THE COLD WAR
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Perhaps one of the best cinematic expressions of the “Red” scare during the 1950s is The Way We Were, in which we see the paranoia, fear, and propaganda that gripped Hollywood and the rest of America during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “witch-hunts” to expose all communist and communist-sympathizers in the U.S. A direct reaction to the Cold War being waged between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, in the film we see friends snitch on friends, people go to jail, violence erupt, people’s careers ruined, and a host of other ills because they were somehow connected to communism. In The Manchurian Candidate, an even fuller expression of the paranoia, fear, and propaganda of the period is portrayed, a film laced with the very paranoia, fear, propaganda, political self-serving and violence of the period. This analysis of The Manchurian Candidate will argue that the fear and paranoia over communism during the Cold War were more of a threat to American freedom than any actual threat posed by communism.During the fifty years after World War II, the Cold War was waged between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. While the Cold War never erupted in direct military conflict between the two superpowers, there were military conflicts between the two, like the Korean war in which the communist government of North Korea was supported by the Soviets while the South Korean democratic government was backed by the United Sta
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lture when it came to the red scare of the 1950s. Other artists were also moved to chronicle the zealous, Inquisition-like tactics of men like McCarthy and their ilk, who, in the minds of these artists, represented more of a threat to American freedom than any threat from communism. Two such artists were John Frankenheimer and George Axelrod, the respective director and writer of The Manchurian Candidate.
The Manchurian Candidate does an excellent job at recreating the fear, paranoia, and propaganda that were part of American culture during the 1940s and 1950s. Like Senator Joseph McCarthy and the fictional Senator Iselin from the film, there were many individuals who felt that the threat to American freedom and security from the Soviet Union and communism was a very real one indeed. One was Congressman George A. Dondero, who, in debates in the U.S. House over the Mundt-Nixon bill created to “protect the U.S. against Un-American and subversive activities,” claimed “The world is dividing into two camps, freedom versus Communism, Christian civilization versus paganism” (Miller xi). If we think such sentiments are fanciful or did not impact American culture, we only need to think of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s still referring
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Approximate Word count = 2336
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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