Almost as soon as World War II ended,
developers such as William Levitt (whose “Levittowns” in New
York, New
Jersey and Pennsylvania would become the most famous symbols of
suburban life in the 1950s) began to buy land on the outskirts of cities and
use mass production techniques to build modest, inexpensive tract houses there.
The G.I.
Bill subsidized
low-cost mortgages for returning soldiers, which meant that it was often
cheaper to buy one of these suburban houses than it was to rent an apartment in
the city.
(http://www.history.com/topics/1950s)
While the economy boomed and consumerism
pervaded the culture, anxiety and tensions belied the surface placidity of
1950s society. Fear of Communist expansion abroad and subversion at home, as
well as of nuclear war, shaped American life in profound ways. As the long
conflict with the Soviet Union took shape in 1946-1947, American society became
increasingly obsessed with communism, disloyalty, and dissident opinion
generally.
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/DocumentToolsPortletWindow?displayGroupName=Reference&u=oldt1017&u=oldt1017&jsid=347c2091a080fbd71aebaad95d411063&p=UHIC%3AWHIC&action=2&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CBT2313026907&zid=dbaf8355e54c396b9af1f64d3a9cea8c
It was one thing to ponder a map, something else to traverse the
boundless countryside, as Field Marshal Manstein remembered: "Everyone was
captivated at one time or other by the endlessness of the landscape, through
which it was possible to drive for hours on end – often guided by the compass –
without encountering the least rise in the ground or setting eyes on a single
human being or habitation. The distant horizon seemed like some mountain ridge
behind which a paradise might beckon, but it only stretched on and on."
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/defeat/attack-russia.htm
The Cold War was a world war, some have argued even more so than the
World Wars themselves. It drew in many people and economies and saw fighting
in more places than the Second World War, including the Middle East, Asia,
Africa, South America, and Central America. Millions of people did
actually die.
https://secretsofcoldwarradar.omeka.net/exhibits/show/background-material--the-cold-/what-was-the-cold-war-/a-brief-introduction
Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight
Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no
military need to use the bomb.
“Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,”
says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money
on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not
used.
(edwards,
2005)
Charlie Chaplin was such a worry
to the FBI during the Red Scare that J. Edgar Hoover tried to have him
deported. When he left the country in 1952 to promote his movie Limelight,
Hoover collaborated with the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revoke
Chaplin's re-entry permit. Instead of fighting it, Chaplin made the choice to
stay in Europe, making his home in Switzerland. He issued the statement,
"...Since the end of the last
world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary
groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have
created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be
singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually
impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my
residence in the United States."
He only ever came back to the U.S. very briefly "“ to collect an
Honorary Oscar in 1972.
McCarthy cared little about the accuracy of his accusations, and he made
heavy use of intimidation and innuendo. Nevertheless, his complete disregard
for the truth only made him more powerful and frightening
McCarthy, like many other red baiters,
greatly exaggerated the domestic communist threat.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/fifties/essays/anti-communism-1950s
The film’s place in history certainly intimates that the pod people
represent communism, stripping away all that’s American from small town America
(“love, desire, ambition, faith – without them life’s so simple, believe me”),
as well as an arguably contradictory reflection upon the red scare.
As a genre, sci-fi peaked in the l950s
as a result of several political reasons. First, there was a renewed interest
in outer space. Second, there was fear of the atomic bomb's destructive power.
Moreover, because of McCarthy's witch-hunting, filmmakers feared to comment
directly on current social problems, instead turning to “safer” stories, such
as sci-fi and Westerns, using both genres as political allegories.
(Levy,
2006)
site>>
http://emanuellevy.com/comment/invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-as-political-allegory-4/
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