Fear and Modern Nationalism in Hollywood
The three films we viewed this week are the general interpretation of the opinion Hollywood has on what the average American want to be afraid of. We watched pictures all set between the end of world war two and the beginning of the cold war, a time that is seen as Americas greatest era of fear from foreign bodies that there has ever been. While discussing our final film, Bad Day at Black Rock, the idea that these films are all connected by the fear of the unknown became very clear. In my paper I will discuss how each film represents a certain aspect of the American response to the ‘iron curtain’ that shrouded much of the eastern world from the west. American knew little of the practices of the communist regimes and forthwith it made the reflexive aspects of Hollywood shadow this idea.
Guilty by Suspicion; a fictional narrative about a film maker during the golden age of Hollywood, who returns from a trip to a world filled with an uneasy social climate and friends betraying friends because of being scared “shitless” by the actions of a relatively unknown HUAC. Our fist introduction to the film is in one of these interrogations where, with reason, the audience can barely make out the images of the group of men interrogating a film maker about communism. It is a discussion to say that the American counter attack against communism harboured the same techniques that the fear of centralized government gave to the Americans. This film looked at the era of American fear from those being feared, the un-Americans’ if you will.
The second film we viewed was Invasion of the Body Snatchers; a perspective of the world in a outlandish story of aliens (something unknown) making everyone act without emotion and world together absolutely for a common goal (the definition of a communist utopia). The over powering statements about communism are almost impossible not to see, from the loveless family members who care more about the common gain then their family members, to the scene where the entire town gathered in the square to continue their assignments of spreading their way of life to others. When the main character hears soulful songs and leaves Becky to see the farmers of the pods turning off the music, it is a great deal like the idea that Americans had about communist, that they are soulless communalists. The film was a great deal like Guilty by Suspicion in the way that it was about the battle for individualism, though Guilty… was in response of a witch-hunt by the hyper-individualists.
Our third and final film was Bad Day at Black Rock, which was a look at the American policy of one world politics. In my opinion, the character of smith was the policy that HUAC had with the American hunt for communists. It would look at anything that was new or unknown, as the communist scare was, to be immediately needed to b e rid of. It is a defining stretch to say that a film set right after world war two, about a prejudice murder in a small town is about communism; but I feel like it was an un-objective look at the world when the film was made. It was produced during the heat of the black list and involved the classic setting of an American film, the old west; not to mention that each character represented a subtype of Americans. To go into each character in detail would take a great deal of time, but after seeing this film a great amount of time in the last weeks, I can come to the conclusion that it is a caricature of the American fear that was felt in the beginning of the nuclear age.