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Kindred Ambivalence

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Kindred Ambivalence KINDRED AMBIVALENCE: ART AND THE ADULT-CHILD DYNAMIC IN AMERICA’S COLD WAR by MICHAEL MARBERRY A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2010 Copyright Michael Marberry 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT The pervasive ideological dimension of the Cold War resulted in an extremely ambivalent period in U.S. history, marked by complex and conflicting feelings. Nowhere is this ambivalence more clearly seen than in the American home and in the relationship between adults and children. Though the adult-child dynamic has frequently harbored ambivalent feelings, the American Cold War era—with its increased emphasis on the family in the face of ideological struggle—served to highlight this ambivalence. Believing that art reveals historical and cultural concerns, this project explores the extent to which adult-child ambivalence is prominent within American art from the period—particularly, the coming-of-age story, as it is a genre intrinsically concerned with the interactions between adults and children. Chapter one features an analysis of Katherine Anne Porter’s “Old Order” coming-of-age sequence, specifically “The Source” and “The Circus.” Establishing Porter’s relevance to the Cold War period, this chapter illustrates how her young heroine (Miranda Gay) experiences ambivalence within her familial relationships—which, in turn, comes to foreshadow and represent the adult-child ambivalence within the Cold War period. Chapter two expands its scope to include a larger historical context and a different artistic mode. With the rise of cinema during the Cold War period, the horror film became a genre extremely interested in adult-child ambivalence, frequently depicting the child as a destructive force and the adult as a victim of parenthood. Attempting to identify models of ambivalence within these horror films, this chapter considers whether said models might provide readers with new ways of understanding classic coming-of-age texts. ii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to all of my teachers, official and otherwise. For all of your past and continued instruction, I am deeply, deeply indebted. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am thankful for the opportunity to share this thesis with those who have encouraged and supported me through the early brainstorming stages, the rigorous production, and the final completion of this project. Specifically, I am thankful for my family and my friends, as well as the University of Alabama. I am also particularly thankful for Dr. Fred Whiting, the chairman of this thesis, for sharing his time and his knowledge, while demanding from me a certain standard of thinking and writing. I would also like to thank Dr. Andrew Huebner, whose historical expertise was invaluable in grounding my journey through this project, and Dr. Stephen Schneider, who provided significant insight and helped with much of the inglorious sentence- level “grunt-work” necessary in a paper of this size. Special thanks is also warranted to the kind people of Traverse City, Michigan, who welcomed an outsider like myself for an entire summer, providing a near-perfect environment for researching and writing much of this thesis. Undoubtedly, there are others deserving of thanks whom I have forgotten. Please accept my sincerest apologies and know that my forgetfulness does not stem from a lack of gratitude. iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................ii DEDICATION............................................................................................iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..........................................................................iv 1. INTRODUCTION..................................................................................1 2. CHAPTER ONE...................................................................................18 3. CHAPTER TWO..................................................................................36 4. CONCLUSION.....................................................................................63 REFERENCES..........................................................................................66 v INTRODUCTION “What harm is it while you are kissing your child to say with a lisping voice: ‘Tomorrow you will die.’?” (Epictetus) In 1983, in a speech on the subject of morality and the status of family life in the United States, President Ronald Reagan recounted an experience he’d once had, hearing an anonymous father address a crowd about his relationship with his children: It was during the time of the Cold War, and communism and our way of life were very much on people’s minds. And [the father] was speaking to that subject. And, suddenly, though, I heard him saying, “I love my little girls more than anything—” And I said to myself, “Oh no, don’t. You can’t—don’t say that.” But I had underestimated him. He went on: “I’d rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism […]” (Reagan) What a strange story and a strange response. Why such surprise from President Reagan at the father’s initial claim to feel the utmost affection for his children? Why such admiration for someone who would rather see his own children dead and in the grave than see them live under a different type of government? Such a curious word to use: “underestimate.” This story is compelling for a couple of reasons. First, the story briefly captures the sentiment of many Americans during the Cold War period, when personal, individual anxiety 1 stemmed from a collective or national adversary (real or imagined) in the form of communism and the Soviet Union. In conjunction with this collective anxiety, widespread fear and uncertainty surrounded the American domestic ideal, particularly in regards to the family dynamic—whether such an ideal could survive and flourish in the nuclear age. Indeed, Cold War concerns and familial concerns were linked in the minds of many Americans during this time. Secondly, President Reagan’s story reveals an ambivalence at the heart of the adult-child relationship, one in which adults experience complex and frequently conflicting feelings toward their children: both admiration and jealousy; the desire to protect coupled with the tendency to control; physical dominance over children and emotional fear of them. As the man in President Reagan’s story unwittingly illustrates, real love for one’s children is very often accompanied by a death-wish. The relative ease with which we may hear and even understand the father’s sentiments only serves to indicate how deeply rooted this ambivalence is within the larger societal framework.1 The overwhelming and undeniable ideological nature of the Cold War brought the family dynamic to the forefront and, in the process, shed light on an adult-child ambivalence that has been, in reality, a recurring social phenomenon. As such, the purpose of this project is to further explore this adult-child ambivalence within the context of America’s Cold War period. *** Social myth and representation—the process of (re)remembering the past—can make an investigation of the Cold War somewhat difficult. On one hand, social memory portrays this 1 Our reaction to the father’s sentiment may be inconsistent. From a critical standpoint, one might come to the conclusion that, thought the Soviet Union was not an idyllic place and though communism may not be one’s chosen political party, the prospect of either seems better, by comparison, than the prospect of death or non- existence. However, one’s emotions, one’s experiences with his/her own children might very well lead one to believe the opposite—that there are alternatives worse than death (though, personally, I am hesitant to believe that communism is one such alternative). Perhaps this is something of a paradox: seemingly strange but also seemingly understandable. 2 period, particularly the years immediately following World War II, as a time of noted tranquility in the home, illustrated by the proliferation of suburban life, the propagation of Cleaver-esque iconography, and increased economic security. However, many of the Cold War’s most distinct images are those in which the period’s undercurrent of political unrest, rampant paranoia, and state-sanctioned violence are on full display: the McCarthy hearings, for example, or the shocking footage of police dogs being loosed on Southern civil rights demonstrators. A tendency towards historical polarization might lead us to see the Cold War as being only one or the other: either a great period in American history or a tragic one. In reality though, as Charles Dickens so effectively reminds us, history often encompasses both the best and worst of these memories. In this sense, the Cold War period, with its nervous balance between war and peace, may be seen as one of the most ambivalent eras in American history. It seems rather appropriate then that a project on ambivalence should find its way to such a period. An added benefit to investigating the Cold War, aside from its ambivalent nature, is that its temporal boundaries are relatively tidy for a historical period. Historical periodization is, even under the best conditions, a messy business. The inability to establish timelines often gives credence to the argument that historical periods are rather fluid and arbitrary in interpretation, even misleading. Fortunately, while there are
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