Throughout contemporary history we see that movies and pop culture have the power to influence opinion and beliefs. During the Cold War the movies and the media was a means used to spread propaganda regarding the war. Individuals and directors used the movies they made to convey a message they wanted Americans to hear. At this time, it was used to garner support for the anti-communist agenda and to start conversations about the Cold War and the actions the government was taking to fight it. Although these two movies may seem conflicting, it reflects the mixed feelings Americans had about the Cold War. The Red Menace (1949) is a famous anti-communist movie that was directed by R.G. Springsteen during the Second Red Scare. The film is centered …show more content…
They were led to believe that life as they knew it in the United States and the freedom they enjoyed was at risk of being destroyed. In The Red Menace, Partridge, the party leader sneers at democracy by saying that is a delusion created by Christianity. In the scene where Molly’s father a priest (Father O’Leary) comes to visit Nina, he discusses faith and communism. He says that “God is the being that puts something in your heart that wants a better world. Atheistic systems are always founded on hatred. Race hatred when they’re Nazis and class hatred when they’re communistic.” (Springsteen, 1949). Communists were atheists; they were founded on hate. At the end of the movie Molly comes home to her family and the church. Her father, the priest welcomes her with open arms. He tells Molly that the best way to defeat Communism is by living a life of Christianity and democracy every single day of your life. The message Americans were intended to take away from The Red Menace was that by practicing Christianity and democracy Americans could protect themselves and others from the threat of …show more content…
This is illustrated in the movie Dr. Strangelove, as the focus was on safeguarding the security of the United States. One idea that was prevalent was the concept of a security dilemma. Leffler explains that the “security dilemma” came into operation as each side moved to enhance its security thereby provoking additional fears in the adversary and producing new countermeasures that tended yet again to intensify apprehensions and underscore vulnerabilities.” (Leffler, 1994, 64). Suspicions and the security dilemma led the United States and the Soviet Union to become pre-occupied with their relative position against each other. It ends up elevating the risk of actual war. Megadeaths, or the death of millions, raised questions about U.S. control over nuclear weapons. In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers' minds, people started to relate to what the movie was conveying. This is depicted in Dr. Strangelove when Ambassador De Sadeski explains why the Soviets built the doomsday device. De Sadeski helps enlighten the people in the war room by saying that they didn’t want to necessarily build the Doomsday device but they had no choice. The Soviet Union could not keep up with the exorbitant costs involved in the arms race. The Doomsday machine ended up costing them a fraction of what they had been previously spending on defense. “But the deciding factor was when we learned that your
The Cold War was a period of dark and melancholic times when the entire world lived in fear that the boiling pot may spill. The protectionist measures taken by Eisenhower kept the communists in check to suspend the progression of USSR’s radical ambitions and programs. From the suspenseful delirium from the Cold War, the United States often engaged in a dangerous policy of brinksmanship through the mid-1950s. Fortunately, these actions did not lead to a global nuclear disaster as both the US and USSR fully understood what the weapons of mass destruction were capable of.
Americans during the 60s lived in constant fear of nuclear war, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film shows how easy it is for one person to destroy the world in a nuclear firestorm if governments are not careful enough. Ripper’s argument about fluoridated water also reflects the belief of some Americans that fluorine was actually a Cold War weapon by the Soviets to turn American communist. General Jack D. Ripper himself also served to present an American stereotype along with General Turgidson. They both seeked to destroy the Soviet Union without any care to logic or human life. Turgidson, in particular, reminds me of Patton, who wanted to invade the Soviet Union after WWII, and MacArthur, who wanted to invade China during the Korean War. Both of these generals epitomize how people thought of Americans as zealously anti communist and violently stupid. Additionally, Dr. Strangelove and his proposal for fallout shelters show how much the Cold War interfered with Americans’ lives with the constant duck and cover drills and shelters for nuclear war. Finally, the captain of the B-52, King Kong, also represents American stereotypes with his southern accent and his patriotic final act of sitting on top of the bomb while it is falling down towards the Soviet Union. When he found out about the orders, he did not question them and went down fighting. Many people regarded Americans as gun toting southerners who were just as patriotic as they were trigger
With the onset of the Cold War, a growing Red Scare would cripple American society – effectively plunging the nation into mass hysteria and unrest over the fallacious threat of communist infiltration. This reaction was precipitated by Republican senator, Joseph McCarthy, in his speech, “Enemies from Within”, delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950. McCarthy paints communists in a particularly harsh light to generate anti-Soviet sentiment within the American public. He uses juxtaposition to engender both indignation and fear in the audience to achieve this effect.
...ills and built bomb shelters in preparation for possible nuclear warfare. The U.S. also built up its army and its air force, just to be prepared. Overseas, the U.S. enforced the Eisenhower Doctrine, which was a threat warning communist countries not to attack the Middle East, lest they wanted to begin and all out war. The United States also engaged in an Arms Race with the Soviet Union to see who could build the most powerful and destructive weapons and technologies. Brinkmanship was effective in preventing war because neither the United States or the Soviet Union was really prepared to fight yet another war.
Within this controversial topic, two authors provide their sides of the story to whom is to blame and/or responsible for the “Cold War.” Authors Arnold A. Offner and John Lewis Gaddis duck it out in this controversial situation as each individual lead the readers to believe a certain aspect by divulging certain persuading information. However, although both sides have given historical data as substance for their claim, it is nothing more than a single sided personal perception of that particular piece of information; thus, leaving much room for interpretations by the reader/s. Finding the ...
Another theme parodies McCarthyism and the Red Scares that it produced. General Jack D. Ripper produces paranoid rants that sound as if they could have come from the transcripts of the House Un-American Activities Commission....
In the third decade of the Cold War, less than two years after the United States population had been scared half-way to death by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove invaded the nation's movie theatres and showed the country the end of the world. Touted by critics then and now as the film of the decade, Dr. Strangelove savagely mocked the President, the entire military defense establishment, and the rhetoric of the Cold War. To a nation that was living through the stress of the nuclear arms race and had faced the real prospect of nuclear war, the satiric treatment of the nation's leaders was an orgasmic release from deep fears and tensions. Its detractors argued that the film was juvenile, offensive, and inaccurate. Viewed, however, in its context of the Cold War and nuclear proliferation, Dr....
The terms hawks and doves' were quick labels attached to politicians in order to categorize their views on war and foreign policies, as to make them understandable and accessible for the public. However, these labels were not always accurate and in some cases could be quite misleading; it would have been more accurate not to label individuals as either Hawks or Doves, but instead, what they stood for.
There really is not much of a historical time lag considering that the Cold War has only been over for about a decade after having been going on for four decades. Anyone who has had US history should understand that time period and therefore get the underlying point of the movie. The target audience in my opinion would probably be an older American public because of the violence and the historical references in the film. I stayed interested during this movie, but due to all the violence, especially when Sergeant Shaw killed the love of his life, Jocelyn, I would not be interested in having it in my own collection of films.
During the late 1940's and the 1950's, the Cold War became increasingly tense. Each side accused the other of wanting to rule the world (Walker 388). Each side believed its political and economic systems were better than the other's. Each strengthened its armed forces. Both sides viewed the Cold War as a dispute between right and wron...
QUESTION 2: The Cold War is an international conflict, a global fight between the United States and the Soviet Union that began in Europe in the wake of World War II but quickly expanded into Asia and the Third World. These international events, however, undoubtedly influenced domestic American politics between 1945 and 1965. How did the international Cold War shape, influence, or change domestic American politics in the first twenty years of the conflict?
Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, talks about a general who is a psycho or mental. This general had access to nuclear weapons and wanted to get rid of Russia for good before they hit them first. It was basically a nuclear war for power. This movie ultimately started the arm race, this means the country that had nuclear weapons felt safer than other countries which didn’t. In the movie Dr. Strangelove there were many things that reflected real life events in a somewhat accurate way. This movie caused a good deal of debate about an American general ordering a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union without consulting the president. This move that the general wanted to make threatens the life of humans all around the earth as nuclear weapons could introduce end of time. The movie is somewhat accurate as it is a daunting fact that the United States and the Soviet Union are ready to get rid of each other at any time. This kind of action not only threatens these two countries but it also threatens the entire race of humanity as the nuclear power can swipe out everything if kept in the wrong hands. The main argument is that the United States and Soviet Union seek to make nuclear deterrence credible as the need for credibility is an essential matter to
Anti-communism influences the films produced, films portrayed communism as evil and immoral. The films during the Cold War certainly portrayed the political storm between the progressive left and the conservative right. Films such as Ninotchka in 1939, showed anti-communism, guilty of Treason 1949, showed an attack against communism, exploiting the evils of communism was shown in Docudrama. The Red Menace in 1949 showed the immense threat of communism.
It was the 1960’s in America, a time of social consciousness, fear, war, distrust in government, and rebellion. It was a time in which bomb shelter ads on TV were common place. It was a time of tension and fears for communism creping though our neighborhoods and infiltrating American ideals. We were at war with a nation. After World War 2, there were two dominant nations, the United States and the Soviet Union. Political ideals and control over Germany would separate the allies into bitter rivals and enemies. The fear of the Soviet’s use of nuclear weapons was constantly in the backs of our minds. It was a global ...