And Subversion of Containment
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THE CONTAINMENT OF SUBVERSION (AND SUBVERSION OF CONTAINMENT) IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS by Mark Stein submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literature Chair: sberg, Chair. thesis director *, -A. vSffcty fr. Be 7 O U u ClMMZ Marianne Noble Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences U > ___________________ Date 2001 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 JWEWCJUI DWVERSm LBRAD Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1403726 UMI__ ® UMI Microform 1403726 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE CONTAINMENT OF SUBVERSION (AND SUBVERSION OF CONTAINMENT) IN HOLLYWOOD FILMS by Mark Stein ABSTRACT Selected Hollywood films from the Depression, 1930-1941, are examined for ways in which writers and directors might convey anti-capitalist meanings in productions by capitalist corporations (Hollywood studios). The study explores ways in which filmmakers seek to alter viewer attitudes with meanings that are elicited via textual and visual gaps. This implicit effort at attitude change represents subversion, in contrast to explicit efforts which represent persuasion. Finally, the study seeks to assess if such subversively embedded meanings were, in fact, received by viewers of the work. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor David L. Pike for serving as my thesis director, and for turning the task of being his graduate assistant during my two years at American University into the unexpectedly joyful cornerstone of my graduate education. Heartfelt thanks also to Professor Betty T. Bennett and Professor Marianne Noble, who also served on my thesis committee and provided guidance not only on the work itself but, in their respective ways, on the process of integrating one's person with one's work. I would also like to thank Professor William Slights and Professor Camille Slights of the University of Saskatchewan, who generously responded to some of the earliest stages of this effort. And finally, my appreciation to my wife, Arlene Balkansky. As a Motion Picture Cataloger at the Library of Congress, Arlene possesses both a wealth of helpful knowledge and the Holy Grail of research: borrowing privileges. i n Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. In memory of Nancy Schwartz, author of The Hollywood Writers' Wars, college friend. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 From the transcripts of the House Committee on Un- American Activities, a question to Hallie Flanagan, director of the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Theatre Project: CONGRESSMAN STARNES: I want to quote from your article, "A Theatre is Born." ... "There are only two theaters in the country today that are clear as to aim: one is the commercial theater which wants to make money; the other is the workers' theater which wants to make a new social order...without the help of money— and this ambition alone invests their under taking with a certain Marlowesque madness." You are quoting from Marlowe. Is he a Communist?1 ^ric Bentley, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before House Committee on Un-American Activities. 1938-1968 (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 25. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION To set the record straight, Christopher Marlowe was not a communist. Nevertheless, we might benefit by considering Congressman Starnes' question more seriously. His concern that communists were participating in the production of plays suggests that he believed the performing arts can alter political attitudes, just as today many Americans believe the performing arts influence attitudes regarding sex and violence. When Congressman Starnes posed his question in 1938, numerous factors were converging to produce his political fear, such as Hitler's having (seemingly, at least) mesmerized the German people and the similar view that the Soviets had inculcated the masses with Communist Party doctrine. Following World War II, the fall of China to the communists under the singular figure of Mao Zedong added to these fears. America's perception of these developments as somehow involving techniques for the mass manipulation of attitudes led to, and augmented the fame of, a theory posited by Vance Packard, popularly called Subliminal Seduction.2 Packard applied psychoanalytic 2Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: McKay Co., 1957). 2 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 concepts to the imagery in mass media to theorize as to how one's attitudes can be altered without one's awareness. These views found a ready audience in an America unsettled not only by foreign events but by the rapid spread domestically of yet another mass media, television. What meanings might secretly be getting conveyed to unsuspecting Americans through theatrical performances on radio, television, and in film? Reflecting the government's increased concern, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) re-convened its investigation into the performing arts in 1947, but this time baring its teeth. That year, the Hollywood Ten— eight screenwriters, a producer, and a director suspected of being or having been communists— became the first witnesses to refuse to answer the Committee's questions regarding their political associations.3 For that act they went to prison and the studios instituted an unofficial blacklist, withholding work from anyone who refused to cooperate with HUAC. The blacklist remained in effect until I960.4 Amid the passions, politics, and publicity of the HUAC investigation, the Committee overlooked numerous items 3The Hollywood Ten consisted of screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Dalton Trumbo, writer/producer Adrian Scott, and director Edward Dmytryk. “The blacklist officially ended with Spartacus. in which the screenplay is credited to Dalton Trumbo. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. that could have shed light on the question of communist propaganda in the performing arts. One such item was the excerpt from Hallie Flanagan's article that Congressman Starnes cited. Flanagan had distinguished between theaters that aim to make money (capitalist theater) and those that aim to make a new social order (anti-capitalist theater). The distinction begs the question: can one theater do both? This question went unasked by HUAC, but, transplanted to Hollywood, it will become the central question of this thesis: Can a Hollywood film, being the product of a capitalist corporation, subvert capitalism?5 A Hollywood film that subverts capitalism ultimately subverts Hollywood itself. Such a film would be truly seditious and therefore its subversive devices would be well worth contemplating. Keying off the HUAC investigations, this inquiry will limit its probe of this question to anti-capitalist meanings in Hollywood films produced between 193 0 and 1941, an era particularly ripe for such expressions. The onset of the Depression caused many Americans to reconsider the effectiveness