Anti-Communism and Popular Culture in Mid-Century AmericaNot long after the Allied victories in Europe and Japan, America's attention turned from world war to cold war. The perceived threat of communism had a definite and significant impact on all levels of American popular culture, from government propaganda films like Red Nightmare in Time magazine to Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This work examines representations of anti-communist sentiment in American popular culture from the early fifties through the mid-sixties. The discussion covers television programs, films, novels, journalism, maps, memoirs, and other works that presented anti-communist ideology to millions of Americans and influenced their thinking about these controversial issues. It also points out the different strands of anti-communist rhetoric, such as liberal and countersubversive ones, that dominated popular culture in different media, and tells a much more complicated story about producers' and consumers' ideas about communism through close study of the cultural artifacts of the Cold War. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 The Seduction of Communism | 9 |
2 Paranoiac Discourse and AntiCommunism | 18 |
3 Internal and External Communism in Popular Film | 27 |
4 The Individual Russian and the Communist System | 40 |
5 AntiCommunism and Ambivalence in Science Fiction | 52 |
6 Criminals and Communists in Fifties Popular Culture | 67 |
7 AntiCommunism and Movie Serials | 76 |
9 Nuclear Apocalypse and AntiCommunism | 97 |
10 Cold War Confessions and the FBI Plant | 108 |
11 AntiCommunism and the Business World | 121 |
Representations of
Communism in Early Sixties American Culture | 130 |
Conclusion | 144 |
Notes | 153 |
| 163 | |
| 171 | |