History 305

Spring 2011

Study Questions: American Culture during the Cold War

Biskind, “Pods and Blobs”

1. Biskind argues that the sci-fi film Them! “effectively established the legitimacy of state power” and “defined and negated the extremes, the limits of behavior.” What does he mean by this? How does the film set out to convince people that they should “do what the government tells them”?

2. Why does Biskind believe that both Them! and The Thing depict nature’s assault on culture?

3. Biskind uses the terms “corporate-liberal” and “conservative” in his analysis of cold war sci-fi films. As he uses them, what do these terms mean?

4. Why does Biskind consider “Them!” a “corporate-liberal” film and “The Thing” a “conservative” or “populist” film? What evidence does he cite to support his argument? Do you buy his interpretations?

5. What “corporate-liberal” themes emerge in “Them!”? What “conservative” themes emerge in “The Thing?”

6. According to Biskind, how do corporate-liberals and conservatives differ with regard to their attitudes toward:

1) authority/state power

2) science and scientists

3) the military

4) the “common people”

5) the nature and agenda of the Communist enemy

7. Biskind declares that “Them! has as much to do with the sex war as it does the cold war.” Do you believe, as the author appears to, that Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and other “corporate-liberals” were afraid of “sexual women?” Should they have been?

8. Does Biskind offer any evidence that contemporary audiences interpreted these films in the same way he does? Even if they did not, does his argument still stand because these audiences were subconsciously consuming the messages latent in these films?

9. Biskind implicitly condemns the “consensus” political culture of the cold war in which forces of the “center” tried to keep in check other forces they perceived to be on the extreme left and right. Given Americans’ recent encounters with Fascism (on the right) and Communism (on the left), is the behavior of the “centrists” understandable, or even prudent? Or was this simply a case of a self-interested status quo trying to protect its own power?

James Gilbert, A Cycle of Outrage, Introduction, Chapter 1

1. How was antagonism toward mass culture during the 1950s both old and new?

2. Why does Gilbert call the “seduction of the innocent by culture” an “episodic notion”? What are the characteristics of episodic notions?

3. Who were some of the combatants in the dispute over mass culture in the 1950s? According to Gilbert, what were they really arguing about?

4. What was the central argument of the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham? Why did it win popular support during the late 1940s and 1950s? What conditions of that historical period made Wertham’s arguments particularly “seductive”?

5. What aspects of teenage behavior during the 1950s fascinated and repelled American adults? How did teenage behavior change between World War II and the 1960s?

6. Why were large comprehensive high schools the focus of adults’ concerns during the 1950s?

7. How did postwar prosperity fuel the generation gap?

8. What contributed to adults’ perception that teens were creating a “premature adult culture”?