Tag Archives: cold war

by

Modern Cold War: A Continuation

So the threat of a cold war is still alive! If The New York Times says so, it must be true. Here’s an interesting article I stumbled upon on my daily perusal of the NYT website:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/world/16memo.html?ref=us

Basically, the article says that there is still a cold war going on right now. Except it is called terrorism. Al Qaeda plays the role of the communists. The middle east is today’s Soviet Union. In the past, America “faced an enemy with ‘no scruples about employing any weapon or tactic'” and feared that they would smuggle nuclear weapons into the country. The threat we face today is terrorists concealing dangerous weapons and “killing tens of thousands of Americans.”

So when did the cold war turn into the war against terrorism? After the murder Israeli athletes in the 1972 summer olympics. Nicknamed the “Munich Massacre,” a group of eight Palestinian terrorists broke into where the athletes were staying and kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. All were killed. (Steven Spielberg’s 2005 Munich depicts this event.)  Alarm was also obviously heightened after the September 11 attacks.

NYT states that “most security experts believe the focus in recent years on destroying of locking up nuclear material is far more effective than sealing American borders” (like they did during the Cold War era). Do you agree? Has it improved? Does the public feel safer because of this?

by

Animated Soviet Propaganda

I would like to turn back a little and continue on the topic of cold war and mass propaganda, this time examining it from the point of view of Russia. It’s pretty obvious that if America had propaganda, where communists seemed evil and manipulative, Soviets must have also used mass media to control their population. I found a great documentary called “Soviet Animated Propaganda” , which depicts a history of all the mind controlling cartoons made by Soyuzmultfilm Studios from 1924 to 1984. Thirteen parts of it are available on youtube.  Here is part one to start with.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/KV5sIGm70SE" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I thought it would be interesting to know how Soviets portrayed Americans in the cold war period. During WWII, media was created to align people against fascism, and during cold war American capitalism took its place. It seems that Soviets stayed on top of their game and criticized every single aspect of American life – the money, racial divisions, war strategies and so on. As Igor Kokarev says in the film, people were persuaded to believe, which they did, that they live in the best country of the world, and that the rest of the world with their money and ideologies is absolutely evil: outsiders are the enemy. As Kokarev notes such strong propaganda was so successful, because Soviet people were artificially isolated from the rest of the world, and lived almost like a “cult”. Children from early years were taught how to view the other countries and how to react to certain situations. All children and adults were given the same mindset, the same resources of knowledge, therefore leaving all on the same page. The government created thousands of propaganda posters, which were hanged on every wall in every institution – from schools, busses, cafeterias to private homes. Those posters “told citizens what to do and how to think and who to blame”. All media was strongly supervised and corrected “very stubbornly” up to the last days of the Soviet Union.

I urge you to watch this documentary even though its long, if you are at all interested in media as a brainwashing device. I found it very interesting, since it goes through most of the propaganda cartoons ever created by USSR. After watching this, I got a strong sense that the Hollywood blacklisting was minor, compared to this large degree control in Soviet Union, where nothing could leak out.

by - 1 Comment

Satire during the MADness of the Cold War

Dr. Strangelove is one of the best satires on the paranoia of the Cold War. During a time of great fear and panic, Dr. Strangelove served to offer a more humorous approach towards the threat of mutually assured destruction. This greatly contrasted with other movies, such as the short film “Duck and Cover”, which only seemed to add to America’s fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. There is a snowball effect of panic, where out of the fear of the spread of Communism, there is the rise of the military industrial complex. Such a response only triggers a similar reaction by the Soviet Union, thereby adding to the fragility of foreign relations. Dr. Strangelove understands these fears, and is able to effectively turn them into a form of entertainment, during a time when many only seemed to add to the anxiety.

But Dr. Strangelove was by no means the only satirical take on the Cold War. Tom Lehrer, a famous American satirist and songwriter during the time of the Cold War, recorded “So long, Mom” in 1967, which remarked on the same fear of mutually assured destruction. The youtube video of the song is embedded here for your entertainment. Strangely, I found it rather difficult to find many musical satires of the Cold War during the 50s and 60s. There seems to be a trend, where during times of crisis, there are spikes in the entertainment industry. During the Great Depression, Vaudeville adjusted itself according to the economic times, becoming an excellent means of escape for those in great hardship. In recent years, the entertainment industry has performed exceedingly well, correlating with the exceedingly poor performance of the economy.  As a result of this correlation between economic and political fears with the performance of the entertainment industry, it would only make sense for artists to cater to this shifted environment. Additionally, Tom Lehrer’s satire offers a unique perspective on the time period, where he produces songs during the time period, as opposed to in retrospect. It is one thing to comment on the irrational fear of the constant threat of nuclear war with foresight, but it is entirely different to create a piece which acts almost as political commentary. In addition, Tom Lehrer also produced the song “We Will All Go Together When We Go”, another piece on the threat of mutually assured destruction.

Weird Al Yankovich’s “Christmas at Ground Zero” is an example of entertainment that focuses on the threat of nuclear winter. During the time of its production, the Cold War was coming to a close, and after existing for many decades, the threat of nuclear war seemed increasingly distant. What I found particularly interesting in the music video is that many of the scenes were taken from the same “Duck and Cover” video that we had watched in class. It’s also amusing to see the contrast between the fear of total destruction by nuclear winter and the joy of the holiday season.

by

Two 1980s Nuclear Nightmares

If you haven’t had your fill of nuclear doomsday narratives, here are two more.

The Atomic Cafe (1983) is a clever, satirical documentary made up of archive footage from a variety of sources from the late 1940s to the early 1960 addressing every aspect of cold war era nuclear anxiety. Both frightening and darkly funny, it very nicely distills many of the themes in the discussions we’ve had over the last two weeks.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1126269724766604475&ei=4yuqS-KgHI6mqgL0g7DRBg&q=atomic+cafe&hl=en#

Threads (1984) is a BBC made for TV movie about a nuclear attack on Great Britain. It is, in a sense, a British Day After. It feels decidedly more real than it’s American counterpart broadcast a year earlier. Believe it or not, it is even darker and bleaker. It is widely regarded as the very best, most disturbing and haunting imagining of nuclear war and its aftermath from the 1980s.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488&ei=Ay2qS7-lNZPorAL7rNXWBg&q=threads&hl=en#

by - 6 Comments

The Cold War Through Music

The Cold War lasted approximately from 1947 to 1991 and it was a period of high tension and political conflict between the USSR and the US. There was not any physical fighting, but there was conflict behind the scenes: military alliances, espionage, propaganda, the nuclear arms race, and a race for technological innovations. 

I came across this song by Sting from his debut solo album, The Dream of Blue Turtles called Russians. In it, he sings of the consequences of the Cold War and of what we could do to save the world from the escalating shows of power. 

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4rk78eCIx4E” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

The lyrics are: 

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to respond to all the threats
In the rhetorical speeches of the Soviets
Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
It’d be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians love their children too

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the president
There’s no such thing as a winnable war
It’s a lie we don’t believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don’t subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us me and you
Is if the Russians love their children too 

Source: http://www.lyrics007.com/Sting%20&%20Police%20Lyrics/Russians%20Lyrics.html

Please take the time to read the lyrics. Each line is really very meaningful. The song’s lyrics and Sting’s mournful voice really portray the despair of the situation. He wants the everyone to get along to ensure that a future will exist for generations to come.  The last four lines are really poignant. Sting says, we are all human beings; you and I are made of one and the same. Why can’t we just get along and live in peace and harmony?

I think Sting’s debut of this song was very taboo, but I applaud him for being courageous enough to come out with this radical song. People were very frightened by the prospect of another World War and there was a lot of hatred towards foreigners. They were anti-Russian, anti-Communist, and anti-foreigner. Sting tries to soothe people by singing about the innocence of sons and daughters, trying to convince them to unite peacefully for their sake. 

by

The Red Scare and the Hollywood Blacklist: For Tuesday

As you’ll see on the calendar page, our viewing for Tuesday is The Front, a 1976 comedy starring Woody Allen about McCarthyism’s impact on the entertainment industry and Trumbo, a 2007 documentary about Dalton Trumbo, a well known screenwriter who was blacklisted but continued to write and and win awards under psuedonyms. Both are available for streaming on Netflix.

Also, please take a look the following films. Together, they’ll give you some additional context for the two films as well as our reading from Whitfield’s The Culture of the Cold War. Most of these are already in our Delicious feed.

“Hollywood ‘Red’ Probe Begins, 1947/10/20 (1947)” A newsreel on the beginning of HUAC’s probe of alleged communist activity and influence in Hollywood.
I Married a Communist(a.k.a. The Woman on Pier 13)(1949). An RKO feature starring Robert Ryan and an exemplary red scare propaganda film along with My Son John and I Was A Communist for the FBI.

“The Hollywood Ten” (1950), a 16mm short critical of McCarthyism and the blacklist. The director, John Berry, was blacklisted after the film’s release and fled to France where he worked until his return to the US in the 1970s.

“Make Mine Freedom” (1948). A propaganda cartoon on the virtues of democracy and what Americans stand to lose if communism should prevail.
“Communism,” a 1952 educational film about the threat of Soviet Communism.