Cold War
Some say that it is useless to speak of
world peace or world law or world
disarmament - and that it will be useless
until the leaders of the Soviet Union
adopt a more enlightened attitude. I
hope they do. I believe we can help them to
do it. But I also believe that we
must reexamine our own attitude - as
individuals and as a Nation - for our
attitude is as essential as theirs. And
every graduate of this school, every
thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and
wishes to bring peace, should
begin by looking inward - by examining his own
attitude toward the
possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the
course of the
cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home. President John
F.
Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10, 1963 The Cold War was a time
in
American History during the twentieth century where the Communist
nations were
fighting against the non-Communist nations. However, the main
countries
involved, or the ones leading the two sides were the United States
and Russia.
The United States led the fight against Communist nations,
like Russia. But
these intense rivalries didn’t just go on in the type of
government that
should be used or in who could develop the most advanced and
most powerful
nuclear weapon of the time. This rivalry went into the culture
of American
societies. The Russians were always being viewed as the toughest
rival and the
team to beat according to the US. It is similar to how teams
think of the
defending champions in a sport. The team playing the defending
champions wants
to come out hyped up and with their "A-game" every time they
are competing
with them. Another impact it had on the American society was
how people started
acting and thinking. In many of the movies and television
shows of the time,
most people wouldn’t have noticed, but the directors and
producers were hiding
subliminal messages in them. Some of them depicting how
awful the Russians were
or how supreme the Americans were. But was American
society affected by the Cold
War, or was America just trying to make
their society better to show it off to
the other countries? Basically, did
America’s way of life and economy during
the cold war improve because they
wanted it to show it off or was it a
necessity? The Cold War did affect the
American’s way of life. America was a
young nation and it was just beginning
to develop into a dominant country. It
first really just established itself
as a world power during the two world wars.
Therefore, the cold war was a
time in which Americans were trying to get a name
for themselves by showing
how great, life in their country was. Shows like Leave
It to Beaver and
Father Knows Best portrayed the stereotypical American
families. Even though
everyone knows that there is no such thing as a perfect
family, people still
enjoyed watching these types of shows. Commercials, or
shows like I Love
Lucy, showing the stereotypical woman or housewife in the
kitchen were
another way of showing things off. It is really very difficult to
always own
the latest models of things coming out. So a woman in a kitchen with
all the
new appliances is really unlikely. This was another way of showing off
to
other countries how life was or wasn’t. However, the show I Love Lucy,
mainly
showed how much freedom a woman had when her husband wasn’t home.
Lucy
constantly did foolish things that weren’t exactly the ways women
were
supposed to have been behaving. Once again, the United States was
portraying how
great life was in America compared to other countries. The
majority of the
television shows during the 1950s showed no poverty, death,
ethnic mixing, or
racial tension. It just presented the "perfect world."
Juxtaposed, it could
be argued that the Cold War didn’t help shape the
American society. American
life could have just formed like how it was
supposed to happen; like human
nature. When the men all came back from World
War II, many women lost their jobs
and weren’t as active as they were during
the time of WWII. The jobs were all
given back to the men, and women were
once again treated very delicately. They
went back to their old ways of life
when a woman’s life wasn’t supposed to
be strenuous. That then caused the
emergence of the "in-the-house-all-day"
housewife. The idea of the housewife
then became more exaggerated and led to the
creation of the various
commercials portraying the "perfect lifestyle." All
of these reasons point to
the society being shaped naturally just by the way
things were turning out.
The cold war affected all parts of the American society
including politics.
The major political event during the time was the Red Scare.
The Red
Scare started back a few years before the 1920s and went away relatively
for
awhile during World War II. However, as soon as the war ended, the
hysteria
over communism went away a little bit. The "Reds," as communists
were
called, were seen as a danger to the United States and their citizens.
The Red
Scare brought out one of the most "politically repressive
periods" in U.S.
history because it took away many freedoms of expression,
political activism and
press. It kept on going, however, due to the American
communists, communist
sympathizers, and citizens trying to achieve social
justice. Most of these
people were intellectuals (writers and academics),
government officials,
political figures, teachers, college professors, and
entertainers. The main
effect it had on Americans was that off fear. Many
Americans were afraid of a
communist take-over and all the violence that
followed it. Most of these fears
were portrayed in science-fiction movies,
like Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
The Thing, Invaders from Mars, and
The Blob. These films all presented traits
similar to either the communists
or the stereotypical description of communists.
In The Blob, the blob
shows how the communism is spreading slowly, but
effectively over everything.
Like it is "creeping" through relatively
unnoticed. In Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, the aliens act like the communists
in that they possess similar
goals, which are to "take over the town’s
military, government, and other
types of authority." These are similar to what
Anti-Communist Americans
believed that the "Reds" were trying to do. All of
these movies also show how
directors and producers tried to show Americans
hidden messages about
communism. Therefore, it is likely that the directors
were
Anti-Communist. Another aspect of entertainment influenced by the
cold war was
music. Rock and roll was the most popular style of music at the
time and there
were some songs that weren’t really dealing with the cold war
in general, but
there were some songs in which the topic of the song dealt
with a situation in
the cold war. It’s typical audience was teenagers and
young adults, similar to
the listeners of rap and hip-hop in today’s society.
Elvis Presley, "the
King of Rock and Roll," was probably the most popular
rock and roll star of
the time. His music was different from others because
he was the first to
combine both "black and white sound." However, his
dancing did bring on some
criticism from the older generation of people
because they perceived it as
obscene and indecent. Elvis, though not directly
in his songs, was influenced by
the Cold War. According to his Federal Bureau
of Investigation file, he was an"undercover informant against radicals he saw as
undermining the nation."