Cold War Cool Medium Television Mccarthyism And American Culture

Author : Thomas Doherty
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2005-03-10
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780231503273

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Cold War, Cool Medium by Thomas Doherty Pdf

Conventional wisdom holds that television was a co-conspirator in the repressions of Cold War America, that it was a facilitator to the blacklist and handmaiden to McCarthyism. But Thomas Doherty argues that, through the influence of television, America actually became a more open and tolerant place. Although many books have been written about this period, Cold War, Cool Medium is the only one to examine it through the lens of television programming. To the unjaded viewership of Cold War America, the television set was not a harbinger of intellectual degradation and moral decay, but a thrilling new household appliance capable of bringing the wonders of the world directly into the home. The "cool medium" permeated the lives of every American, quickly becoming one of the most powerful cultural forces of the twentieth century. While television has frequently been blamed for spurring the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was also the national stage upon which America witnessed—and ultimately welcomed—his downfall. In this provocative and nuanced cultural history, Doherty chronicles some of the most fascinating and ideologically charged episodes in television history: the warm-hearted Jewish sitcom The Goldbergs; the subversive threat from I Love Lucy; the sermons of Fulton J. Sheen on Life Is Worth Living; the anticommunist series I Led 3 Lives; the legendary jousts between Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy on See It Now; and the hypnotic, 188-hour political spectacle that was the Army-McCarthy hearings. By rerunning the programs, freezing the frames, and reading between the lines, Cold War, Cool Medium paints a picture of Cold War America that belies many black-and-white clichés. Doherty not only details how the blacklist operated within the television industry but also how the shows themselves struggled to defy it, arguing that television was preprogrammed to reinforce the very freedoms that McCarthyism attempted to curtail.

Author : Thomas Doherthy
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:902444208

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Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture by Thomas Doherthy Pdf

Author : Douglas Field
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015060862193

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American Cold War Culture by Douglas Field Pdf

This book guides the reader through recent and established theories as well as introducing a number of previously neglected themes, films and texts.

Author : Annette Vowinckel,Marcus M. Payk,Thomas Lindenberger
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9780857452436

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Cold War Cultures by Annette Vowinckel,Marcus M. Payk,Thomas Lindenberger Pdf

The Cold War was not only about the imperial ambitions of the super powers, their military strategies, and antagonistic ideologies. It was also about conflicting worldviews and their correlates in the daily life of the societies involved. The term "Cold War Culture" is often used in a broad sense to describe media influences, social practices, and symbolic representations as they shape, and are shaped by, international relations. Yet, it remains in question whether -- or to what extent -- the Cold War Culture model can be applied to European societies, both in the East and the West. While every European country had to adapt to the constraints imposed by the Cold War, individual development was affected by specific conditions as detailed in these chapters. This volume offers an important contribution to the international debate on this issue of the Cold War impact on everyday life by providing a better understanding of its history and legacy in Eastern and Western Europe.

Author : Lori Maguire
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2016-08-17
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781443899253

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The Cold War and Entertainment Television by Lori Maguire Pdf

An essential dimension of the Cold War took place in the realm of ideas and culture. While much work exists on cinema, relatively little research has been conducted on this subject in relation to television, despite the latter being a technology and popular cultural form that emerged during this period. This book rectifies that absence by examining the impact of the Cold War on entertainment television, and underlines the comparative aspect by studying programs from both blocs – without forgetting, of course, the outsize impact of American television. Although most of the focus is on the two main protagonists, the US and the USSR, chapters also consider programming from the UK, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and both East and West Germany. This book represents a contribution to the debate about the cultural Cold War through a rigorously comparative analysis of the two blocs. For this reason, the approach used is thematic. The study begins by considering the subject of censorship, and then goes on to look at the very particular case of the two Germanys. A series of comparative genre studies follow, including police and war, variety shows, and documentaries and docudramas. Perhaps surprisingly, the similarities are often greater than the differences between television in the two blocs.

Author : Joseph Smith,Simon Davis
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2017-03-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781442281868

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Historical Dictionary of the Cold War by Joseph Smith,Simon Davis Pdf

“Cold war” was a term coined in 1945 by left-leaning British writer George Orwell to predict how powers made unconquerable by having nuclear weapons would conduct future relations. It was popularized in 1947 by American journalist Walter Lippmann amid mounting tensions between the erstwhile World War II Allies - the capitalist democracies - the United States of America and Britain - versus the Soviet Union, a communist dictatorship. As the grand alliance of the “Big Three” they had defeated Nazi Germany, its satellites and Japan in World War II but became rivals who split the world into an American-led Western “bloc” and Soviet-led Eastern “bloc.” Both were secured from direct attack by arraying ever-greater nuclear and conventional forces against the other while seeking global supremacy by other means. The 45-year Cold War lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed between 1989 and 1991. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Cold War contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, crucial countries and peripheral conflicts, the increasingly lethal weapons systems, and the various political and military strategies. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this crucial period in history.

Author : John Sbardellati
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2012-05-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780801464218

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J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies by John Sbardellati Pdf

Between 1942 and 1958, J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a sweeping and sustained investigation of the motion picture industry to expose Hollywood's alleged subversion of "the American Way" through its depiction of social problems, class differences, and alternative political ideologies. FBI informants (their names still redacted today) reported to Hoover's G-men on screenplays and screenings of such films as Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), noting that "this picture deliberately maligned the upper class attempting to show that people who had money were mean and despicable characters." The FBI's anxiety over this film was not unique; it extended to a wide range of popular and critical successes, including The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Crossfire (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954). In J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies, John Sbardellati provides a new consideration of Hollywood's history and the post-World War II Red Scare. In addition to governmental intrusion into the creative process, he details the efforts of left-wing filmmakers to use the medium to bring social problems to light and the campaigns of their colleagues on the political right, through such organizations as the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, to prevent dissemination of "un-American" ideas and beliefs. Sbardellati argues that the attack on Hollywood drew its motivation from a sincerely held fear that film content endangered national security by fostering a culture that would be at best apathetic to the Cold War struggle at best, or, at its worst, conducive to communism at home. Those who took part in Hollywood's Cold War struggle, whether on the left or right, shared one common trait: a belief that the movies could serve as engines for social change. This strongly held assumption explains why the stakes were so high and, ultimately, why Hollywood became one of the most important ideological battlegrounds of the Cold War.

Author : Susan L. Carruthers
Publisher : University of California Press
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : History
ISBN : 0520257316

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Cold War Captives by Susan L. Carruthers Pdf

This provocative history of early cold war America recreates a time when World War III seemed imminent. Headlines were dominated by stories of Soviet slave laborers, brainwashed prisoners in Korea, and courageous escapees like Oksana Kasenkina who made a “leap for freedom” from the Soviet Consulate in New York. Full of fascinating and forgotten stories, Cold War Captives explores a central dimension of American culture and politics—the postwar preoccupation with captivity. “Menticide,” the calculated destruction of individual autonomy, struck many Americans as a more immediate danger than nuclear annihilation. Drawing upon a rich array of declassified documents, movies, and reportage—from national security directives to films like The Manchurian Candidate—his book explores the ways in which east-west disputes over prisoners, repatriation, and defection shaped popular culture. Captivity became a way to understand everything from the anomie of suburban housewives to the “slave world” of drug addiction. Sixty years later, this era may seem distant. Yet, with interrogation techniques derived from America's communist enemies now being used in the “war on terror,” the past remains powerfully present.

Author : Julia Lee
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2015-12-29
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781452949789

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Our Gang by Julia Lee Pdf

It was the age of Jim Crow, riddled with racial violence and unrest. But in the world of Our Gang, black and white children happily played and made mischief together. They even had their own black and white version of the KKK, the Cluck Cluck Klams—and the public loved it. The story of race and Our Gang, or The Little Rascals, is rife with the contradictions and aspirations of the sharply conflicted, changing American society that was its theater. Exposing these connections for the first time, Julia Lee shows us how much this series, from the first silent shorts in 1922 to its television revival in the 1950s, reveals about black and white American culture—on either side of the silver screen. Behind the scenes, we find unconventional men like Hal Roach and his gag writers, whose Rascals tapped into powerful American myths about race and childhood. We meet the four black stars of the series—Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison, Allen “Farina” Hoskins, Matthew “Stymie” Beard, and Billie “Buckwheat” Thomas—the gang within the Gang, whose personal histories Lee pursues through the passing years and shifting political landscape. In their checkered lives, and in the tumultuous life of the series, we discover an unexplored story of America, the messy, multiracial nation that found in Our Gang a comic avatar, a slapstick version of democracy itself.

Author : Heonik Kwon
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2010-12-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780231526708

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The Other Cold War by Heonik Kwon Pdf

In this conceptually bold project, Heonik Kwon uses anthropology to interrogate the cold war's cultural and historical narratives. Adopting a truly panoramic view of local politics and international events, he challenges the notion that the cold war was a global struggle fought uniformly around the world and that the end of the war marked a radical, universal rupture in modern history. Incorporating comparative ethnographic study into a thorough analysis of the period, Kwon upends cherished ideas about the global and their hold on contemporary social science. His narrative describes the slow decomposition of a complex social and political order involving a number of local and culturally creative processes. While the nations of Europe and North America experienced the cold war as a time of "long peace," postcolonial nations entered a different reality altogether, characterized by vicious civil wars and other exceptional forms of violence. Arguing that these events should be integrated into any account of the era, Kwon captures the first sociocultural portrait of the cold war in all its subtlety and diversity.

Author : Tevi Troy
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2013-09-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9781621570578

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What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted by Tevi Troy Pdf

From Cicero to Snooki, the cultural influences on our American presidents are powerful and plentiful. Thomas Jefferson famously said "I cannot live without books," and his library backed up the claim, later becoming the backbone of the new Library of Congress. Jimmy Carter watched hundreds of movies in his White House, while Ronald Reagan starred in a few in his own time. Lincoln was a theater-goer, while Obama kicked back at home to a few episodes of HBO's "The Wire." America is a country built by thinkers on a foundation of ideas. Alongside classic works of philosophy and ethics, however, our presidents have been influenced by the books, movies, TV shows, viral videos, and social media sensations of their day. In What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culturen in the White House presidential scholar and former White House aide Tevi Troy combines research with witty observation to tell the story of how our presidents have been shaped by popular culture.

Author : Harry Eiss
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2016-05-11
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781443894296

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The Joker by Harry Eiss Pdf

To prepare for the role of the Joker, Heath Ledger locked himself in a London hotel room, trying to understand and become a character he saw as “an absolute sociopath, a cold-blooded, mass-murdering clown” who was not intimidated by anything and found all of life “a big joke.” In the end, Ledger’s obsession with his role contributed to his own death from drugs before The Dark Knight was released. The connections and irony are too close to ignore. The movie gives the world a curious twist on the roles of Batman and the Joker. It’s politically incorrect, and yet emotionally the Joker’s insanity becomes more endearing than Batman’s noble sacrifice. What is it? Why does this psychopath seem to have a sense of higher truths in his insanity? This is the role of the Joker or the Fool, a standard character in theatre, and a role consciously adopted by serious artists since the late 1800s. Just as Shakespeare’s Fool in King Lear used his riddles and puns and satire to reveal the truths the royal leaders of his world could not or refused to see, today’s artists are both revealing the darkness within the culture and offering a way out. Waiting for Godot has been proclaimed the greatest play of the twentieth century. But there are no great roles in it, no characters representing the equivalent of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Rather, the two main characters are closer to T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, who says he cannot be a Hamlet, only, perhaps, Hamlet’s Fool. This book explores what has happened as Europe’s culture fragmented and the world lost its center. It explores a range of different arenas, from political and social and religious happenings to scientific and artistic expressions, in order to find the centers of the human condition and how the dark expressions of meaninglessness so commonly highlighted are more rites-of-passage than the final destination.

Author : Danielle Fosler-Lussier
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780520959781

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Music in America's Cold War Diplomacy by Danielle Fosler-Lussier Pdf

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Presentations program. Performances of music in many styles—classical, rock ’n’ roll, folk, blues, and jazz—competed with those by traveling Soviet and mainland Chinese artists, enhancing the prestige of American culture. These concerts offered audiences around the world evidence of America’s improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy also created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although born of state-sponsored tours often conceived as propaganda ventures, these relationships were in themselves great diplomatic achievements and constituted the essence of America’s soft power. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, Danielle Fosler-Lussier shows that musical diplomacy had vastly different meanings for its various participants, including government officials, musicians, concert promoters, and audiences. Through the stories of musicians from Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson to orchestras and college choirs, Fosler-Lussier deftly explores the value and consequences of "musical diplomacy."

Author : C. W. E. Bigsby
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 469 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2006-10-12
Category : History
ISBN : 9780521841320

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The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Culture by C. W. E. Bigsby Pdf

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Author : Caroline S. Emmons
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2010-06-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781598841046

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Cold War and McCarthy Era by Caroline S. Emmons Pdf

This volume offers readers the opportunity to see how the Cold War and McCarthy eras affected men, women, and children of varying backgrounds, providing a more personal examination of this important era. Studies of the Cold War often focus on the political power players who shaped American/Soviet relations. Cold War and McCarthy Era: People and Perspectives shifts the spotlight to show how the fear of a Soviet attack and Communist infiltration affected the daily life of everyday Americans. Cold War and McCarthy Era gauges the impact of McCarthyism on a wide range of citizens. Chapters examine Cold War-era popular culture as well as the community-based Civil Defense Societies. Essays, key primary documents, and other reference tools further readers' understanding of how official reactions to Communist threats, both real and perceived, altered every aspect of American society.