The Cold War was a very interesting period in American history as it as much fought domestically and through negotiation of major institutions as much as it was a war in any traditional sense of the word. The Cold War in the United States was everywhere especially early between the end of World War II and 1960s. American society and culture negotiated with the Cold War in many different ways. It popped up as anxiety, fear and something that could actually work to change the country for the better. America’s anxieties with the Cold War were very prominently displayed in movies from the era such as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove which depicted what would happen in case of all out nuclear war. Fear was a feature of the Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings. Third and finally was how America’s standing in the world actually worked to change policies like segregation and to help the Civil Rights movement.
There is rarely any better way of measuring how a people feel about an issue than through analyzing its popular culture and American popular culture during the Cold War showed that Americans were very nervous and anxious about it. They were particularly worried about the potential of nuclear war and what it would mean for everyone. This is was particularly important because Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s played a huge role in the “institutionalization” of the Cold War by cementing the “anxieties, values and beliefs which most people would carry throughout the conflict were first established.” (Shaw 44) One such case of how Hollywood interacted with the Cold War was Dr. Strangelove and how it depicted people’s fears, anxieties and the dangers of nuclear war (Boyer 95-100). Popular culture played a major role in creating the Cold War narrative as we know it today for most average everyday Americans.
Similarly another factor of American life greatly affected by the Cold War was the coming of a second Red Scare and Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist “witch-hunt.” Joseph McCarthy a US Senator from Wisconsin did during the 1950s something that few had done before him he was able to take a particular brand of anti-communism, demagoguery and paranoia as a way to bring into question the work and the reputation of his opponents. McCarthyism in his way created an anti-communism with phrases like “controversial person, Communist, fellow-travelers” that could bring anyone into question as a communist. (Whitfield 39) The McCarthy era made a lot of people very afraid and it definitely changed the way America conceived of Communism and Communists not just as some amorphous fear but something that was an imminent domestic threat.
America’s role as the leader of the Free World did not only bring into question how America’s own problems with race relations at home would undermine that position but it actually influenced the government’s thinking on the issue. As early as the Truman administration the issue of civil rights and how they were connected to American foreign policy became a major issue and it led to the president making statements which basically equated the importance of civil rights reforms at home with trying to win the battle for the Third World nations in the Cold War abroad. (Dudziak 81-84) America’s foreign policy principles and its domestic legacy of racism obviously clashed and it was the desire of many presidents beginning with Truman to try and bring those two values into harmony as a way of fighting the Cold War abroad.
American pop culture, McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt and the connection between the Civil Rights movement and American foreign policy are just three ways that American society was changed during the Cold War. Anxiety and moments of crisis aren’t always great for making unqualified successes for improving a society but it can also lead to great moments of change. The 1950s and 1960s were a great time for American culture and much of it was spurred by the Cold War and the anxieties and fears it created. Similarly the battle for Civil Rights proved that America could maybe live out the values it preached by finally giving equality to so many Southern blacks that had cried out for it for so long.
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul S. Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. Print.Bottom of FormTop of Form
Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2011. Internet resource.
Shaw, Tony. Hollywood's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007. Print.
Whitfield, Stephen J. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore [u.a.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1996. Print.
