Popular Culture and Cold War
In the years following the Second World War, American popular culture mirrored the anxieties that developed between the United States and the USSR. Although allies in the war against fascism, the two nations became increasingly agitated by mutual suspicion. This state of continuous tension, known as the Cold War (1946–1991), became a subject and theme in films, fiction, television, and other genres. In many cases, popular culture served to subvert Cold War anxieties by questioning the reigning assumptions of both the government and the public.
The Paranoid Style
The 1950s were a period of prosperity for American society. Many nations around the world felt the influence of American ways of life and the expressions of its culture. Yet despite American affluence, the spread of communism and the threat of global atomic war plagued Americans with a sense of constant threat both from within and without. Fiction, films, and other products of the culture reflected this fear of a possible communist invasion and atomic holocaust. The "paranoid style," which the scholar Richard Hofstadter defined as a recurrent feature of American politics culminating during the Cold War, also affected the cultural production of the era. With the end of the USSR, this paranoid style shifted its focus to the rise of international terrorism and, in the words of President George W.
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