“A RELIGIOUS ORGY IN TENNESSEE”: THE (MIS)REPRESENTATION OF THE SCOPES ‘MONKEY’ TRIAL IN LAWRENCE AND LEE’S INHERIT THE WIND AND ITS CINEMATIC ADAPTATIONS
“A RELIGIOUS ORGY IN TENNESSEE”: THE (MIS)REPRESENTATION OF THE SCOPES ‘MONKEY’ TRIAL IN LAWRENCE AND LEE’S INHERIT THE WIND AND ITS CINEMATIC ADAPTATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The aim of my paper is to explore the extent to which the popular representations of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial (1925) in the media of the day, in the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, Inherit the Wind (1955) and its subsequent cinematic adaptations have altered the American public’s perception about what came to be known as ‘the trial of the century’. I discuss the manner in which starting from one teacher’s violation of an act which made it unlawful to “teach any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”, the trial’s coverage in the media and its later literary and cinematic renditions were used to manipulate and fuel a war between religion and science, as well as provide a critique of the American society at large.

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