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. Bush, "the axis of evil"—a term that recalls President Reagan's branding of the Soviet Union and its satellites as "the empire of evil."
The repression of political dissent in the early 1950s, known as McCarthyism, affected popular culture. Many artists, such as the Hollywood Ten, playwright Clifford Odets, and director Jules Dassin, were suspected of being political subversives. Actor Zero Mostel and screen-writer Walter Bernstein captured their experience of the Hollywood blacklist in the film The Front (1976), directed by Martin Ritt, himself blacklisted during the 1950s. In On the Waterfront (1954), the director Elia Kazan dramatized the struggle of a dock worker trying to stand up to his corrupt union bosses. Many interpreted the film as a metaphor for the perils of "naming names," as some in the Hollywood community, like Kazan, chose to do against suspected Communists. Other anti-Communist films of the era (though none with the stature of Kazan's film) included I Married a Communist (1950), I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), My Son John (1952), Big Jim McLain (1952), and Invasion U.S.A.
This page contains 200 words.
Popular Culture and Cold War article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,698 words
(approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Cold War Article
