THIS IS WHAT I DO ALL DAY

Hahahaha I don't give ten shits about nine shits if you manage to choke this down, it's 2:05 in the goddamn morning and I'm amazing

PS EDIT: THIS IS WHAT I FEEL LIKE RIGHT NOW. JUST DRUMS AND DISTORTED BASS PLAYED LIKE A GUITAR AND MAYBE SOME SCREAMING AND MAYBE SOME LIQUOR UGH UGH UGH JACK WHITE STICK THIS IN YOUR FACE AND LIKE IT


Although the Cold War was –by traditional military standards- relatively bloodless, the decades of conflict and tension had as much socio-economic,industrial, and scientific influence as any previous war. Indeed there is an arguable case, due to the mass media coverage and level of widespread consensus ideology present during the Cold War, that it helped to shape American society on a far broader level than the World Wars. Stephen Whitfield, in his essay The Culture of the Cold War, follows this massive impact of the Cold War and associated anti-communist sentiments in America – specifically,the drastic influence they had on popular culture and the people who wrote, filmed, and viewed it.

The Culture of the Cold War presents, from the very beginning, an uncompromisingly negative view of the results of the Cold War entering popular culture. The mass mentality and fear produced led to, according to Whitfield, “the suffocation of liberty and the debasement of culture itself”. Although his language is strong, the primary sources that follow this claim excuse Whitfield of hyperbole (for the most part). The examples he gives range from the subtle to the blatant, from the merely pro-capitalist tothe outspoken hatred of Communism, from literature to gameshow television – and throughout all ofthem he emphasizes the fact that these were the sentiments of the majority of America. Anti-communist action was met “with popular approval and acquiescense”. (Whitfield, 218)

While Whitfield expresses intense disappointment at the homogenization of Cold War sentiment, his true contempt is saved for the culture that came of it. At the height of the Red Scare,Communist hatred and fervent Americanism had turned the greater entertainment industry into little more than a pandering propaganda and agitation machine. Not only was the media being produced pitifully single minded, Whitfield laments, it was also just plain bad. The same themes of fearmongering and anti-communist hysteria were played out over and over again with minor changes. Posters for films carried buzzwords in bold, warning/titillating/selling the RED MENACE taking over colleges (Red Salute,225), trying to convert ordinary citizens (The Red Menace, 222), and spying on American secrets (Walk East On Beacon, 226).

Communists who made actual appearances in mass media were portrayed as scheming,devious, and inherently evil criminals with an almost comical one-sidedness, while conversely Americanism (and, by extension, capitalism) had its virtues extolled to equally comic excess. While Communists burned flags and rubbed their hands together on screen, Capitalist heroes helped viewers affirm their Americanism. To this defensive and willing embrace of capitalism, Whitfield attributes the rise of iconic symbols like the Barbie doll. “The capitalist ‘fetishism of commodities’ that Marx found so repellent had advanced to the first line of defense”. (Whitman, 221)

Whitfield brings up film after B-list film produced in the 1950’s as examples of the lengths to which anti-communism narrowed media culture. The “Red” label was applied to anything and everything possible by the HUAC and Motion Picture Alliance. Ominous lists floated from ear to ear, naming actors and writers who, for the most part, were not politically active. This concept of finger pointing and fear, even directed at the “innocent”, is expanded upon in by Mark Goodson: “The watchword in the business is ‘Don’t make waves.”(A Producer Remembers the Red Scare, 226).

Here the root of the longevity and power of anti-communist hysteria is fully exposed. If viewers thought an actor, writer, or producer was a communist, they wouldn’t watch the show – indeed, often a more forceful group (The Catholic War Veterans or the American Legion) would protest and make a lot of noise and someone would end up losing money. While the initial impetus behind the Red Scare can be traced back to a relatively small group of highly vocal instigators, this (ironically Capitalist-driven) link allowed the Red Scare’s influence to trickle down as deeply as it did. Your bosses fears became your own, until by the early 1950’s “it was safer to produce…without any political or economic themes or implications at all.” Whitman’s relentless stark portrayal of the bending of mass culture ends with as strong a condemnation as it began: “…the development of a more vital and various national culture was unrealized.” (Whitman 221, 224)


Such emphatic language can serve as a useful literary aid – it often carries a more memorable message, and can help make an essay a “better read”. However, using this technique inappropriately can make a paper substantially more opinionated and subsequently off-topic. Such is the case with Whitman’s diatribe on The Culture of the Cold War: A blisteringly disappointed narrative tone throws off an otherwise commendable historical investigation. Though entirely supported by his extensive example sources (and echoing the sentiments of all those unfairly [or, for that matter, fairly] blacklisted as Communists), Whitman’s downright derisive voice detracts from the professional level of research put in to his paper. Again, it is for the most part entirely justified – but righteous anger, even at a truly infuriating level of injustice, pandering, and idiot hysteria, is not the tool of the historian.

As well, Whitman does a fair amount of pandering himself. One must take in to account the fact that the essay as it appears in Thinking Through The Past is highly abridged, and so there are several unintended jumps from topic to topic, but even so there are multiple passages that serve no purpose other than to preach a more indignant story to the choir. The (albeit sad) story of Woody Guthrie’s affliction with Huntington’s chorea does indeed symbolize “the fragility of the left-wing popular culture that faced extinction during the Cold War”(Whitman, 223), but that’s exactly it. It’s a symbol, and a damn good metaphor, but neither of those help form a greater understanding of the history of the time.


PS Be honest you can totally tell the place in my essay where I came back after reading THIS for two hours and I was all "oh shit dang yo I gots to finish this up like real fast okay