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Emotion Management and the Standardization of Democracy in Cold War Literature and Film

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Emotion Management and the Standardization of Democracy in Cold War Literature and Film ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE FEELING AMERICAN: EMOTION MANAGEMENT AND THE STANDARDIZATION OF DEMOCRACY IN COLD WAR LITERATURE AND FILM Kelly A. Singleton, Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jonathan Auerbach, Department of English This project examines how strategies of emotion management influenced the development of American literature and film during the Cold War period. Focusing primarily on the High Cold War Period of 1949 to 1962, it argues that a government- funded postwar boom in the psychological and social sciences resulted in a “psychological turn” in American culture that sought to solve social problems by teaching Americans to manage their emotions in keeping with scientifically- established standards for democratic behavior. Proponents of emotion management believed it could accomplish the Soviet goal of creating a harmonious, classless society without requiring radical social revolution or totalitarian forms of control that would violate American principles of freedom and democracy. To that end, American policymakers used the findings of social scientists to develop narratives that: 1) modeled how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack, 2) equated happiness with the American standard of living, 3) made emotional malleability the foundation for a democratic personality, and 4) linked racism to deviation from the norms of liberal white psychology. The works of several mid-century American authors and filmmakers provide an important counterpoint to the optimism of this official emotion management narrative as they: 1) challenge the government’s sanitized representation of nuclear war, 2) document the unhappy effects of middle-class organization culture, 3) express anxiety over the alienating effects of emotional labor, and 4) reject the equation of mental health and American identity with specifically white cultural standards and forms. In contrast to emotion management’s conservative emphasis on individual psychological adjustment, these works suggest that only systemic structural changes can resolve the problems of American democracy. This historicist approach analyzes propaganda films, government bulletins, popular magazine articles, and period sociological studies alongside close readings of novels (Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow! (1954) and Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)), films (Don Siegel’s The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962)), and the story collections of African American authors Langston Hughes and Alice Childress. THE FEELING AMERICAN: EMOTION MANAGEMENT AND THE STANDARDIZATION OF DEMOCRACY IN COLD WAR LITERATURE AND FILM by Kelly Anne Singleton Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2017 Advisory Committee: Professor Jonathan Auerbach, Chair Professor Saverio Giovacchini Professor Peter Mallios Professor Randy Ontiveros Professor David Wyatt © Copyright by Kelly Anne Singleton 2017 ii Table of Contents Introduction: The Feeling American: Emotion Management and the Standardization of Democracy in Cold War Literature and Film .................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 2. Rational Democracy and the Problem of Control .................................................................. 17 3. The Cold War Takes a Psychological Turn .............................................................................. 26 4. Stories of Standardization—the Limitations of Emotion Management ................................ 35 Chapter 1: Don’t Panic!—Civil Defense, Popular Culture, and the Emotion Management of Fear ....................................................................................................................................................... 53 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 53 2. Civil Defense and the Problem of Panic ................................................................................. 61 3. Coming Soon to a Home Near “You”: The Rhetoric of Civil Defense Films ........................... 78 4. Philip Wylie’s Tomorrow!—A Post-Nuclear Frontier Fantasy ................................................ 85 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 98 Chapter 2: Unhappy Americans: Emotion Management and the Standardized “American Way of Life” .............................................................................................................................................. 109 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 109 2. Happiness is the “American Way of Life” ............................................................................ 120 3. A Novelist Peers into the Heart of the Organization Man ................................................... 142 4. Escaping the Things that Make Happiness........................................................................... 157 Chapter 3: Alienation and Emotional Labor in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Manchurian Candidate ................................................................................................................ 176 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 176 2. Alienation and the Emotional Labor of Democracy ......................................................... 193 3. The “Simpler, More Peaceful Feeling” of Podification .................................................... 204 4. The Resentful Counterfeiter of Emotions ........................................................................ 222 Chapter 4: Social Problems and “Simple” Heroes: The Pathology of Race Psychology ............... 249 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 249 2. The Psychological Turn in American Race Relations ........................................................ 251 3. A Black Author’s Perspective on Cold War America ........................................................ 257 4. African Americans in the Atomic Age .............................................................................. 263 5. The Privilege of Unhappiness ........................................................................................... 273 iii 6. The Pathologizing of African American Psychology ......................................................... 280 7. Democracy, Heroism, and the Limits of the Psychological Turn ..................................... 299 Comprehensive Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 317 1 Introduction: The Feeling American: Emotion Management and the Standardization of Democracy in Cold War Literature and Film “Emotion management may be understood as a strategy for the mobilization, administration, and control of emotional life. The creation of those who aspire to the status of authorities and guardians of the soul…” Guy Oakes The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture (1994)1 1. Introduction On December 8, 1957, CBS television aired a thirty-minute dramatic documentary titled, The Day Called ‘X.’ Directed by Harry Rasky and produced in conjunction with the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), the film is narrated by Glenn Ford and stars “the people of Portland, Oregon.” It tells the story of “what happened…or could happen” to Portlanders in the event of a nuclear attack on their city. With less than three hours of notice, the entire city of Portland must be evacuated. All hospitals, schools, businesses and homes must be emptied; vital rescue personnel and utility equipment must be relocated to remote staging areas; the city’s mayor and other key government officials must move to an emergency operations center located deep in a hillside bunker. Using a combination of staged scenes and archival footage recorded during Portland’s 1955 test evacuation drill (“Operation Greenlight”) the film explains that Portland has a well-developed nuclear evacuation plan, but “the question is…on the day called X, will it work?” (00:09:54). The answer, according to the images of Portlanders successfully evacuating their city “quietly [and] without panic” (00:10:05), is an unequivocal Yes. 1 Guy Oakes, The Imaginary War: Civil Defense and American Cold War Culture, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 46. 2 There are no traffic jams, no looting or shouting. School-children calmly follow their teachers outside, and the only people shown outright running at any point are rescue personnel like firemen, who slide down fire-poles and hurry onto the backs of their trucks as though responding to an ordinary emergency (00:7:30). A police dispatcher blandly reports on the progress of the evacuation, tone and expression no different than when relaying an earlier call about a cat stuck in a tree (00:05:30). A doctor even smiles cheerfully when he tells the mayor that “one boy and twins” were
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