1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910453357803321

Autore

Smith Jeff <1962 December 17->

Titolo

Film criticism, the Cold War, and the blacklist : reading the Hollywood Reds / / Jeff Smith

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, California : , : University of California Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-520-28068-7

0-520-95851-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (365 p.)

Disciplina

791.43/6582825

Soggetti

Motion pictures - Political aspects - United States

Motion pictures - United States - History - 20th century

Cold War in motion pictures

Communism and motion pictures - United States

Blacklisting of entertainers - United States - History - 20th century

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: What More Can Be Said about the Hollywood Blacklist? -- 1. A Bifocal View of Hollywood during the Blacklist Period: Film as Propaganda and Allegory -- 2. I Was a Communist for RKO: Hollywood Anti-Communism and the Problem of Representing Political Beliefs -- 3. Reds and Blacks: Representing Race in Anti-Communist Films -- 4. Stoolies, Cheese-Eaters, and Tie Sellers: Genre, Allegory, and the HUAC Informer -- 5. The Cross and the Sickle: Allegorical Representations of the Blacklist in Historical Films -- 6. Roaming the Plains along the "New Frontier": The Western as Allegory of the Blacklist and the Cold War -- 7. Loving the Alien: Science Fiction Cinema as Cold War Allegory -- Conclusion: Old Wounds and the Texas Sharpshooter -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist examines the long-term reception of several key American films released during the postwar period, focusing on the two main critical lenses used in the



interpretation of these films: propaganda and allegory. Produced in response to the hearings held by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that resulted in the Hollywood blacklist, these films' ideological message and rhetorical effectiveness was often muddled by the inherent difficulties in dramatizing villains defined by their thoughts and belief systems rather than their actions. Whereas anti-Communist propaganda films offered explicit political exhortation, allegory was the preferred vehicle for veiled or hidden political comment in many police procedurals, historical films, Westerns, and science fiction films. Jeff Smith examines the way that particular heuristics, such as the mental availability of exemplars and the effects of framing, have encouraged critics to match filmic elements to contemporaneous historical events, persons, and policies. In charting the development of these particular readings, Film Criticism, the Cold War, and the Blacklist features case studies of many canonical Cold War titles, including The Red Menace, On the Waterfront, The Robe, High Noon, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.