Cold War Fears, Cold War Passions: Conservatives And Liberals Square Off in 1950s Science Fiction

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Bryan E. Vizzini received his PhD in history from UNC—Chapel Hill in 1999, and has been teaching at West Texas A&M University since 2001. In addition to teaching survey courses in Latin American history, World history, and American history, Bryan regularly teaches courses in film and history and graduate seminars in cultural history. Bryan's research interests include film and literary appropriations of the Mexican Revolution, Cold War themes in 1950s science fiction, and the use of graphic novels and comics in teaching history. Notes 1. Brian Neve, for example, cites the production and release of at least 42 anti-communist films between 1951 and 1953 alone. See Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 187. See also Linda K. Fuller, “The Ideology of the ‘Red Scare’ Movement: McCarthyism in the Movies,” in Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller, eds., Beyond the Stars, (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1990), 229–248. 2. See Peter Nicholls’ entry for “Politics”, in John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds., The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, (New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin), 1995. 3. See Roger A. Berger, “‘Ask What You Can Do for Your Country’: The Film Version of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine and the Cold War,” Literature/Film Quarterly, 17.3 (1989): 177–187; Peter Biskind, “Pods, Blobs, and Ideology in American Films of the Fifties,” in Georg Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin, eds., Shadows of the Magic Lamp: Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 58–72; James B. Gilbert, “Wars of the Worlds,” Journal of Popular Culture, 10.2 (1976): 326–336; Cyndy Hendershot, Paranoia, the Bomb, and 1950s Science Fiction Films (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1999); and Patrick Lucanio, Them or Us: Archetypal Interpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). 4. When the Chinese Communists took control of China in 1949, Republican legislators charged Democrats with having “lost” China. Senator Joseph McCarthy quickly charged that the “loss” had resulted from communist infiltration of the U.S. State Department. The now-famous senator went on to accuse the Truman administration and even the Army of harboring communist sympathizers and subversives. See David Caute, The Great Fear (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 562–567. 5. “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049366/>. 16 August 2005. 6. John Foster Dulles, “A Policy of Boldness,” reprinted in Hugh Ross, The Cold War: Containment and its Critics (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1963), 22–24. 7. Adlai Stevenson, “Labor Day Speech,” reprinted in Hugh Ross, The Cold War: Containment and its Critics (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1963), 27–28. 8. See Daniel J. Leab, “How Red Was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War Film, and I Married a Communist,” Journal of Contemporary History, 19.1 (January, 1984): 59–88. 9. See Teresa Alves, “‘Some Enchanted Evening’: Tuning in the Amazing Fifties, Switching Off The Elusive Decade,” American Studies International 39.3 (2001): 25–40. 10. See Kirshner, “Subverting The Cold War In The 1960s: Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, And The Planet Of The Apes,” Film & History 31.2 (2001): 40–44.