Horror films provide a guide to many of the sociological fears of the Cold War era. In an age when warning audiences of impending death was the order of the day for popular nonfiction, horror films provided an area where this fear could be lived out to its ghastly conclusion. Because enemies and potential situations of fear lurked everywhere, within the home, the government, the family, and the very self, horror films could speak to the invasive fears of the cold war era. I Was a Cold War Monster examines cold war anxieties as they were reflected in British and American films from the fifties through the early sixties. This study examines how cold war horror films combined anxiety over social change with the erotic in such films as Psycho, The Tingler, The Horror of Dracula, and House of Wax.
The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period. Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called late capitalism. Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the cultural logic of late capitalism.
The Monster War is the third book in the action-packed, steampunk League of Seven series by acclaimed author Alan Gratz. Having discovered the monstrous secret of his origins, Archie Dent is no longer certain that he is worthy to be a member of the League of Seven. But with new enemies to face, he realizes that he may not have the luxury of questioning his destiny. Wielding the Dragon Lantern, the maniacal Philomena Moffett has turned her back on the Septemberist Society, creating her own Shadow League and unleashing a monster army on the American continent. Archie and his friends must race to find the last two members of their league in time to thwart Moffett's plan and rescue humanity once more. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today's world During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world. John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world? The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country's role in the world. Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran. The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world. A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
A "meticulously researched and comprehensive" (Financial Times) history of the devastating war in the heart of Africa's Congo, with first-hand accounts of the continent's worst conflict in modern times. At the heart of Africa is the Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal war in which millions have died. In Dancing in the Glory of Monsters, renowned political activist and researcher Jason K. Stearns has written a compelling and deeply-reported narrative of how Congo became a failed state that collapsed into a war of retaliatory massacres. Stearns brilliantly describes the key perpetrators, many of whom he met personally, and highlights the nature of the political system that brought these people to power, as well as the moral decisions with which the war confronted them. Now updated with a new introduction, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tells the full story of Africa's Great War.
Presents the story of the "Creature from the Black Lagoon," examines how the story was brought to life in 1954, and explores subsequent versions of the story throughout history.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, the American film industry produced a distinct cycle of films situated on the boundary between horror and science fiction. Using the familiar imagery of science fiction--from alien invasions to biological mutation and space travel--the vast majority of these films subscribed to the effects and aesthetics of horror film, anticipating the dystopian turn of many science fiction films to come. Departing from projections of American technological awe and optimism, these films often evinced paranoia, unease, fear, shock, and disgust. Not only did these movies address technophobia and its psychological, social, and cultural corollaries; they also returned persistently to the military as a source of character, setting, and conflict. Commensurate with a state of perpetual mobilization, the US military comes across as an inescapable presence in American life. Regardless of their genre, Steffen Hantke argues that these films have long been understood as allegories of the Cold War. They register anxieties about two major issues of the time: atomic technologies, especially the testing and use of nuclear weapons, as well as communist aggression and/or subversion. Setting out to question, expand, and correct this critical argument, Hantke follows shifts and adjustments prompted by recent scholarly work into the technological, political, and social history of America in the 1950s. Based on this revised historical understanding, science fiction films appear in a new light as they reflect on the troubled memories of World War II, the emergence of the military-industrial complex, the postwar rewriting of the American landscape, and the relative insignificance of catastrophic nuclear war compared to America's involvement in postcolonial conflicts around the globe.
A chilling, riveting account based on newly released Russian documentation that reveals Joseph Stalin’s true motives—and the extent of his enduring commitment to expanding the Soviet empire—during the years in which he seemingly collaborated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the capitalist West. At the Big Three conferences of World War II, Joseph Stalin persuasively played the role of a great world leader, whose primary concerns lay in international strategy and power politics, and not communist ideology. Now, using recently uncovered documents, Robert Gellately conclusively shows that, in fact, the dictator was biding his time, determined to establish Communist regimes across Europe and beyond. His actions during those years—and the poorly calculated responses to them from the West—set in motion what would eventually become the Cold War. Exciting, deeply engaging, and shrewdly perceptive, Stalin’s Curse is an unprecedented revelation of the sinister machinations of Stalin’s Kremlin.
Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the most famous director to have ever made a film. Almost single-handedly he turned the suspense thriller into one of the most popular film genres of all time, while his Psycho updated the horror film and inspired two generations of directors to imitate and adapt this most Hitchcockian of movies. Yet while much scholarly and popular attention has focused on the director's oeuvre, until now there has been no extensive study of how Alfred Hitchcock's films and methods have affected and transformed the history of the film medium. In this book, thirteen original essays by leading film scholars reveal the richness and variety of Alfred Hitchcock's legacy as they trace his shaping influence on particular films, filmmakers, genres, and even on film criticism. Some essays concentrate on films that imitate Hitchcock in diverse ways, including the movies of Brian de Palma and thrillers such as True Lies, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dead Again. Other essays look at genres that have been influenced by Hitchcock's work, including the 1970s paranoid thriller, the Italian giallo film, and the post-Psycho horror film. The remaining essays investigate developments within film culture and academic film study, including the enthusiasm of French New Wave filmmakers for Hitchcock's work, his influence on the filmic representation of violence in the post-studio Hollywood era, and the ways in which his films have become central texts for film theorists.
Hosting the Monster responds to the call of the monstrous with, not rejection, but invitation. Positing the monster as that which defies classification, the essays in this collection are an ongoing engagement with that which lies outside of established boundaries. With chapters ranging from the monstrous mother or the deformed child to subjectivity in transition, this volume is not only of interest to film and gender scholars and literary and cultural theorists but also students of popular culture or horror. Its wide appeal stems from its invitation both to entertain the monster and to widen the call to and the listening for the monsters that have not yet, and perhaps must not yet, come calling back. This sense of hospitality and non-hostility is one guiding principle of this collection, suggesting that the ability to survey and research the otherwise may reveal more about the subjectivity of the self through the wisdom of the other, however monstrous the manifestation.
