilty. These are just a couple of things I learned, but there were many more. Overall, I would recommend this video to anyone who also doesn't know much about the Salem Witch Trials, and wants an easy to digest lesson about it.

I've been fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials since I wrote a paper on the topic for my first year American History class in college. Since then, I've collected a modest collection of books, articles, and papers on the subject. I'm hardly an expert, but I do know enough to be terribly disappointed in this newest addition to my Salem collection.

First of all, this documentary is extremely short - certainly not long enough to justify the twenty dollar asking price. The "50 minutes" length also includes the long teasers that aired prior to and after commercial breaks, bringing the 'actual' length to much shorter than 50 minutes. Second, even accounting for this shortness, the content here is extremely shallow. I realize the History Channel is supposed to be approachable for everyone regardless of prior knowledge, but do we really need to have explained in detail that accused witches were executed because the Bible ostensibly required it? Surely someone interested in the Salem trials has already grasped this much of the material, and its inclusion here seems like a desparate bid to eat up necesary time to hit the 50 minute mark.

Being short and shallow makes for a bad documentary for an enthusiast like me, but not necessarily a bad documentary for, say, a classroom. However, here is where the documentary is most troubling for it is *extremely* inaccurate. Opinions are bandied about as fact, and facts that would undermine these opinions are kept hidden from the audience. For instance, the opinion is aired that perhaps the biggest impetus in stopping the Salem trials was that "nontraditional" people such as men were accused of being witches - without once mentioning the fact that of the first three executions, THREE of the exectuted witches were men and that the trials continued for months afterwards before abating. It would be far more fair to include that the apparent biggest impetus to ending the trials was the Dutch document undermining spectral evidence entirely and the subsequent dismantling of the court by the governor, but there is nothing said about this. There is also mention of George Burroughs' famous recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the gallows which is presented as being some sort of turning point in the peoples' minds, again without mentioning that if it WAS a "turning point", the actual turning was only accomplished months later! The narrator also states unequivocably that there were "no transcripts" of the trial, and fails to temper this with the fact that copious notes were taken by several of the judges, many in near-transcript form! The fact that most (but not all) of the trials were recorded to history has been obscurred in order to represent the much more interesting fiction that the whole event is supposedly surrounded by an impenetrable fog of mystery. This is dishonest and it is bad documentary technique, designed to entertain and titillate rather than inform.

An admittedly minor gripe of mine is also that, of the four or five 'experts' interviewed, two of them are religion professors with apparently little or nothing to add on the topic. It's unclear as to why an event that is notable for historical and psychological implications is left to religionists to interpret, and it feels like the makers decided that it was necessary to sprinkle in some nice religion experts so that they couldn't be accused of being anti-religion. If so, this is an incredibly cowardly way to construct a documentary - focusing on averting potential criticism of your motives rather than giving the best possible presentation regardless. If this had been a 3 hour long documentary, I wouldn't have minded the token religion professors nearly as much, but as a 50 minute presentation, it was grating to watch time slip away to the 'expert' opinion that Puritanism was a rough religion to adhere to.

This DVD is excellent for 11th Grade English Teachers, trying to go over the Salem witch trials can be difficult. If you purchase this DVD it goes step by step on how everything started and students get interested right away. I thought it was well explained and it was smooth transition into the whole Crucible unit.