CODY COLGAN: Red Hollywood

In the fifties we had various problems that people would not admit to having. The fifties were an age of repression and masquerade. We had a vision of mediocrity, where everyone just wanted to be middle class and Keep up with the Joneses. Communism was the menace that apparently threatened our way of life and Hollywood reflected that. Invasion of the Body Snatchers showed us the soulless alien menace (communism) that threatened to take our way of live and make us conformist alien drones. Though Invasion of the Body Snatchers condemns communism, it seems to counter the popular trends at the time by touting the benefits of being an individual. Individuality seems fairly counter culture in a decade of repression, oppression and conformity.

Hollywood has become a large factor in social views throughout the years. It is a system focused on monetary gain and not art as David Thomson points out by saying “Our movies are not simply a business or an art. They are a mass medium, reshaped in the need to help the masses understand their world”. This point is also brought across in the essay by Didion when she calls the Hollywood system “Hollywood the destroyer”. Film is a powerful medium and it became the focus of the government’s energy with the Hollywood blacklist. Guilty by Suspicion chronicles the trials of fictional director David Merrill. Through David Merrill’s story we see how the fifties government and xenophobia created a fascist deformation of many peoples’ lives in Hollywood. The blacklist made a farce of our government, by undermining those with values that weren’t “culturally acceptable” to those in charge. We see David Merrill being forced to make a choice between testifying against his close friends or be out of work indefinitely. This sort of ultimatum being imposed on one of the citizens of our own country shows how big of a role fear plays in our government and the fact that Hollywood generally prescribes to popular ideologies of our society shows how willing mass media is to back those fears up. Bad Day at Black Rock could be seen as an effective allegory for our cultural setting in the fifties. Just a simple representation that we can see is the fact that all the power in the town lies in the hands of Reno Smith and the rest of the townspeople just keep quiet and stay out of the way. It’s only when the outsider John Macreedy comes to town that justice is served and the townspeople are free to express themselves. This could suggest that we need this outsider; we need these opposing views to keep our system in check.
I would like to believe that conformity and xenophobia are not part of our mainstream media today, but I would be lying to myself. Hollywood is marketing tool and mainstream media will always reflect this. Mainstream movies are there to sell not only tickets, but popular cultural values. We need to keep this in mind whenever we see a film. As Naom Chomsky said “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.” And I believe this state of mind should be reflected by our media.

CODY COLGAN

Hollywood Journal

Red Hollywood

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