Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War Movies

Transcription

Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War Movies
Author(s): Michael Rogin
Source: Representations, No. 6 (Spring, 1984), pp. 1-36
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928536
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ROGIN
MICHAEL
Kiss Me Deadly:
Communism,Motherhood,and
Cold War Movies*
I
THE
HISTORY
in Americanpoliticscomprisesthree
of demonology
major moments.The firstis racial."Historybeginsforus withmurderand
wroteWilliamCarlosWilliams.'He wascalling
notwithdiscovery,"
enslavement,
to thehistorical
originsoftheUnitedStatesin violenceagainstpeoples
attention
ofblacklaborlie at
of Indianland and exploitation
ofcolor.The expropriation
butofitspoliticalconflicts
economicdevelopment,
therootnotonlyofAmerica's
fearfulof
Americanpoliticaltradition,
as well.A distinctive
and culturalidentity
developedin responseto peoplesofcolor.
and conspiracy,
disorder,
primitivism,
drawsitsenergyfromalienthreatsto theAmericanwayof life,
That tradition
responsesto them.2
and sanctionsviolentand exclusionary
moment.The tardefinetheseconddemonological
Classand ethnicconflict
agrarian
movedfromtheredsand blacksof frontier,
getsof countersubversion
"savages"and alien"reds"ofurban,industrializing
Americato theworking-class
stillderivedfromrepressive
againstsavagery
America.The defenseofcivilization
expansionagainst
imperial
conditions
oflaboron theone handand frominternal,
on the other.But the termsof the struggleshifted
autonomouscommunities
to ethnocentric
classwar.
fromracialconflict
The
The cold warintroducesthethirdmomentin Americandemonology.
and
classas thesourceofanxiety,
SovietUnionreplacedtheimmigrant
working
wasreplaced
and natives,
immigrants
thecombatbetweenworkers
andcapitalists,
students
employees,
government
byone betweenMoscow'sagents(intellectuals,
appaon theone hand,and a statenationalsecurity
and middle-class
activists)
ratuson theother.The classand ethnicredscaredefinedAmericanpoliticsfrom
itssurges
the 1870sto theNew Deal. The thirdmomenthas had itsvicissitudes,
and declines;we stilllivewithinit.
core:first
Each red (or red and black)scarehas revolvedarounda different
masssocietyand thestate.Ateach
finally
individual
freedom,thenclassconflict,
momentthefreemanhas bothdependedon and definedhimselfin opposition
REPRESENTATIONS 6 * Spring
1984
?
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
to his subversivetwin. The discourse of expansion and slaveryacknowledged
that dependence, for proslaveryapologists made black slaverya condition for
white freedom,free labor ideology counterposed itselfto slavery,and the free
man created himselfin Western,Indian combat. Capitalistsdepended on workers,just as free men needed Indians and slaves. But the persistenceof freelabor
ideology and the influxof immigrantsburied that dependence, shiftinga class
opposition into an ethnicone thatpittedAmericansagainstaliens. Defenders of
the national securitystate invoked their Soviet counterpart,thus returningto
antebellum America's clarityabout the source of doubleness, muddied in the
industrializingage. Now, however,countersubversivedoublingjustifiednot the
freeman but a centralized,secretive,inquisitorialstate.Althoughliberalsblamed
McCarthyism,the rise of a security-orientedstate bureaucracy was the most
importantnew factorin the modern historyof countersubversion.
Americanhistoryin each countersubversivemomenthas constituteditselfin
binaryopposition to the subversiveforcethatthreatenedit. Demonology begins
as a rigidinsistenceon difference.That insistencehas strategicpropaganda purposes, but it also derives fromfears of and forbiddendesires for identitywith
the excluded object. In countersubversivediscourse, therefore,the opposition
breaks down. Its cultural and political productions register the collapse of
demonological polarization in a return of the politicallyand psychologically
repressed.
The subversivein all three stages has threatenedthe family,property,and
personal and national identity.But subversivesmelted into theirsurroundings
as the racial and culturaldifferenceswhich stigmatizedthem disappeared, and
the imagined danger shiftedfromthe body to the mind. Instead of representing
only loss of restraintand disorder,the subversivesignifiedcontrolby a sophisticated,alien order. That danger was met in two new ways,each of which mirrored theenemyarrayedagainstit.One was the riseof the nationalsecuritystate.
The other was the productionand surveillanceof public opinion in the media
of mass society.
This paper examines the representationsof American demonology in the
filmsof the cold war.It analyzes movies made between 1943 and 1964, the years
surroundingthe cold war consensus. These movieshelped produce thatconsensus. It fragmentedafterthe Kennedy assassination,as we shall see, but by then
it had done itswork.The 1960s antiwarmovementchallenged cold war practices
but did not do awaywiththem.The 1980s presidentwho, as we shall see, moved
frommoviesto politicsin cold war Hollywood has revivedthe demonologywhich
gave him politicalbirth.Cold war cinema will give us access, at its founding,to
the cold war discourse withinwhich we continue to speak. As conscious antiCommunistpropaganda, and as unintentionalregisterof anxiety,these movies
reflected,shaped, and expessed the buried dynamicsof a repressive political
2
REPRESENTATIONS
consciousness.They displayboth the cumulativehistoryof American demonology,and the specifichistoricalcircumstancesof the 1950s which placed the obsessionsof thathistoryunder pressure.
Like other productionsof American demonology,cold war movies sharply
distinguishedsubversivesfrom countersubversives.But the movies also made
visible three developments which threatened to collapse that distinction.The
firstdevelopmentwas the rise of the national securitystate,whichcounteracted
SovietinfluencebyimitatingSovietsurveillance.The second, whichwe willintroduce in part II of thisessay,arose fromthe simultaneousglorificationand fear
of maternalinfluencewithinthe family.The thirdwas the emergence of a mass
societywhichseemed to homogenize all differenceand make subversivesdifficult
to spot.
Before AmericaenteredWorldWar I, WoodrowWilsonhad attacked"citizens
of the United States ... born under other flags... who have poured the poison
of disloyaltyinto the veryarteriesof our national life."Afterthe war those foreigners were blamed for the great strikewave of 1919 and the radical agitation
surroundingit.AttorneyGeneral A. MitchellPalmerand his youngsubordinate,
J. Edgar Hoover, rounded up thousands of Americansborn abroad for deportation.Palmerdescribedthe targetsof his raids as "alien filth"with"slyand crafty
eyes ... lopsided faces,sloping brows,and misshapenfeatures."3"Communists,"
agreed Harry Truman'sattorneygeneral,J. Howard McGrath,thirtyyearslater,
"are everywhere-in factories,offices,butchershops, on streetcorners,in priMcGrath
vatebusiness,and each carriesin himselfthe germsof death forsociety."4
was echoing Wilsonand Palmer.But invisibleinternalSovietagentshad replaced
the alien workingclass as the targetof cold war countersubversion.When Palmer'saliens returnedfromouter space, in the science fictionmoviesof the cold
war,theylooked like everyoneelse.
The invisibility
of Communistinfluencedistinguishedthe CommunistParty
fromlegitimateopposition groups. But just because Communistsmasqueraded
as ordinary citizens,it was necessary to insistthey were not. Truman and his
liberalanti-Communistsupporterscontrastedmundane politicalconflictsto the
struggleagainst Communism.The CommunistParty,theyargued, was a secret,
internationalconspiracy to overthrowAmerican government; the Party took
orders froma foreignpower,and its memberscommittedespionage.
The transformationof political dissent into criminaldisloyaltywas fed by
sensational accusations of espionage in the late 1940s and early 1950s against
Alger Hiss, Judith Coplon, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Hiss, accused of
confidentialState Departmentdocuments,was convictedof perjury.
transmitting
The Rosenbergs were executed for,in Judge Irving Kaufman'swords, "putting
into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb."Judge Kaufman accused the RosenforCommunistaggressionand Americandeaths in Korea.
bergsof responsibility
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
KissMe Deadly:Communism,
3
Hiss and the Rosenbergs may well have passed confidentialinformationto the
Russians; theirguilt is stillin dispute. But theyneithergave Russia the atomic
bomb nor caused the Korean War.Their highlypublicizedtrials,and the unprecedented Rosenberg death sentences, helped identifyopposition to American
policies in the cold war withcriminal,treasonous,disloyalty.5
Anti-Communistsrightlycalled attentionto the monstrous crimes of the
Soviet stateagainstitsown and other subjectpeoples, and to Moscow'sdirection
of the American CommunistParty.Some membersof the Partywere probably
spies and murderers,just as were some agents of the American state. But the
assault on Communists and Communist sympathizersfocussed not on actual
crimes but on memberships,beliefs,and associations. It therebyspread by its
own logic to so-called "fellowtravelers,"those who associated withCommunists,
shared their beliefs,and might secretlybe responsive to Partydirection. The
atomicspytrialsof the late 1940s mergedwiththe House Un-AmericanActivities
Committeeinvestigationof Communistinfluencein Hollywood. Becase HUAC
exposed both Hiss and the Hollywood Ten, and because the accused spies, writers, and directorsall wenttojail, the distinctioncollapsed betweenmicrofilmand
film.The celluloid medium of secret influencebecame the message. The Red
(i.e., Communist)scarejoined togetheras one danger atomicspying,revelations
of confidentialgovernmentproceedings,CommunistPartymembership,membershipin "Communistfront"organizations,manipulationof mass opinion, and
subversiveideas. In that chain reaction of guilt by free association, the ideas
became the source of the atomic contamination.As if to reversethe only actual
use of nuclear weapons, thatby the United States,the Red scare made un-American ideas radioactive.The "germs"which spread the "poison of disloyalty"
justifieda state-initiated
counter,anti-Communist,epidemic.
The free man's dependence on the state,at the centerof cold war ideology,
goes back to the origins of America. American countersubversionhas always
defended the individualby mobilizingAmerican nationalism.Both Indian conquest and slave labor were enforced not so much by heroic,individual achievementsas by the armed mightof the state. The free man and the militarystate
are neither two alternativepoles in American ideology,nor are they merelya
recent symbiosis.Their marriage goes back to the beginning.Nonetheless,the
growingpower of American public and privatebureaucracies placed particular
pressureon the freeindividualduringthe cold war.Those bureaucracies,whether
corporateorganizationsor the national securitystate,were presentedas the free
man's allies. They comprised his free enterprisesystemand defended it against
Communism.Still,if the free man was one polar opposite of the subversive,the
national securitystate was the other.And the New Deal, the war, and the cold
war had all given that state an unprecedented presence in American life. The
4
REPRESENTATIONS
boundary separatingthe free man's state fromits subversivetwinwas alwaysin
danger of collapsing in an implosionthatwould annihilatethe free man.
Cold war ideologyestablisheda double division,then,betweenthe freeman
and the state on the one hand, the free state and the slave state on the other.
Cold war movieswillshow how the historicaldisplacementof the firstopposition
by the second called into question an even more fundamentaldivision,and then
offereda solutionto the problemof itscollapse. That divisionis the one between
motherhoodand Communism.
II
The same processof insecureoppositionwhichtroubledpublichistory
also infected private life. Just as the free man was the polar opposite of the
subversivein society,the subversive'sopposite in the familywas the mother.But
just as the boundary between the free man and the state was a permeable one,
so also theline dividingmothersfromCommunismproved to be no Iron Curtain.
Since appearing on the American scene, the subversivehas made the home
into his or her central target.Indians kidnapped and massacred mothersand
children;blacksraped women; revolutionariespromotedfreelove; and theCommuniststate invaded the family'ssanctity.In each image, the American mother
was a passive victimwhose violationsdemanded revenge.But whilethe freeman
who needs the stateis not so independent as the countersubversivepretends,the
motherturnsout to be too powerful.Domestic ideology,whichdeveloped in the
nineteenthcenturyto give women social functionswithinthe home, was doubleedged in itsimpacton bothfamilyprivacyand femalepower.Traditionalmethods
of paternalcoercion,as domesticideologistssaw it,failedto createself-disciplined
children. They punished the body but did not reformthe heart. Domesticity
replaced physicalforce with loving, maternal influence.The domestic mother
created moral characterby giving and withholdinglove. She entered the self,
formedit,understooditsfeelings,and therebyat once produced itand protected
it fromcorruption.6
The motherin domestic ideology made the familya refuge and spread its
influencethroughoutsociety.Domestic ideologyjustifiedwomen's confinement
in the home by makingmothersinto the guardians of public morality.However,
domesticitydid not so much enrich privatelife as socialize it. Denying the truly
private character of the home, it made the familyless a haven for protecting
than an arena forformingand standardizingpersonality.By wiping
eccentricity
out the trulyprivate,domestic ideology threatenedthe familyit was supposed
to support.
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
5
Womenwere empowered morally,in domesticideology,in returnforaccepting theireconomic and politicalsubordination.Confined to the home, women
were promised substantialindirectpower in return;it was the power to sacrifice
theiridentitiesin service to others and live throughthe achievementsof men.
But the sons and husbands whose intimateneeds women served feltdependent
for theirfreedom on the women who attended to them. At the same time,the
emphasis on female virtuegenerated female reformmovements.Transferring
domestic ideology from the home to society,such movementsclaimed direct
politicalpower.Opponents of femalereform,in turn,invokeddomesticideology
to returnwomen to thehome. They fearedwomen who easilyslidfromnurturing
influenceto emasculatingpower.7
For a societyanxious about maternal power,World War II created a crisis.
As the Depession deprived men of confidentpublic lives,women came to play
more important,nurturingroles. Then the men wentoffto war. Encouraged to
replace theirmen on thejob, women were promised significantwork,independence, and even sexual autonomy.Resurgentpostwardomesticideologyattacked
motherswho abandoned theirchildren to work; it also attackedfemale sexual
aggression.Women were drivenback to domesticsubordinationin response not
only to their husbands' return from the war, but also to their own newfound
independence.8
The femininemystiquecame to dominate American culture and societyat
the same time that the cold war took over politics.Cold war cinema emerged
fromthatconjunction.I introducedthe problem of the free man and the state
in the masculinemode, bymakinglarge,historicalclaims.Let me turnto mothers
and Communismin a more intimate,privatemanner,by offeringa synecdoche.
In 1942, Philip Wylie,the immenselysuccessfulwriterfor women's magaofVipers,was an
zines, published a book of social criticism.The book, Generation
immediate bestseller.The American Library Association selected it in 1950 as
one of the major nonfictionbooks of the firsthalf of the twentiethcentury.The
book made Wyliea celebritybecause of its attackon "Momism."Mom, in Wylie's
depiction, was a self-righteous,hypocritical,sexually repressed, middle-aged
woman. Having lost the household functionsof preindustrialwomen,according
to Wylie,mom gotmen to worshipher and spend moneyon her instead.America,
insisted Wylie,was "a matriarchyin fact if not in declaration,"in which "the
women of America raped the men" Mom dominated her husband and encouraged the dependence of her son. She elicitedhis adulation to represshis sex, and
for
transferredthe desire thatought to go to anotherwoman intosentimentality
herself."I give you mom. I give you the destroyingmother,"Wylieconcluded. "I
give you Medusa."9
Momismis the demonic versionof domesticideology.It uncoversthe buried
anxieties over boundary invasion,loss of autonomy,and maternal power gen6
REPRESENTATIONS
erated by domesticity.
Philip Wyliehad been obsessed withthe dangerous attractionsof women since the beginningof his career. He flirtedwithfreelove in his
early fiction,but his men were as vulnerable to sexually liberatedwomen as to
moms.10Although Generation
ofVipersrelinquishesfree love, it stillfallsoutside
the boundaries of acceptable domesticattitudes.In makingmothershis targets,
Wylieexposed anxieties that the mass public could not normallyacknowledge.
Generation
ofVipersfound an audience in the special circumstancesof the war.
During the 1950s motherswere sanctified,not vilified.Althoughthe United
States Army had endorsed Wylie'swarningsabout mom, the Voice of America
removed Generation
of Vipersfromits overseas libraries.Nonetheless,the book's
attackon women was an instrumentin the battle to returnthem to the home.
For so long as Wyliestayedwithinthefamily,he could offeronlymore domesticity
to assuage anxietiesovermom.Wylie,likeother1950sdomesticideologists,
opposed
careers for women and advocated companionate, sexually fulfillingmarriages.
The American motherwas to support her husband and let go of her son; she
was not,likemom,to dominatethem." Wyliewas seekingthesolutionto momism
in the domesticconfinementthathad generated the problem.
When PhilipWylieis stillremembered,itis as the inventorof momism.Wylie
had another obsession besides mothers.however-the menace of Communism.
The author visited Russia with his half-brotherin the 1930s. He blamed the
Russians for the cholera he contractedupon leaving the country,and for his
brother'sfatalfallfroma window.SmokeAcrosstheMoon,serializedin TheSaturday
EveningPost,warned against Communism. An anti-Fascistas well an an antiCommunist,Wyliewrotea militarymanual in 1940 forsoldiersenteringthearmy.
He advocated continued militarypreparedness afterthe war,and warned that
Americans(softenedby moms) were not takingseriouslythe Communistthreat.
(He also blamed mom for McCarthyism.)12
The answer to Communism,Wyliebelieved, lay in nuclear armament and
civildefense. Wylievisitedthe Nevada bomb testsitein the late 1940s, prepared
an imaginativelistof nuclear weapons for the navy,and served as a special consultant to the federal Civil Defense Administration.He became an adviser to
the Commission on Atomic Energy,a friend of its chairman, Senator Brian
McMahon, and an advocate of building the hydrogenbomb.'3
But as he supported atomic weapons, Wylieworried that the countrywas
unprepared for nuclear war. He had collaborated in 1930 with the editor of
Redbookon a science fictionnovel, WhenWorldsCollide.This tale of the earth's
destructionbecame a classic; Hollywood filmedit in 1951. Wyliehimselfhad
writtenscreenplaysfor Hollywood. After the success of the movie version of
WhenWorldsCollide,he began a screenplayon atomic war. He rewroteit as the
and published it in 1954. Wyliededicated Tomorrow
"to the galnovel, Tomorrow,
lant men and women of the federal Civil Defense Administration."Tomorrow
Motherhood,
and Cold WarMovies
7
presentscivildefenseas a protectionnot onlyagainstCommunismbut also against
momism,and offersrearmamentand nuclear war as the way to lay momismto
rest.14
The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was called "LittleBoy."The plane
thatdropped the Hiroshima bomb was named "Enola Gay,"afterthe commander's mother.'5Mom fillsher son withdestructivepower in the nuclear naming
payssilenthomage to thathope byinvertingit.Wylie'smoms
ceremony.Tomorrow
disempowertheirhusbands and sons. Mom is stillthe source of the bomb, as on
the "Enola Gay,"but onlyin Wylie'sunconscious. In his consciousnessmom is the
target.
Two dominate theirweak husbands; the
There are three moms in Tomorrow.
third,whose husband is dead, controls her son and runs the whole town. All
three moms oppose civil defense. They discount the Soviet threat,and resent
the disruptionsthe drillscause in theirshopping rounds and social engagements.
These moms are punished by nuclear war. None takes shelter,and each suffers
the consequence. The firstwatchesthe blast of lightfroma window: "Her face,
her breast, her abdomen were sliced to red meat."The second is saved by her
baby'sbody,pressed up against her. The baby "received a pound of glass in her
back; she was torn almost apart." This mom'sother children are all gruesomely
destroyedas well.The thirdmom,who has dominated everyonearound her and
orchestratedan anti-civildefense campaign, suffersa humiliatingrescue. Crippled by the blast,her helpless fatbody is wheeled throughthe panic-filledstreets
in a wheelbarrow.Tomorrow
blames moms for,and punishes them with,body
16
destruction.
Philip Wyliewas drawn to the apocalypse he claimed to be warningagainst.
Tomorrow
presentscivildefense as a method not of deterringatomic war but of
survivingit. The Russians follow their atomic bombs with germ warfare,and
demand an American surrender.But the Americans have a secret weapon, an
atomicsubmarineriggedas a cobaltbomb. Some scientiststhinkthatifthatbomb
is setoffin the BalticSea itwilldestroytheworld; othersclaimitwillonlydestroy
the submarine will have become a
Russia. Ten years later, in Dr Strangelove,
doomsday machine. In 1954, however,the presidentbelieves the optimists.He
explodes the submarinewithoutwarning,and Americawinsthewar.Those "able
to dream and put the dreams on paper" preside over the rebuildingof a better
world.The dreamer,PhilipWylie,has builthis own betterworldon paper, in the
act of destroyingmoms.17
Liberated women representthe Communistthreatin Wylie'searlier fiction.
The left-wing
college studentin SmokeAcrosstheMoon believesthatwomen should
have careers. She rejects the role of supporting a husband and motheringhis
children.This subversive,who favorssex withoutcommitments,seduces a minister.He hangs himselfwhen she refusesto marryhim.'8 SmokeAcrosstheMoon
8
REPRESENTATIONS
makes the familiarassociationsamong independent women, sexual danger,and
Communism.Female libertinesare typicallypolarized againstAmericanmothers.
But Wylie'sobsession withmomismbreaks down thatbinaryopposition. In The
Disappearance(1951) Wylie imagined that women vanished one day from the
men'sworld,and men fromthe women's.One consequence (in the male half of
existence) is nuclear war.19Women are both essential and menacing in Wylie's
world. He links both their absence and their presence to boundary invasion,
body destruction,and apocalypse.
Merging Communism, mothers, and scientificcatastrophe, Philip Wylie
introducesthe movies of the cold war. The motion pictureindustryrefused to
20 Perhapsthatwas because thescriptmade connectionsgruesomely
filmTomorrow.
explicit that are present but buried in the movies. Cold war filmsdepict the
Communistthreatas an invasive,invisible,deceptive,enslavingconspiracy.The
filmsconstructa Manichean universeto protectAmericanboundaries frominvasion. But theyregisterthe breakdown of effortsto polarize not just free men
against the statebut mothersagainst Communismas well.
Cold war filmspresent themselvesas defending privatelife fromCommunism. Like domestic ideology,however,these movies promote the takeover of
the private by the falselyprivate. They politicizeprivacyin the name of protectingit, and therebywipe it out. Domestic and cold war ideologies not only
dissolve the privateinto the public; theyalso do the reverse. They depoliticize
politicsby blamingsubversionon personal influence.That influence,in cold war
cinema,is female.The filmssubordinatepoliticalconsciousnessto sexual unconsciousness. They inadvertentlylocate the need to make boundaries to protect
identityin the fear of being swallowed not so much by Communismas by the
mother.
In theirsimplestform,the movies identifyCommunismwithsexual seduction. But polarizing the mother against the seductressdoes not redeem mom,
forthe motherbecomes the source of bad influencein thesefilms.Having examined the politicizationof privacy in cold war cinema, and the role of sexual
seduction,I shall thentracethe progressivedeepening of domesticanxiety.That
deep destructuringhas threelayers,family,state,and society;each is a response
to the layerabove. The firstidentifiesCommunismwithsecret,maternal influence. The second replaces mom's surveillanceby that of the national security
state.Hollywood sacrificesthe freeman to the stateto protecthim frommaternal
invasion.But the symbiosisof stateand familyfailsto defend againstthe deepest
fear of maternity.Indifferentfemale reproductivepower,in cold war science
fiction,proliferatesinterchangeableidentities.The aliens of cold war science
fictionare deliberate stand-insfor Communists.But the filmssuggest that the
menace of alien invasionlay not so much in the power of a foreignstateas in the
obliterationof paternal inheritanceand the triumphof mass society.
Motherhood,
and Cold WarMovies
9
III
The filmwhichintroducedcold war demonologyinto Hollywood was
a hot war movie,MissiontoMoscow(1943). It was made to create sympathyfor
Soviet Russia. MissiontoMoscowemployed the imageryof national defense and
internalconspiracytojustifyStalin'spurge trials.The filmblamed a TrotskyiteNazi alliance for weakeningRussia against imminentGerman invasion.Mission
toMoscowbecame a targetof the House Un-AmericanActivitiesCommitteeafter
Howard Koch, was blacklisted.2'The blacklistimitated
the war. Its screenwriter,
the purgesjustifiedby the film.HUAC's appropriationof a pro-Sovietmoviewas
emblematicof the larger historicalrelationshipbetweenthe war against Nazism
and the cold war. Though cold war filmmakersclaimed to be protectingthe
American way of private life against Communism, they actually revived and
inverted the politicized popular-frontculture of the struggle against fascism.
Climaxing during World War II, the popular frontsubordinated private existenceand internalpoliticalconflictto a sentimentalAmericannationalism.World
War II, moreover,provided the occasion forthe emergenceof the national securityapparatus; pro-Communists,who were to be the major targetsof thatapparatus, helped develop the countersubversiverationale. That is less a paradox
thanitseems,forcountersubversivetheorymirrorstheenemyitis out to destroy.
Since twinningdominates the countersubversiveimagination,I shall begin
by treatingcold war moviesin oppositionalpairs. That method elevatesthe double featureof the 1950s movie house to a structuralprincipleof analysis.It will
at once illuminatethe boundaries thesefilmstryto maintain,and also charttheir
breakdown.(Those boundaries break down,in theanalysispresentedhere,when
the mother of a Communisthas a breakdown. Her collapse provides an entry
forthe stateand mass society,where the methodof doubling filmsis abandoned.)
fortheFBI (1951).
The double of MissiontoMoscowis I Wasa Communist
Warner Brothersreversed the ideology of itsMission
In I Was a Communist,
toMoscow.Both filmsused a documentaryvoice-overto give fictionthe sound of
news; both showed factorysabotage; both glorifieda secret,internalpolice; and
both warned against imminentforeigninvasion. A conspiratorialcabal in both
filmsthreatened the national defense, played upon divisivesocial discontents,
and undermined the nation'swill.The differencewas thatthe threatportrayed
was now fromRussia, not to it. (Matt Cvetic,the man who actuallydid play the
role of Communistforthe FBI, had named hundreds of Communistsand Communistsympathizersin westernPennsylvania,costing many theirjobs. He was
later revealed, not in the film,to have had a historyof mentalillness.)22
Missionto Moscow,derived from Ambassador Joseph E. Davies' book, presented itselfas fact. WalterHuston played the ambassador, but Davies himself
appeared at the beginningto introduceand sanction the film.Matt Cvetic was
10
REPRESENTATIONS
also real, and Pittsburghproclaimed Matt Cvetic Day for the premiereof I Was
The film,fictionalboth in Cvetic'sfantasiesof Communistinfluence
a Communist.
and in the movie fictionalizedfromthose fantasies,was nominatedforan Academy Award as the best feature-lengthdocumentaryof 1951.23
warned against a politicaldanAnti-CommunistfilmslikeI Wasa Communist
ger.But theydepoliticizedthe appeals of Communismby using the conventions
of thegangstermovieand equating Communismwithcrime.Such filmsdisplayed
the confusioninstitutionalizedin the FBI betweencriminalactivityand political
dissent. (Alone among Westerndemocracies, America united political surveillance and criminaldetectionin a single agency.The head of the agency for fifty
years,J. Edgar Hoover, had built his career on countersubversionratherthan
fightingcrime.) But in equating Communismand crime,cold war filmsshifted
sympathyaway fromthe individualcriminalof the gangstermovie and toward
the forcesof law and order. Depression-era gangstermovies had sympathyfor
the devil; theirprotagonistswere outsidersand underdogs, self-mademen who
rose to the top. The racketeersand murderersMatt Cvetic exposes in the film
are men in greyflannelsuitswho merelyplay upon sympathyfor the underdog
consistsin the protagThe lonelyheroismof the free man in I Wasa Communist
onistmasqueradingas one sortof organizationalman when in facthe is another.
Both Davies and Cveticentered Communistterritoryon the orders of their
government.Davies enjoyed the luxuryof supportingSoviet Russia as an American governmentofficial.Cveticoutdid him. He masqueraded as an actual Party
memberand lostthe protectionof his patrioticidentity.Davies was rewarded for
his mission; Cvetic made himselfinto a pariah. Sacrificinghis private life to
patrioticwork,Matt Cvetic introducesthe anxious relationshipof the personal
to the politicalthatpervades cold war cinema.
Communism not only threatened public stabilityin cold war films;it also
turned familymembersagainst one another and endangered privatelife. The
loving familyrepresentedAmerica in cold war movies. Communistssubverted
the family,sometimesin the person of a sexual seductress,sometimesas the
of an intrusivestate.The twofiguresentercold warcinematogether,
representative
dressed in innocentclothes,in the pro-RussianWorldWar II film,SongofRussia.
Song ofRussia (1943) elicited romance, then sacrificedit to patriotism,and
leftitsAmericanhero bereftand alone. An Americanconductoron Russian tour
fallsin love witha youngRussian woman, a pianist.But she chooses her country
over her husband aftertheirmarriage.She leaves the conductorwhen the Nazis
invade Russia, and returnsto fightfor her village.
Richard Collins,named the other,Paul
One of Song ofRussia'sscreenwriters,
Jarrico,before HUAC; Jarrico was blacklisted.Robert Taylor was also called
before the Committeefor starringas the American conductor.Taylor played a
victimof Russian patriotismon film.He blamed the American Officeof War
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
11
Informationfor pressuringhim into thatrole. Taylorapologized for appearing
in a Communistfilm.He urged that those Hollywood figureshe named as suspected Communistsbe blacklisted."The American people," Taylor reassured
questioningCongressman Richard Nixon, "willgo along withanybodywho prefersAmerica and the American formof governmentover any other subversive
ideologies."Taylor'sunacknowledged "other" made the American formof governmentas subversiveas the Russian. That apparent slip, in the contextof the
actor'senthusiasticcooperation withthe Committee,faintlyechoes Nikolai Bukin his Moscow purge trial.Tayharin'sdeliberatesubversion-by-overcooperation
lor may have been recognizing,unconsciouslyor even consciously,that HUAC
was substitutingone intrusivestateforanother,and thatsuch politicalintervention subvertedhis desire to be leftalone. The actor rejected propaganda films
in favorof entertainment.But thatformulawas too privatizing
in his testimony,
for the Committee.To make sure that Americanswere protectedfromsubversion, Taylor agreed with HUAC that "the motion picture industry... should
make anti-Communistpictures."24
The motion pictureindustrydid. NeverLet Me Go (1953) took back Song of
Russia.Clark Gable playsan Americanwar correspondentwho marriesa Russian
ballerina during the war. But the Communistswon't let her out of Russia after
the war is over. In Song ofRussia Taylor'swife died fightingthe Nazis and he
returned to America alone. But Gable secretlyinfiltratesRussia and bringshis
woman home.
Susan Peters,playingthe pianist,chose her countryover her husband. Gene
Tierney,playingthe ballerina, chooses her husband. The femme fatale in Kiss
Me Deadly(1955) masquerades as a Tierney,the helpless victimof atomic spies;
in factshe is more deadly than they.Although Mike Hammer is no familyman,
he is stillseduced by a woman'sapparent helplessness.To turn MickeySpillane's
detectivethrillerintoa cold war movie,Hollywoodadded atomicradiation.Hammer is on the trailof a stolenbox containingradioactivematerial.The slightest
opening of the box emits rayswhich burn and disfigurethe body. The woman
gains possession of the box in the film'sclimacticscene; she knowsits value, but
is ignorantof its contents.Unable to restrainher curiosity,Pandora opens the
box and a glowing fireleaps out. Since the woman is facing the camera from
behind the box, the fireseems to leap out of her body. It consumes the woman
and destroysthe house to whichshe and the detectivehave come. Only Hammer
escapes the holocaust.KissMe Deadlylocates Pandora's box as the seat of apocalypticdestruction.
Less seamy and violent anti-Communistfilmsdomesticate the subversive
the Partysends a seductiveschoolteacherto spy
woman. In I Was a Communist,
on Cvetic,whose son is in her class. Cveticrejectsthe schoolteacher'sadvances in
theirfirstprivate encounter.Once she learns to mistrustthe Communistsand
12
REPRESENTATIONS
chooses the FBI over the Party,she is no longer a threatto him. That is partly
because he now protectsher fromCommunisteffortsat murder.It is also because
when she leaves the Partyshe leaves her sexualitybehind.
Joseph von Sternberg'sJetPilot,made in 1951 and released in 1957,25is a
comic-stripvariationon the same theme. (Its lack of seriousnessmay have convinced Howard Hughes not to release it at the heightof the cold war.)A female
Russian jet pilot, masquerading as a political refugee, seduces and betraysthe
ofJanetLeigh overJohn
Americanassigned to discoverher secrets.This victory,
Wayne,reproduces Marlene Dietrich'striumphin Sternberg'sBlue Angel.In both
movies a male sexual innocent is at firstresistantto overt displays of female
sexuality,and then succumbs. Each hero discovers his woman's disloyaltyafter
having married her. But the American refuses to accept his humiliation.Like
Gable in NeverLet Me Go, Wayneenters Russia. He is now playingLeigh's role,
of a spymasqueradingas a defector.Pretendinghe is stillin Leigh's sexual power,
Wayneoutwitsboth her and the Russian state. His prowess is too much for the
Russian Mata Hari. At the film'send she chooses Wayneover Russia, and the two
jet pilotsflyoffto freedomtogether.Patriarchyand love inJetPilotprove stronger
than Communismand sex.
"I woke up one morningand found I had a Partycard,"explains a contrite
Communistin WalkEast on Beacon (1952). It is like "findingyourselfmarried to
a woman you hate."26Anti-Communistfilmsseem to pose the classic opposition
between the free man, family,and love on the one hand, female sexuality,the
state,and the invasionof the familyon theother.They seem to standwithprivate
lifeagainstthreatsfromwithout.But the filmsactuallysuggestthatsuch a polarizationis too simple,fortheyalso express anxietyabout the internalvulnerability
of the family.Both Cvetic'srole and Taylor'stestimonyshow thatcold war cinema
politicizedprivacyin the name of defendingit.That paradox is not to be explained
simplyby the externalthreatof Communism.Cold war filmsimplythatdomestic
ideology,far fromprotectingAmerica againstalien ideas, generated aliens from
withinits bosom. The 1950s movie which comes closest to blaming mom for
Communismis My SonJohn(1952).
Two sons toss a footballwith their fatherin the opening scene of My Son
John.The fatherdrops the ball. "I was a tackle,"he jokes. "They ran through
you,dad," responds one of the sons. The camera pans up to a bedroom window.
It revealsthe mother,playedby Helen Hayes,dressed onlyin her slip. The family
is late forchurch,and the fathercan't get her to come on time. He's never been
able to, he says.When mom finallyjoins her family,she walksbetweenand flirts
aggravatesthe
withher sons. These sons are twins,and theirinterchangeability
disorientationof the opening of the film.
Leo McCarey,who directedMy SonJohn,normallymade Hollywood comedies. He had a comic intentionin the opening scene of this movie. But the
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
13
appearance of the absent son, John, transformscomedy into surrealism,and
casts a retrospectivecold eye on the movie'sbeginningas well.
John's brothersare off to fightin Korea; theyare their father'sboys. The
mother'sbond is withJohn, the Washingtonintellectual,who staysaway from
theirsend-off.John will also make fun of his father,as his brothersdo, but his
ridiculehas an edge thattheirslacks. Robert Walker,who died whilemakingthis
film,playsJohn. His distancing,de-realizingpersona calls thevalues of his family
into question. Walker'sironyis meant to expose John'scontemptforwholesome
American life. But his brilliantperformance draws directorand viewer in, so
that the filmpresents the American familythroughJohn's detached and discreditedeyes. My SonJohnmay want to stand withthe father,but it exposes his
American Legion costume and his simple-minded,patrioticslogans to ridicule.
John'sfather,speaking the message of the film,warns thatCommunistsare
no longer foreigners,but Americans.These internalenemies resemblepatriots,
the filmtellsus, whom theyimitatein order to subvert.Communistswere aliens
in the firstRed scare; they assaulted the American family.John's familyhas
produced a subversive,and it is powerlessagainst him.
John'sfathermakeshim swearon thefamilyBible thathe is nota Communist.
Then, provoked by John's mockery,he smashes the Bible over his head. The
father'sold-fashioned,coercive methods fail to disciplineJohn,just as domestic
ideology predictedtheywould not.John'sfatherdoes not command respect; he
is reduced to forcingthe Bible on his son. John'smotherinsinuatesit into him
byinterchangingitwithfood. "I'd makeyou a cake,cookies and jam," she reminds
John,"ifyou'd read Matthew,Luke and John."But the newermaternalmethods
of lovinginfluenceonlymake mattersworse.John has become a Communist,the
filmimplies, because of the liberal ideas and sexual availabilityof his mother.
"You are part of me,"John's mother tells him, and even as that line points to
John'sbetrayalof his mother,it insistson the lack of boundaries betweenthem.
John has imbibed his mother'snaive humanitarianismand, to distance himself
fromher,taken it in a sinisterdirection.
Helen Hayes plays a flaky,independent, sympatheticwoman. The family
doctor prescribespillswhen her youngersons go offto war,and we applaud her
refusal to take them. But Hayes' feistinessbecomes a sign of her disturbance.
Her intimacywithJohn gets her in trouble in the course of the film,and her
eccentricitiesturn to madness.
My SonJohncapitalizedon theJudithCoplon spy case. The filmmakesJohn
not merelya Communistbut a spy,and therebymergesatomicand sexual secrets.
John has betrayedhis motherfor a female spy,but he inadvertentlyleaves his
key to the spy'sapartmentin a pair of torn pants that he gives his motherfor
charity.Mom turnshim in to the FBI onlyaftershe fliesto Washington,triesthe
key,and itfitsthe otherwoman'slock. "Mothers... Our Only Hope," announced
14
REPRESENTATIONS
I(I
Above:Nfom(fielen I laves)withhersoil (RobertWaKlker)
(ihelnia Ritter)with lneof her
in Mx SouiJfoh; below:MN()e
in Pikup on SotithStveet.
bIo)Oy's' (Richard W\idmark)
RF1I.
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
15
J. Edgar Hoover's articleenlistingdomesticideologyin the fightagainstcrime.27
But in My SonJohnthe special bond betweenmotherand son engenders psychological and politicalbad influence.
By psychologizingthe appeals of Communism,MySonJohnlocated the problem in the veryfamilythatwas supposed to provide the solution. Psychological
explanationsforCommunism,likethe reductionof Communismto crime,diverted
attentionfromsocial injustice.But psychologypointed away fromsocietynot to
the gangster,but to the family.It located the threatto the free man less in the
alien Communiststatethan in his lovingmother.
The familyconstellationin My Son Johnconsisted of an intrusive,sexually
unsatisfiedmother,a weak father,and a cold, isolated son. The ManchurianCandidate(1962) repeated that triangleand made it demonologicallyexplicit. The
ManchurianCandidateis a brilliant,self-knowingfilm.But far frommockingthe
mentalityit displays,it aims to reawaken a lethargicnation to the Communist
menace. Capitalizingon itsimprobabilitiesbymixingrealismwithsciencefiction,
TheManchurianCandidateis the most sophisticatedfilmof the cold war.
Laurence Harvey is the Manchuriancandidate. The Communistscapture his
batallionin Korea, takethe men across the Chinese border,and programHarvey
forpoliticalassassination.During thesebrainwashingsessions,the Americansoldiers hallucinate that the Communistswho give them orders are middle-aged
club women. The playing card, the queen of diamonds, the residue of these
moms,is Harvey'scontrolcard. He goes into a trancewhen he sees the queen of
diamonds, and obeys the orders of the next voice he hears.
Harvey's mother,played by Angela Lansbury,connectsthe fantasizedManchurianclubwomento the queen of diamonds. "She is a middle-agedpuffinwith
an eye likea hawk,"Philip Wyliewroteof mom;28he mighthave been describing
Lansbury.Harvey hates his motherbut he is in her power. Her incestuouslove
for him, which repels Harvey but which he cannot escape, is the source of the
Party'shold on his unconscious. Helen Hayes is sympathetic,as Lansbury is not.
But both momsbringto the surfacethe entrapping,repressed,Oedipal love that
Wyliemade the source of momism.As ifto confirmWylie'sclaim thatmomswon't
let theirsons go, Harvey is programmedto killhis own fiancee.
John's father,the simple-mindedpatriot,has become Harvey's stepfather,
and TheManchurianCandidaterelinquishesthe sympathyfor thatfigurethatMy
SonJohntried to retain. Lansbury is married to a drunken,ridiculous,malevoanti-Communistsenator,a charactermodeled on Joe McCarthy.
lent,right-wing,
AlthoughLansbury masquerades as a superpatriot,she is secretlya Communist,
and controlsher husband. Afterhe is nominated for vice president,the Party
orders Harvey to kill the man at the head of the ticket.If Harvey succeeds, his
McCarthystepfatherwill be elected presidentand his Communistmotherwill
run America.
16
REPRESENTATIONS
But incestis strongerthan Communismin thisfilm,as it was in My SonJohn.
Furious thatthe Sovietshave made her son theirsacrificialinstrument,Lansbury
vows to turn against them once her husband is president.She seals that pledge
to herselfwith a long kiss on Harvey's lips. Kissing her son in closeup, as she
faces the camera, Harvey's mom is kissingthe audience. We feel as sickened as
he does by her inappropriatedesire. But just as her incestuouslove is stronger
than Communism, so is his incestuous hate; it frees him from Party control.
Frank Sinatra, playing the army intelligence officerpursuing Harvey, does
not reach him in time to prevent the assassination. But after climbing the
stairsto the top of the conventionhall, and gettingthe presidentialcandidate
in his sights,Harvey turns his rifleon his stepfatherand his motherand kills
them instead.
Domestic ideology promised that the American familywould triumphover
Communism.TheManchurianCandidate,by subordinatingCommunistto maternal influence,showed what that promise entailed. The familydefeats Communism only by firstgeneratingCommunismand then self-destructively
replacing
it. The incest fantasywhich reduced Communism to momism is shown to be a
wish. For the familynightmaredefends against havingactuallyto come to terms
withpolitics.Freed fromits roots in momism,Communism (and anti-Communism) would have to be seen as havinglives of theirown.
TheManchurianCandidateis a Kennedy Administrationfilm.Sinatra,a member of the Kennedy entourage, plays a ravaged, lonely Kennedy hero. He tries
to rouse a credulous army bureaucracy to the danger posed by Harvey. The
Presidentialcandidate is asking Americans to sacrificefor their countrywhen
Harvey trainshis sightson him. Like Kennedy,TheManchurianCandidatewarns
against both right-winghysteriaand bureaucraticcomplacency.Both the film
and the administrationaimed to breathe new life into the cold war.
The cold war needed reanimatingin the early 1960s. Eisenhowerseemed to
turn pacificduring his second term,the Korean war was over, and McCarthy
had been reduced to impotence. As if in acknowledgmentof the shiftin the
national mood, Hollywood had released no anti-Communistmovies since 1957.
Moreover,JetPilot,the last to be shown,had a comic ambience alien to vintage
cold war cinema. TheManchurianCandidate,witha politicaland technicalsophisticationabsentfromitsmodels,was supposed to initiatea politicalrenewal.Instead
it was the last cold war movie, for the assassinationto whichit pointed brought
the cold war consensus to an end.
TheManchurianCandidatewas released in 1962. The verynext year a young
man who had returned frombehind the Iron Curtain carried a riflewithtelescopicsightsup severalflightsof stairsin a building.Like Harvey,he firedthrough
a window on a targetbelow. Unlike Harvey,he did not shifthis aim. No doubt
theassassinationwhichimitatedartwas an eerie coincidence.But in 1981 another
Motherhood,
and Cold WarMovies
17
witha movie assassin. TaxiDriver
troubledyoungman acted out his identification
led John Hinckleyto shoot at one President;29did Laurence Harvey stimulate
Lee Harvey Oswald?
The coincidencein names, whichunsettlesthe observer,mayalso have taken
possession of Oswald. If the Russians did not program Lee Harvey Oswald,
perhaps The ManchurianCandidatedid. One has the additional fantasythat the
filmwarned Oswald (or whoeverprogrammedhim)to avoid themistake(merging
motherhood and Communism) of those who programmed Harvey. No doubt
Oswald was neither stimulatednor alerted by The ManchurianCandidate.His
successnonethelessdid have theconsequence againstwhichthefilmwas warning.
By killinghis presidentwhere Harvey had failed, Oswald initiatedthe breakdown of cold war demonology. In the absence of a young hero who could
reinfusethe cold war with meaning, and in the presence of a violence which
(or so it seemed), the cold war conoverwhelmedanti-Communistsimplifications
sensus temporarilydisintegrated.TheManchurianCandidatewas followedby Dr.
(1964), a movie entirelyfaithfulto the filmtraditionit bringsto an
Strangelove
end.
Sterling Hayden, playing Gen. Jack D. Ripper, who sets the holocaust in
motion, was making reparation for cooperating with HUAC.30 Dr. Strangelove
derived anti-Communismand nuclear holocaust from the free man's fear of
female sexuality.Ripper protectshis bodily fluidsfromwomen by withholding
his seed. He uses the initialsof "purityof essence" as the code whichlocks the
bombers on theirtargets.George C. Scott plays a sexual cowboy,General Buck
Turgidson,the mirrorimage of Ripper.Slim Pickensis the pilotwho, wavinghis
stetson,rides the bomb between his legs down to Russia. The bomb will set off
a Russian doomsday machine thatwill wipe out notjust momismand Commubut the entireworld.
nism (as in Tomorrow)
makes gallowshumor fromthe sexual politicsof cold war cinema.
Strangelove
It also brings to the surface the two other cinematicsubtextsto which we now
turn.One is the freeman'sdisplacementbythe technologicalstate.Men are weak
and falliblein Strangelove;
technologytakes over fromthem.Justas in its treathere mocks a wishwithincold war films.The
mentof sexual politics,Strangelove
second subtextis the buried fear of nuclear holocaust. That anxietyis doubly
displaced in cold war cinema. It moves fromanti-Communismto science fiction
and, withinthat genre, fromreal bombs to fantasymenaces-radiation-caused
mutationsin Them!,an alien invasion(whichoccursat thesiteof a nucleardefense
complex) in InvadersfromMars. We shall firstexamine the technologicalstatein
cold war movies,and conclude withscience fiction.
The cold war cultural consensus produced political power in the 1950s. It
helped build a national securityapparatus. That apparatus survivedthe breakdown of the consensus and dominated the 1960s. By the time the culturalcon18
REPRESENTATIONS
were in place. We can
sensus stopped producingpower,the powerfulinstitutions
see theirgenesis in our films.The national securitystate,absent thus far from
our reading of cold war cinema, is not absent fromthe movies themselves.Cold
revealwar filmswhichexposed familyweaknesswerenot merelyunintentionally
ing troubles at the heart of American private life; they were exploring those
troublesin order to promote theircure. Help for the insecure familylay in the
national securitystate. Two filmsdirected by Edward Dmytrykintroduce that
state. He made the first,Crossfire
(1947), before he was jailed as one of the Hollywood Ten. He made the second, The Caine Mutiny(1954), afterhe recanted,
set in the yearsof the
named names, and was allowed to work again.3' Crossfire,
emergingcold war,warns against the demonizationof culturaland politicaldifference. The Caine Mutinyreturnsto World War II in order to justifycold war
was the mirrorimage of MissiontoMoscow,
America.Just as I Was a Communist
and NeverLetMe Go took back Song ofRussia,so The CaineMutinywas Dmytryk's
unwritingof Crossfire.
was one of a handful of sociallyconscious filmsthat got Hollywood
Crossfire
in trouble. Its subject was antisemitism.Robert Ryan plays a character named
Montgomerywho kills a Jew,and tries to pin the crime on a confused young
soldier.We see the Jew in flashback,explaining the feelingsof purposelessness
and violencethatare emergingwiththe end of the WorldWar II. His talksoothes
the young soldier; it enrages the ex-soldier,Montgomery.But although Montgomerysilences one voice of sympatheticunderstanding,there is no danger in
thisfilmof a world out of human control.Two strongmen are in charge of the
action. Once theystartworkingtogether,Montgomeryratherthan the accused
innocentis the man caught in the crossfire.
Robert Mitchum plays a tough sergeant, Kelley,the good counterpart to
Montgomery.Robert Cummings plays Finlay,the more intellectual,soft-spoken
policeman. Although both Kelley and Finlaywork in law-and-orderbureaucracies, the filmignores the institutionsin favorof the individuals.In a filmwhich
claimsto stand againstauthority,
a policeman and a sergeantnonethelessbecome
its heroes. Crossfire
is populated by attractive,reliable,strongmen.
There is a tough,authoritativeofficerin The CaineMutiny.He is the captain
of the minesweeper,the Caine,and he exitsat the beginningof the movie. That
captain is replaced by the dictatorial,pathetic,paranoid Captain Queeg. Fred
MacMurrayplaysthe tough-talkingcynicalintellectual,Lt. Tom Keefer,who has
no use for naval discipline. He plants in his fellowofficersthe idea that Queeg
is insane. Keefer combines the figuresof Montgomeryand Kelley; he is Kelley
in his apparent concern for the film'syoung protagonist,Montgomeryin his
alienation.Sympathyin Crossfire
had shiftedto Montgomery,in spiteof the movie's ideology,once the trap closed around him. Keefer inheritsthatsympathyfor
the rebel, in order,by the end of CaineMutiny,to forfeitit entirely.Keefer instiKissMe Deadly:Communism,
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
19
gates the mutinybut refusesto take responsibilityforit. Instead he succeeds (as
Montgomerydid not) in makinga young,innocentmilitaryman stand trialfor
a capital crime.
Van Johnson plays Lt. Steve Maryk,the neophyteofficerof the deck who
relieves Queeg of command during a storm. Maryk has a mom, one of Wylie's
overstuffed,intrusive,middle-aged mothers.He emancipates himselffromher
influenceduring the movie and marries the young woman of whom she disapsoldier is also restoredto his wife,but the authoritieswho take
proved. Crossfire's
care of him are absent fromCaineMutiny.Marykhas no father.Queeg resembles
John's fatherand Laurence Harvey's stepfatherin his patheticclaims to power
and in his embarrassingdesires to be loved. He is hardlyan adequate fathersubstitute.MarykoverthrowsQueeg. But in theabsence of a strong,male authority,that act does not free him from his mother; instead it threatenshim with
capital punishment.Maryk grows up though the interventionand support of
the state.
soldier'sentrapment,
The crucial figurein Maryk'srescue, as in the Crossfire
is a Jew.Both Jewsexplain a bewilderingworldto theirneophytes,but whileone
is a kindlysmall-businessmanvictim,the other is an angry lawyerin service to
the navy.Jose Ferrerplays the lawyer,Barney Greenwald,who exposes Queeg's
paranoia during Maryk'scourt martial. But outside the courtroom Greenwald
standswithQueeg, not against him. He turnsto Keefer at the partycelebrating
Maryk'sacquittal,and tellshim,"The authorof the Caine mutinyis you."Greenwald is accusing not onlyKeefer,but also theJew,Herman Wouk,who wroteThe
CaineMutiny,and the ex-Communist,Dmytryk,who directedit.Wouk and Dmytryk(through their representative,MacMurray) must atone for their earlier
rebelliousness.Queeg is pathetic,Greenwald agrees; he is a victimof the ravages
of war. Justfor that reason the crew and its natural leaders must rallybehind
him. Keefer and Maryk should have responded to Queeg's appeals for help
had room for Kelley,the irrevinstead of treatinghim withcontempt.Crossfire
into
good and evil halves,Kelley
erent,cynicalman of the world. No longer split
and Montgomeryare merged into Keefer and expelled fromthe Caine'smoral
policeman to save the innocent
universe. Kelley allied himselfwith Crossfire's
soldier.Keefer endangers both authorityand the innocent.The innocentshould
have rescued authorityon the Caine. When the captain is weak, the filmtellsus,
his troops must sacrificetheircriticalintelligence.They must bolster authority
from below, and cooperate with the hierarchyabove. When the fatherslack
authority,says The Caine Mutiny,we must subordinate ourselves to the military
state.
and My SonJohnconExplicitlyanti-CommunistfilmslikeI Wasa Communist
tain the same message. In such movies the state steps in to restore not simply
social order but sexual hierarchyas well.John'sbetrayaldrives his motherto a
20
REPRESENTATIONS
breakdown,and his fatheris powerlessto help her. The FBI tracksJohn down
and saves his parents;weakened paternal authorityrequires the help of the state.
Where the parentsthemselvesare guilty,as in the real life Rosenbergcase, they
mustconfessto the stateor be killed.But here,too (and contraryto theevidence),
mom was seen as the person in charge. "Juliusis the slave and his wife,Ethel,
the master,"insistedMorris Ernst,co-counsel of the ACLU. His theoryformed
the basis fora "psychologicalstudy"whichreached PresidentEisenhower'sdesk.
Repeating the momism fantasyas he refused to grant clemencyto the Rosenbergs,EisenhowerwrotethatEthel was "the more strong-mindedand the apparent leader of the two."32
RobertWarshow,the liberalanti-Communistfilmcritic,thoughtMy SonJohn
stood withthe father,and he hated the movie for glorifyinga stupid anti-Communism.Unwillingto see his own statistpoliticsreflectedback at him in vulgar
propaganda, Warshow was blind to the fact that My Son Johndiscredited the
fatherto create a need for the FBI. The only figurenot undercutby the end of
the movie is the FBI agent, Stedman, played by Van Heflin. To use Catherine
Gallagher'sterms,The Caine Mutinyand My SonJohnmark the victoryof social
paternalismover domesticideology.33
A patriarchalstate does not replace the family,however.Men comprise the
state,to be sure; but theyuse the techniquesof motherhoodand Communismintrusion,surveillance,and secretdomination.Moreover,theyuse thesemethods
to save the family,not to destroy it. In a militaristversion of reformistand
therapeuticpractice,the familyrequires help fromexperts in order to maintain
itself.The private feelingswhich constitutethe subject also constitute(in Foucault'spun) the means for his subjection.The familyis constructedin the name
of privacyas a fieldforsocial control.State and familyinterpenetratein mutually
supportiveanxiety.The desire for privacycreates nervousnessabout the intrusion of the state. But anxietyover intimateprivaterelationsgeneratesstatesurof stateand familythanthat
veillanceand protection.Betterthe interpenetration
of motherand son.34
Momism, presented as the source of Communism in a filmsuch as My Son
John,maythusappear exposed as thesource of anti-Communism.But thatsimple
reversal,by assigningpower to mom,itselfparticipatesin cold war distress.Fears
of boundary invasiondo point to infantileanxietiesover maternalpower,to the
state of dual union with the mother.35In addition, by encouraging maternal
surveillance,domesticideologyaugmentedanxietiesover boundary breakdown,
particularlyin so far as actual motherscarried out its precepts. Moreover,the
specificversionof domesticideologycurrentin the 1950s,the femininemystique,
played upon fearsof the sinisterpower of women in societyto drive themback
into the home. The femininemystiquefailed to assuage those fears,forit made
the home at once the arena of mom's influenceand the confinedspace against
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
21
which,in fantasiesof femalevengeance, she would rebel. The insistence,at one
and the same time, on rigid boundary divisions and maternal influencethus
created an unstable,contradictorymasculine identity.Cold war movies blamed
Communistsfor thatexplosive mixtureas a cover forblaming mothers.
The resortto momism,nonetheless,was itselfan escape frominvestigating
invasivestructureswhich,though theyintrudedon the family,were located outside the home. Filmmakerswere under pressures that may have reawakened
infantileanxieties, but those pressures came from Moscow, Washington,and
Hollywood, not frommom. Soviet expansion on the one hand, American state
invasionof the motionpictureindustryon the other,laybehind cold war cinema.
Seeing Communistspies everywhere,cold war moviesglorifiedthe double agents
of the Americanstate.That filmicstate,to be sure, was a wishas well as a reality.
The moviespresenteda ubiquitous,intrusiveAmericanstateapparatus, an ideal
typeto whichtheactual nationalsecuritybureaucracymade an imperfectapproximation.The American state ostensiblydefended us fromSoviet Russia; in the
subtextof the films,the statedefended us frommom. At a deeper level still,that
statewas itselfthe problem. The movies disguised that problem by shiftingthe
locus of anxiety from the American state to the American familyon the one
hand, the Russian stateon the other.
By mergingmotherhoodand Communismas the source of secretinfluence,
moreover,the filmsdeflectedattentionfromthemselves.Film, as HUAC investigatorsunderstood, was an intruder.It entered the unconscious of those who
watched moviesin darkened theatersthroughoutthe land. The men controlling
the hidden cameras were agents of Hollywood,not the FBI. But the Hollywood
agents who controlledfilmswere not the men who made them.Those in charge
of movieswere emissariesof larger politicaland economic structures,structures
duringthecold war.The intruwhichpressed particularlyhard upon filmmakers
sive statedepicted on filmmayrepresentthe filmmakers'anxietyabout theirown
influenceand their susceptibilityto influence,and, therefore,their Kafka-like
rush into the arms ofjust those powerfulforces,in Washingtonand the motion
picturebusiness,thatthe filmmakersfeared.
The Communistsintend"to deliverAmerica to Russia as a slave,"MattCvetic
ends withthe "Battle Hymn of the Republic" on the
warns. I Was a Communist
sound track,as the camera closes in on a bust of Lincoln. Anti-Communistfilms
attackedthe police state,yettheyglorifiedan FBI whose agents, cameras, and
electroniclisteningdevices,controlledfroma centralsource,penetratethe deepest recessesof privatelife.Agent Stedman uses a car accidentto insinuatehimself
intoJohn'smother'shome. (He pretendsto want her insurance company to pay
for the damage.) He wins her confidenceby his interestin her boys,and elicits
informationwithouttellingher his real identity.The FBI followsJohn'smother
and filmsher humiliationat the other woman's apartment.Although the Com22
REPRESENTATIONS
munistskillJohnafterthe Bureau convertshim,we witnesshis redemptionfrom
beyond the grave. The stockIrish familypriest,last shown sortingthroughold
clothes given to charity,is supplanted by the technologicalstate. A (spot) light
shines down upon a tape recorder,which has replaced John'sabsent body. His
recorded voice addresses a college graduatingclass and deliversJohn'sconfession. In Leo McCarey'stechnologicalversion of modern Catholic anti-Communism,tape recorder equals mysticbody and tape equals soul.
WalkEast on Beacon (1952) also celebratesthe techLike I Was a Communist,
nology of surveillance.WalkEast on Beacon, another pseudo-documentary,was
based on a book byJ. Edgar Hoover and made withthe FBI's "technicalassistance."At the beginningof the movie a narratorextols the Bureau for"protecting" us. Soon we watch agents opening our mail. Both movies reassure us with
scenes of tape recorderswhirring,agentslistening,and cameras observing.Even
technologyfillsthe
if thereis a singlehero, like MattCveticin I Wasa Communist,
supportingroles. Thus it is oftendifficultin such filmsto tell the facelessCommunistsfromtheircounterpartsin the FBI.36
Cold war familiesare endangered by anti-Communistpublic opinion as well
as by the state.MattCvetic,the secretagent who playsCommunist,is repudiated
by his immigrantbrothers.His son gets into fightsand loses his friendsbecause
theythinkthat his fatheris a Red. Unable to tell his son the truth,Cvetic loses
him too. In the name of showing Communism'sthreat to the family,I Was a
Communist
exposes the ravagessufferedby familieswhose memberswere accused
of subversion.
Anti-Communistfilmsalso violated the sanctityof the familyfromwithin.
They justifiedthe informerwho betrayedsubversivemembersof his or her own
family.In the figureof the informer,anti-Communistfilmsmobilized societyin
theserviceof the state.BothMySonJohnand WalkEast onBeaconmade informing
on Communistfamilymembersan act of moral heroism.StormWarning(1951)
and On theWaterfront
(1954) moved the defense of informingintootherwalksof
life,southern violence and labor racketeering.The effortto turn the informer
intoa culturehero had particularresonance in Hollywood,where namingnames
had become a conditionof employment.
On theWaterfront
was writtenby Budd Schulberg,directedby Elia Kazan, and
starred Lee J. Cobb. All named names before HUAC, and the filmhas rightly
been seen as a Hollywood parable.37StormWarning,starringRonald Reagan, has
escaped similaranalysis.Perhaps thatis because Reagan playsa southerndistrict
attorneywho exposes the Ku Klux Klan. The filmeven confuseda recentBerkeley audience, forit seems to make Reagan into a hero. But the Klan was a standin for the CommunistPartyin justificationsof FBI surveillance.StormWarning
gives itselfawayby entirelyavoiding race; the targetsof its Klan are not blacks.
Like the Partyin I Wasa Communist,
StormWarning'sKlan is merelya racket.The
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
23
filmwantsto warn againsta violentsecretconspiracywithoutraisingthe spectre
the
of racial injustice.(Communiststryto stirblacks to riotin I Wasa Communist;
black crowd is menacing, and the movie blames the CommunistParty for the
Detroitrace riotsof 1943 in whichblacks were actuallythe victims.)
As president of the Screen Actors' Guild, Ronald Reagan led the fightto
drive subversivesout of Hollywood. He opposed, as he later put it, "The Communistplan ... to take over the motionpicturebusiness.""Its gradual transformation into a Communistgristmill,"he wrote,"would have been a major coup
for our enemies."Reagan wore a gun during his battleagainst Communism,to
protecthimselfagainst Red reprisals."I mounted the holsteredgun religiously
everymorningand took it offthe last thingat night,"he wrote.Pioneer heroism
and Indian war had moved from American historyinto Hollywood political
fantasy.Shiftingfromone red enemy to another,Reagan brought fantasiesof
individualismback intohistoryagain. But thelone man in Hollywoodwas actually
a victimof corporate,countersubversivecooperation. HUAC, the motionpicture
business,the unions, and privateagencies all workedtogether,blacklistingthose
who refused to name names. (Hollywood's threatto the lone individual is allegorized in Carl Foreman's High Noon [1952], made when he was refusingto
cooperate withHUAC.) As presidentof the Screen Actors'Guild, Reagan helped
orchestrateand enforcea blacklistwhose existencehe denied.38
Reagan playshimself,as DistrictAttorneyBurt Rainer,in StormWarning.He
is asked at the outset of the filmif he plans to "name names" and expose the
respected membersof his communitywho secretlybelong to the Klan. District
AttorneyRainer respondsthathe standsfor"lawand order."(Reagan had starred
theyearbeforein a moviewiththattitle.)Later a committeeof prominentcitizens
asks Rainer to leave the Klan alone so that outsiders will not divide the community.The actors speak the lines of the Hollywood Committee for the First
Amendment,tryingto protectthe Hollywood Ten. StormWarning'scommittee
membersare fellowtravelersof the Klan.
The committeewants a Klan murder to go unpunished; Rainer insistson
prosecution.Marsha Mitchell,played by Ginger Rogers, has witnessedthe murder in the film'sopening scene. Rogers' mother had recentlyplayed a leading
role before HUAC, protestingCommunistinfluencein Hollywood and wishing
she could name more names.39But thecharacterplayedbyGingerRogersrefuses
to name who she has seen, in spite of Rainer's efforts,because her brother-inlaw pulled the trigger.She is brutalized by the Klan as a result of her family
loyalty,and her pregnantsisteris killed.
The sistersare punished fortheirsexualityas wellas theirsecretiveness.The
older sister,playedby Rogers, is a career woman. She rejectsthe advances of the
salesman travelingwith her at the beginning of the film.The movie wants to
approve of her refusal,yet it marks her as sexually in charge of herself.The
24
REPRESENTATIONS
2. Ronald Reagan unmasks the secret membersof the
Ku Klux Klan in StormWarning.
FIGURE
youngersister,playedby Doris Day,representsthe contrastingdanger contained
withinfemalesexuality,not independence but pleasure. She is turned on by,and
justificationof the
in thrall to, the Klan thug she marries. If StormWarning's
its two sistersecho another Brando film,
informerprefiguresOn theWaterfront,
A Streetcar
NamedDesire.The husband in both movies sexuallyassaults an older
sister.He wears a t-shirt,she wears a slip. The two attacksare meant not simply
to condemn the husband, but also to expose the victim.Combining sex with
countersubversion,StormWarningcollapses the two Brando moviesinto a reductionistwhole.
The Ku Klux Klan kidnapsand publiclywhipsMarsha. That whippingindicts
Klan sadism,to be sure. But italso punishes the woman who thoughtshe needed
neithera man nor the state. And the Klan bullet that kills the pregnant sister
punishesher forher sexual bondage. DistrictAttorneyRainer (who is unmarried
and lives withhis mother) is restoringlaw and order to the familyas well as to
the community.His investigatorymethods imitateand supplant mom's moral
influenceand justifythe forcewhich ultimatelydestroysthe Klan.
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
25
filmswerebox office
anti-Communist
NeitherStormWarningnor the explicitly
successes during the cold war. Perhaps that was because they forced together
theirtwinthemes,of alien invasion and endangered privatelife,in too political
a way.Movies popular during the 1950s eitherretreatedentirelyto privatelife,
or posed the dangers to the American familyin science fictionterms.Afterhe
moved from president of the Screen Actor's Guild to President of the United
States, Reagan explained, "It is the motion picture that shows us not only how
we look and sound, but-more important-how we feel."Anti-Communistfilms
tell us how Hollywood opinion-makerslike Reagan feltin responding to pressures from Washingtonand Moscow. They represent the feelings Hollywood
wanted the rest of us to mirroras our own. But such movies are not evidence
for a mobilized,popular anti-Communism.Cold war liberalslike Richard Hofstadter,S.M. Lipset, and Daniel Bell feared that a mass McCarthyiteuprising
endangered the liberal state. That view is supported neitherby the contentof
anti-Communistcinema nor by its reception. Cold war America sufferednot
froman active popular threatto politicalfreedom,but ratherfrominstitutions
which formed a public opinion fearfulof unorthodox politicalideas and quiescent at theirsuppression. Hollywood, like Washington,was an arena of institutional,not mass, power.40
By insistingthat movies show us how we feel, President Reagan collapsed
the distinctionbetween the producers and consumers of movies. That collapse
had a social and psychologicalas well as a political intention;it absorbed the
world outside movies into film.We were to learn how we already did feel by
seeing our (ideal) selvesreflectedon the screen.That process,ifsuccessful,would
obliterateour subversive,hidden interiorsand render the need for political
surveillanceobsolete. (Should movies failin showingus how we felt,an emissary
from Hollywood not altogethersuccessfulin them would have to enter politics
and go to Washington.)But thatveryprocess,the loss of the selfto its manufactured and controlleddouble, recurred as nightmarewithinone movie genre of
the 1950s. Cold war science fictiongeneralized filmas secretinfluencefromthe
restrictedhomologies of familyand state,and depicted the spread of thatsecret
influencethroughoutsociety.
If we use movie attendancefiguresto chart the intersectionof popular feelings and Hollywood anxiety,then we mustturn fromexplicitlyanti-Communist
filmsto science fiction.The Americanmasses wentto moviesthatraised anxieties
not about politics,but about mass society.Science fictionfilmspresentedan undifferentiated,homogeneous, social world in which realityofferedlittleresistance
to the takeoverby dream. Having examined mom'sinfluencein anti-Communist
cinema, and her replacementby the state,we look finallyat the return of the
repressed. For just as cold war movies made mom a condensation symboland
26
REPRESENTATIONS
scapegoat for political and familialworries,so science fictionfilmsgenerated
mass societynot frommovie but fromfemale influence.
Aside fromits anti-Communistfilms,Hollywood avoided politicalthemesin
the 1950s. Monogram Studios dropped plans fora movie on Hiawatha; it feared
that his effortsfor peace among the Iroquois nations would be seen as aiding
Communistpeace propaganda. JudyHolliday,called before HUAC forsupporting Henry Wallace, insisted,"I don't say 'yes' to anythingnow except cancer,
polio, and cerebral palsy,thingslike that."Listingdiseases as the only safe evils
to oppose, Holliday unwittinglyexposed the logic of countersubversionwhich
equated Communism withdisease. She also inadvertentlyexplained the popularityof those filmswhose alien invaders came not from political conspiracies
but fromouter space. JackWarnerattacked"ideological termites"beforeHUAC,
"subversivegerms hidingin dark corners."Gordon Douglas, who directedI Was
in 1951, made Them!,the giant-antmovie, three years later.It was
a Communist
one of WarnerBrothers'highestgrossingmovies of 1954. The "germsof death
for society"that Truman's attorneygeneral said were carried by Communists
spread fromHollywood throughscience fiction.4'
Biology is out of controlin such movies as Them!,The Thing,and Invasionof
vegetablereproductionthreattheBodySnatchers.
Promiscuous,undifferentiated,
ens familybonds. Reproductiondispenses withthe fatherin BodySnatchersand
The Thing.The aliens multiplypromiscuously,throughdetachable body parts in
(1956). Like the
The Thing(195 1) and throughgenerativepods in BodySnatchers
opened box in KissMe Deadly,the ovarian pods spread destruction.
The monsterwas sympatheticin the classic monstermovie. Embodyingsavage or aristocraticmasculine desire, he stood against genteel,feminineculture.
The Thing seems at firstto carry on that tradition.Its monster,a lone, male
descendant of King Kong, is menaced by the forces of civilization.But while
Dracula and the werewolfare hungry males who feed off female bodies, the
Thing reproduces himself;severed parts of his own body grow into new monsters.When we are shownthe planterboxes in whichtheseThings are multiplying,
we lose all sympathyfor the monster.We do not see simalcramumsof the male
Thing, moreover,but plants withovarian pods. The movie has transformeda
single male monsterinto multiple,reproductivevegetables.42
The Thingis a transitionalbetween the classic movie monsterand his 1950s
female descendants. Male insectsare presentin Them!(1954); theyfertilizethe
queen ants and die. A mutationfromatomictestinghas produced the giantants,
and a scientistworkingwiththe police destroysmostof them.But a singlequeen,
fertilizedby the male members of her court, can give birth to enough ants to
destroyall humanity.The danger of reproductiveworld destructionhangs over
the movie.
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
27
Female ants undergo the transformationPhilip Wyliedepicted for women,
from"Cinderella" to mom. Each female,a "princess"until she mates,then lays
eggs for fifteenyears. Never leaving her nest, she presides over an aggressive
collectivistsociety.Ants are "chronicaggressors,[who] make slave laborers out
of theircaptives,"and a scientistshows movies to emphasize the "industry,social
organization,and savagery"of the ants. "Unless the queens are destroyed,"he
warns,"man as the dominant species on thisplanet will probablybe destroyed."
The scientistis warning the audience withinthe filmabout ants; he is warning
the audience outside the filmabout Communism. As in My Son Johnand The
ManchurianCandidate,however,the sexual threatabsorbs the politicalone.
Two survivingqueen ants flyoffwiththeir "consorts"afterthe firstgiantant colony is destroyed."They are gone on theirwedding flight,"explains the
scientist.These ants are enacting the dark side of theJohn Wayne-JanetLeigh
romance in JetPilot. The flyingplanes engaged in sexual foreplay,which first
threatenedthe man but finallydomesticatedthe woman. The male ants willdie
in the serviceof the mother.An observerwho sees one of the airborne wedding
partiesdescribes"one big one [the queen] and twolittleones [her consorts]."He
is hospitalized for hallucinating,and his belt is removed so he cannot escape.
The man who saw the queen ant clutchesat his pants as he tellshis story;he has
become, like the male ants,her victim.We are shown the ants' worlddeep within
the bowels of the earth early in the movie, deep withinthe Los Angeles storm
drain systemat itsclimax. That world is a matriarchy.
Traced to theircloacal sanctuary,the giant ants are finallydestroyed."Has
the cold war gottenhot?" a reporterwantsto know when the armyis sent to Los
but the action
Angeles. His words name the politicalallegory,anty-communism,
supplants it withthe sexual allegory.Modern firepoweris mobilized against the
weapons as well as long guns invade
reproducing monstersas flame-throwing
the ants' inner space. The armypenetratesto the "egg chamber,"withits strong
"brood odor,"and destroysitin a holocaustof fire.Soldiers rescue twoboyswhom
the ants have kidnapped and brought to the queen's chamber. The ants have
killed the boys' father;theyalso kill the policeman (James Whitmore),the protagonistof the movie. But by restoringthe boys to theirmother,the army saves
the (truncated)American family.
The ants are bad motherswho breed in stormdrains instead of the home.
But breedingitselfis the problemin thesefilms.The ants,the pods, and theThing
proliferateidentities.The creaturestheycreate are interchangeableparts,members of a mass society.Freed of the name of the father and of the mother's
They replace indisingularlove, these creatureslack the stamp of individuality.
vidualidentities(identityas difference)withidentitiesidenticaland out of control.
The motherin domesticideology made her son feel loved by sacrificingher
identityto his.MySonJohnexposed thatspecial bond as the source of Communist
28
REPRESENTATIONS
influence.But if unique individualidentityis suspect,its obverse is just as bad.
Mothersin Them!claim directpower.The consequence (seen also in BodySnatchers)is the multiplicationof identicalselves. Deprived of maternallove, one identityis no differentfromanother.The divisionof theproductsof labor has entered
the reproductivelabor process,mobilizingfearsof procreationwithoutlove. The
and interbody snatchersreplicate townspeople,who now functionefficiently
evoke the nightmareof uncontrolled
changeable. Both Them!and BodySnatchers
The twofilmsjoin nature'srevengeagainstman to the triumph
femalegenerativity.
of mass society.
BodySnatchers,
unlikeThem!,is a self-awarefilm;Don Siegel made itin protest
Since socializationis triumphant
against McCarthyitepressures for conformity.
bothin McCarthyismand Communism(in the 1950s liberalview),"themalignant
disease speading throughthe country,cell forcell,atom foratom" can represent
"I wantedto end the pictureat the pointwhere McCarthy
eitherinterchangeably.
is standing in the highway,"Siegel has said. "He turns,points his fingerat the
audience and yells,'You're next.?'43Siegel was referringto Kevin McCarthy,who
starredin the movie; but the actor has the politician'sname, as if to raise doubts
about whetherJoe McCarthyis the movie'shidden hero or villain.BodySnatchers
may have been commentingon 1950s anxieties, not merely reflectingthem.
Nonetheless,its politicalconsciousness,like thatin cold war cinema generally,is
subordinateto its sexual unconsciousness.
Anti-Communistfilmsdemand eternal vigilanceto protectselfand country
frominvasion. Self-surveillancein BodySnatchersmakes sleep itselfimpossible.
Humans muststayawake forever,fortheyare replaced by pods when theysleep.
The filmdeprivessleep of itsfunctionas social escape, forsleep makestherelaxed
selfvulnerable.Danger maycome fromwithout,inBodySnatchers,
but whatneeds
to be defended againstis the wishfromwithin.The unconscioustakesover from
self-vigilancein sleep. And the dream wishof the 1950s was to escape fromthe
anxietyof separate identityand to merge withsociety.
"Societyis the . . . nourishingmother,"wrote Durkheim,44and a woman is
the source of unconscious temptationin BodySnatchers.The film'sheroine succumbs to sleep. Now a pod, she trieswitha kiss to draw the hero into sleeping
withher. Her kissis deadly,however,as he can tellfromthe dead feelof her lips.
Totally alone, McCarthy must flee the sleep that would cost him his identity.
AdvertisementsforBodySnatchers
depicted the kissas ifit united the lovers.But
alongside the copy,which presented them alone against the world, a menacing
femalereaches out to envelop her man (see Fig. 3). BodySnatchers,
likeManchurian
uniteddeceitwithbodilyinvasion,and locatedbothin femaleinfluence.
Candidate,
Human beings are "hosts to an alien formof life" in BodySnatchers.
Just as
the Communists,in I Wasa Communist,
want"notjust our bodies but our minds;'
so the body snatchersare "takingus over,cell by cell."45MattCvetic,pretending
Kiss Me Deadly: Communism,Motherhood,and Cold War Movies
29
f
30
8S As
90%AL
~~
~~~~~
~
FIGURE 3 Left:The kissof
fenmaleinfluence in Inz'asioti of the Body Snatlchers;
below: the kiss of male
dominationin Pickuponi
SouthStreet.
REPRESENTATIONS
to be takenover bya Communistcell,representsCommunism'sthreatto personal
and InvadersfromMars (1953).
identity.That threatis deepened in BodySnatchers
Cvetic alienated his familyby masquerading as a Communist.The pods in Body
Snatchers,
and the people implanted with electroniccontrol devices in Invaders
fromMars,alienate theirfamiliesby pretendingstillto be themselves.Reds were
visiblyalien in earlier red scares; theywere the others. They moved inside our
minds and bodies in the 1950s, and one could not tell them fromanyone else.
The vulnerabilityof the self to influence,upon which domestic ideology had
hoped to capitalize, resulted in Communistinfluenceinstead. Surveillance and
inquisitionexposed domesticforcesthathad taken possession of the nation and
the self. No longer part of a conflictbetween contrastingclasses, 1950s Communistswere the invisiblemember of (and therebyexposed anxieties about)
American mass society.
Hollywoodboth responded to and encouraged the retreatto privatelife,the
depoliticizationof America encouraged by the Red scare. But in the Hollywood
filmsof privatelifethe promisedfamilysanctuaryis problematic;itis threatened
byinvasion fromwithoutand seductionfromwithin.Familiesunder siege generated anxieties about who was to blame, anxieties that could take the form of
anti-Communism.But anti-Communistfilms,in spite of their conscious intentions,exposed the connectionsbetweenan endangered privatelifeand a fear of
politicalsubversion.
Film criticsRobert Warshow,Manny Farber,and Pauline Kael, writingin the
earlyyearsof the cold war,contrastedthe falselyfelt,pious, middle-brow,liberal
filmsof the 1940s and 1950s to more honest, violent,B movies. These critics
located the formerfilmsin moralizing,popular front,mass culture.The B movies, theythought,opened a window to the heart of America.46Cold war films
reversepopular-frontpoliticalvalues, but theyinheritthe aestheticand political
contamination.The only genuine work of art among the filmswhich promote
the cold war is a right-wing,
anti-liberalB movie. It is Sam Fuller'sPickupon South
Street(1953), and it stands against the familyand the state.Fascismaestheticized
politics,in WalterBenjamin's famous epigram; Communismresponded by politicizingart.47Anti-Communismpoliticizedart in the American 1950s. Silent in
politicallifebut visiblein thismovie,the anarchofascismof Pickupon SouthStreet
succeeded in makingpoliticsinto aesthetics.
Pickupon SouthStreetopens into a crowded subway.The camera followsa
hand as it creeps into a woman'spurse. Our eyes move back and forth,fromthe
purse to the woman'sface to the facesof twomale onlookers.There is no talking
at all. It is as ifthistense,sexylady,nervouslylickingher lips,werebeing aroused
by the intrusion.Her unconsciousnessof the hand intensifiesthe sense of sexual
invasionand arousal. The twoplainclothesmenwatchingthe girlcan't figureout
what is going on. Neithercan the audience. Later we shall learn that the purse
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
31
contained stolen microfilm,and thatthe woman was nervous about its delivery.
Stilllatershe willlearn,aftertheaudience does, thattheindustrialcrimein which
she thoughtshe was complicitwas actuallythe theftof atomicsecrets.The name
of thisfilmhas a sexual and doubly criminalmeaning. Candy (Jean Peters)looks
like a pick-upand plans to participatein one. But the pickpocket'shand thwarts
the pick-upon South Street.Withoutintendingit,a pettycriminalhas acquired
the secretof the atomic bomb.
Like I Wasa Communist,
PickuponSouthStreet
derivesfromthe gangstermovie.
But the formerfilmmakes Communistsinto gangstersand shiftsits loyaltyto
the FBI. The lattermakes Communistsinto bureaucratsand remainsfaithfulto
the outlaw.Instead of equating Communismwithcrime,Fuller makes crimethe
alternativeto Communism.Pickupon SouthStreetis, in its rhetoric,a virulently
anti-Communistfilm.But by deliberatelydoubling the Communistand police
bureaucracies,it makes explicitthe unintendedblurringof boundaries in orthodox cold war moviesbetweenthe CommunistPartyand the FBI. Fuller'shero is
the pickpocket(Skip McCoy, played by Richard Widmark),and he is as hunted
by the police as Candy willbe by the Communists.McCoy livesin a boat beneath
the piers on the East River. He is a criminaloutsider; and the film,which is
photographed almost entirelyat night,48stands withhim against the police.
Instead of invokingthe family,Fuller celebratesthe sexual relationshipthat
develops between Candy and McCoy. The film'sopening scene prefiguresthat
relation; it is based on male domination. He slaps her around when she comes
to retrievethe film,and that turns her on. Their combat ends witha kiss (see
Fig. 3). McCoy's sexual violence saves Candy from her pansy Communistboyfriend.(It doesn't save her frombeing badly beaten by him for not tellinghim
where to find McCoy.) Kisses are deadly in the other cold war films,where sex
causes violence. Violence causes sex, in Pickup.Both versions make women on
top into targets.But whilePickupstimulatesa sadisticallycharged eroticism,the
other filmswipe all eroticismout. (JetPilot,made by the directorof Blue Angel,
cannot help but be a partial exception. Nonetheless,eroticismensnares Wayne;
he establisheshis dominationagainstLeigh'sseductionbyphysicalforce.Violence
is an antidoteto sex inJetPilot,not its generator.)
Other anti-Communistfilmsstand forlove, law and order.Pickupcloses with
a promised happy ending, in which McCoy and Candy will marry and go
straight.That surelywould be the end of thisfilm,forit standswithviolentsex,
outlawry,and disorder.Pickupcelebrates an urban underworld,not some pastoral domestic retreat.It glorifiesa brutal, unencumbered male individualism.
Pickup and Kiss Me Deadly (the other anti-CommunistB movie) are the most
violent cold war films.But the others also justifyviolence. Because theymask
that commitment,theirviolence (as in StormWarning)is not so much absent as
prurient.
32
REPRESENTATIONS
Other anti-Communistfilmsclaim to defend the American individual. But
theydo so bymarryinghimto supportive,entrappinginstitutions-motherhood,
whichthe filmmakerscan neither
mass society,and the state.These institutions,
believe in nor resist,spread a fog throughcold war cinema. By contrast,Fuller
finds a place to stand with an impious, violent,antibureaucraticRed-baiting.
There is nothingat all attractiveabout such politics.Pickupon SouthStreetharks
predatoryindividualism,moved fromthe frontier
back to a nineteenth-century
to the city and placed openly outside the law, in which propertyis acquired
throughtheft.That individualism,alwaysmaskedin politicaldiscoursebyappeals
to civilization,produced the veryworld fromwhichFullerwas alienated. Making
bureaucratsintoenemies,Fullerbroughtfantasiesof individualismback intofilm.
His sexual politics,outside the cold war consensus, offeredno politicalalternative. But by tapping an authenticcore of American feeling,buried by cold war
pieties,Sam Fullercreated a workof art.Pickupexploited,as in the film'sopening
scene,theviewer'sguiltycomplicitywiththeintrusivecamera eye.The voyeuristic
Fullerinvented
momentsin othercold war filmsfailto acknowledgethatcomplicity.
characterswithrough edges and style,whose gesturesand dialogue contrastto
the mass-produced figuresof other cold war movies. The most interestingof
those charactersis an individualizeddouble of mom.
Mom's double is an informernamed Moe, who sells her "boys"to the police
fora price. (Figure 1 showsher ironingas she talkswithMcCoy,one of her boys.)
John'smother also informson her son, but while she informsas a sign of her
dependence, Moe informsto serve her autonomy.John has a familymotherwho
loses power to the state.Moe livesalone and, so long as she remainsan informer,
is in charge of her own life.She flourishes,like McCoy,in an amoral marketplace
in which propertyis stolen and children are sold. Moe sells informationabout
the gangstersand pettycriminalsof the street.The fictionwithwhichthe police
are forced to cooperate is that she is really selling ties. Moe makes the police
pretend to don the clothingof civilizedvirtue; McCoy wears no tie. Although
Moe lives outside the home and makes money fromselling her boys, she is an
entirelysympatheticfigure.
Moe is also a patriotwho,likeJohn'smother,failsto recognize
Unfortunately,
of the CommunistPartyand the FBI. That faithin difthe interchangeability
ferencemakesJohn'smotheran informer.But it closes Moe's lips, and thereby
turnsher into mom. No longer willingto let one of her boys take his chances in
the marketplace,Moe decides to protecthim. She refusesto sell McCoy'saddress
to the Communists,and they kill her. Like John's mother,Moe is sacrificedto
anti-Communism.Her death marks the defeat of a glorifiedunderworld,however,not a demonized domesticity.Moe's death saves McCoy'slife,only to serve
him up to marriage and the state. Her murder,likeJohn's,cementsthe alliance
of the state and the family.But the ending that fulfillsMy Son John is slum
and Cold WarMovies
Motherhood,
33
clearance forSouth Street.Pickupon SouthStreetprotestsagainstthe worldwhich
the other cold war filmswere registeringand helping to bring into being.
Pickupis the singleanti-Communistfilmin whichCommunismseems detachable from the plot. A dubbed French version,made for audiences who would
have laughed at the cold war politics,replaced the microfilmwithheroin. That
substitutionwas possible because, unlike itscounterparts,Pickupis bound by no
moralistic,anti-Communiststraitjacket.But Fuller's filmis not merelyan oldclothes.Rather,Fuller
fashionedgangstermoviemasqueradingin anti-Communist
takescold war moviesthoughthelookingglass.The second halfof a 1950s double
feature,PickuponSouthStreetdoubles and invertspious, anti-Communistcinema.
Notes
*
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
34
This paper interpretsmovies screened during the PacificFilm Archive series,"Hollywood and the Cold War,"Sept. 29 to Nov. 20, 1982. I am indebted to Linda Myles
(formerdirectorof the Archive) and Nancy Goldman for arrangingthe series,and
to Judy Bloch for her notes on the films(printed in the UniversityArt Museum
Calendar). I also benefitedfrom conversationsabout these filmswith Linda Myles,
Nancy Goldman, Judy Bloch, and Paul Thomas, fromJim Breslin'sreading of an
earlier version of the paper, and fromcommentsby membersof the Representations
editorialboard.
WilliamCarlos Williams,In theAmericanGrain(New York, 1956 [1925]), p. 39.
The interpretationof countersubversivehistorywhichintroducesthisessay is based
on myentry,"Suppression,Intimidation,and Control,"forJackP. Greene, ed., Scribforthcoming.I am gratefulto Charles
ofAmericanPoliticalHistory,
nersEncyclopedia
Scribner'sSons for permissionto use materialfromthatentryhere.
Robert Justin Goldstein, PoliticalRepressionin ModernAmerica(Cambridge, Mass.,
1978), pp. 100, 158.
Ibid., pp. 328-29.
Michael E. Parrish,"Cold War Justice: The Supreme Court and the Rosenbergs,"
HistoricalReview,LXXXII (Oct. 1977), 805-42.
American
On domestic ideology,cf. Barbara Welter,"The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820XVIII (Summer 1966), 151-74; Ann Douglas, The Femin1860,"AmericanQuarterly,
izationofAmericanCulture(New York, 1977); Jay Fliegelman,Prodigalsand Pilgrims:
(New York, 1982); KathrynKish
TheAmericanRevolutionAgainstPatriarchalAuthority
(New Haven, Ct., 1973); and
Sklar,CatharineBeecher:A Studyin AmericanDomesticity
EnglishFictionand Social Discourse,
Catherine Gallagher, The IndustrialReformation:
chaps. 5-7. CatherineGallagher has deeply influencedmy
1832-1867, forthcoming,
understandingof domestic ideology and its relation to cold war movies, here and
throughoutthe essay.
On the relationshipbetween female power in male-dominatedsocietiesand images
of female pollution, cf. Mary Douglas, Purityand Danger (New York, 1966), pp.
140-53.
On 1950s domestic ideology,cf. Betty Friedan, The FeminineMystique(New York,
REPRESENTATIONS
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
1963); and Sara Evans, PersonalPolitics(New York, 1979), pp. 3-23. Cf. also Molly
in theMovies(New York,1974).
ofWomen
toRape: TheTreatment
Haskell,FromReverence
of Vipers,2nd ed. (New York, 1955 [1st ed., 1942]), pp. xii,
Philip Wylie,Generation
51-53, 191-216.
Philip Wylie,FinnleyWren(New York, 1934); Truman FrederickKeefer,Philip Wylie
(Boston, 1977), pp. 72, 85.
ofVipers,p. 194n; Keefer,pp. 73, 78-79, 122, 127.
Wylie,Generation
of Vipers,pp.
Keefer,Philip Wylie,pp. 55, 77-78, 85, 95, 108-109; Wylie,Generation
196n, 216-17n, 318-20n. I am gratefulto Todd Gitlinfor calling my attentionto
Wylie'santi-Communism.
Keefer,Philip Wylie,pp. 109, 125.
(New York, 1954).
Ibid., pp. 62 -63, 125; Philip Wylie,Tomorrow
RichardJ. Barnet, RootsofWar(New York, 1972), p. 17; American Heritage,History
ofFlight(New York, 1952), pp. 191-92 (cited in Julie H. Wosk, "The Airplane in
Anti-WarPoetryand Art,"unpublished paper, 1983).
pp. 30, 50-59, 141, 161-64, 268-69, 296-97, 329-30, 359-60.
Wylie,Tomorrow,
18. Keefer,Philip Wylie,p. 85.
Ibid.,pp. 230-35, 350-53, 369, 372.
Ibid., pp. 121-22; Philip Wylie,TheDisappearance(New York, 1951).
Keefer,Philip Wylie,p. 125.
VictorS. Navasky,NamingNames(New York,1980), pp. 167-68; Nora Sayre,Running
Time: Films of theCold War (New York, 1982), pp. 57-62. Both books have been
indispensableforthisproject.PeterBiskind'simportantstudyof 1950s movies,Seeing
Is Believing(New York, 1983), appeared too late for me to benefitfromits analysis.
pp. 344, 347; Navasky,NamingNames,p. 12.
Goldstein,PoliticalRepression,
Navasky,ibid.,p. 12; Sayre,RunningTime,pp. 86-9 1.
Navasky,NamingNames,pp. 225-26; UniversityArt Museum, Calendar,Oct. 1982,
p. 8; GarryWills,"Introduction,"in Lillian Hellman, ScoundrelTime(New York,1976),
pp. 4-6.
UniversityArt Musem, Calendar,Oct. 1982, p. 5.
Sayre,RunningTime,p. 91.
Ralph de Toledano,J. Edgar Hoover(New Rochelle, N.Y., 1973), p. 260.
ofVipers,p. 201.
Wylie,Generation
I (Oct. 1981), 52.
Cf. my "Ronald Reagan's American Gothic,"democracy,
That is my surmise,based on Navasky,NamingNames pp. 100-10 1, 129-30, 151,
280.
Ibid., pp. 232-38.
Cf. MurrayKempton,"DishonorablyDischarged,"TheNew YorkReviewofBooks,XXX
(Oct. 27, 1983), 42.
Experience(New York, 1975), pp. 163-71; Gallagher,
Robert Warshow,TheImmediate
chaps. 5-7.
IndustrialReformation,
Michel Foucault,TheHistoryofSexuality(New York, 1980); ChristopherLasch, Haven
in a HeartlessWorld(New York, 1977); Jacques Donzelot, ThePolicingofFamilies(New
York, 1979).
toPsychoanalysis
(London, 1948); DorothyDinnerstein,
Cf. Melanie Klein,Contributions
TheMermaidand theMinotaur(New York, 1977).
Sayre,RunningTime,p. 91; UniversityArt Museum, Calendar,Nov. 1982, p. 8.
Navasky,NamingNames,pp. 16, 210, 280; Sayre,RunningTime,pp. 151-66.
theRestofMe (New York,1965), p. 162; Michael Rogin, "RonRonald Reagan, Where's
Kiss Me Deadly: Communism,Motherhood,and Cold War Movies
35
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
46.
47.
48.
36
I (April 1981), 35; Navasky,Naming
ald Reagan: Where'sthe Rest of Him?" democracy,
Names,pp. 86-87, 144-95.
Navasky,ibid.,p. 79.
Ibid., p. 15; Sayre, RunningTime,pp. 99-149; Rogin, "Ronald Reagan's American
I (Oct. 1981), 52; Daniel Bell, ed., The New AmericanRight(New
Gothic,"democracy,
York, 1954); Michael Rogin, TheIntellectuals
and McCarthy:TheRadical Specter(Cambridge,Mass., 1967), pp. 1-7, 216-60.
Goldstein,PoliticalRepression,
pp. 362, 377; UniversityArt Museum, Calendar,Oct.
1982, p. 9.
On the contrastbetween the classic monstermovie and the 1950s creature feature,
in Charles Muscatineand Marlene
cf. Andrew Griffin,"Sympathyforthe Werewolf,"
Griffith,
eds., TheBorzoiCollegeReader,4th ed. (New York, 1980), pp. 508-12.
UniversityArt Museum, Calendar,Nov. 1982, p. 9.
45. Sayre,RunningTime,p. 201.
Quoted in Lasch, Haven, p. 13.
Warshow,The ImmediateExperience,pp. 33-48, 127-203; Manny Farber,Negative
Space (New York, 1971), pp. 32-87; Pauline Kael, I LostIt At theMovies(New York,
1965), pp. 3-94.
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"in
Hannah Arendt,ed. (New York, 1968), p. 242.
Illuminations,
Farber,NegativeSpace, p. 129.
REPRESENTATIONS

Kiss Me Deadly: Communism, Motherhood, and Cold War Movies

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