I recently read Jenna Weissman Joselitt’s book Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments and discussed it with my class. The book tells a story about how and why Americans made the Ten Commandments a focal point for larger issues – such as American identity, “Judaeo-Christian” values, and even our superiority to the U.S.S.R.- and how those issues changed over time. One of the book’s motifs that stood out for me was the intersection of the Ten Commandments with capitalism. Throughout the nineteenth century Americans had a robust interest in the Ten Commandments, although that interest never resulted in the kinds of attempts that we witness today to erect them as public monuments. Joselitt sees Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments as a turning point. The release of this movie was significant not because it increased awareness of the Ten Commandments – everybody already knew what they were and in any case the movie was more about Moses than the Ten Commandments – but because it also unleashed the power of capitalism on them. The movie was accompanied by waves of Ten Commandment kitsch, including a Moses action-figure. This explosion of commercial interest in […]
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