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119-126 Wildermuthmanchurian.Indd Electronic Media and the Feminine in the National Security Regime The Manchurian Candidate before and after 9/11 By Mark E. Wildermuth Abstract: The 1962 and 2004 versions satire of McCarthyism and as a suc- gate the sexist epistemic informing those of The Manchurian Candidate, although cessful critique of the hypocritical cold states’ politics and thereby unwittingly critical of the oppressive national secu- war consensus that could not sustain a support the ideology informing regimes rity states of their times, fail to inter- lucid ideological distinction between that, as Iris Marion Young indicates, rogate the sexist epistemic informing the security regimes of the East and typify “a logic of masculinist protec- those states. They thereby unwittingly those of the West (see also Krajewski; tion” that reduces citizens to the roles of support the ideology informing regimes Rogin). However, in the wake of such helpless women and children (223–25). that, as Iris Marion Young indicates, studies as Robert Corber’s In the Name Both films revive a sexist trope that Lynn typify “a logic of masculinist protec- of National Security, which demonstrat- Spigel and Jeffrey Sconce identify in the tion” that reduces citizens to the roles ed how the cold war consensus linked postwar era; one that, as Sconce says, of helpless women and children. Both communism to internal security threats equates “femininity, electronic presence, films revive a sexist trope that as Jef- such as women, gays, and other under- and the televisual” with “oblivion” and frey Sconce says, equates “femininity, represented social groups, attention has a “loathsome passivity” associated with electronic presence, and the televisual” shifted to the film’s gender subtexts. brainwashing and control of the (irra- with “oblivion,” and a “loathsome pas- Hence, Tony Jackson’s 2000 study con- tional and feminized) masses (153–54). sivity” associated with brainwashing cludes that the film “imagines mascu- Both films argue that electronic media and control of the (feminized) masses. linized women and feminized men to are linked to the feminine as a dangerous By embedding itself in countercultur- be the real source of cultural failure” (6) subversive force that configures signs as al rhetorics that express concern for in concurrence with misogynistic cul- disembodied, self-referential icons that the impact of electronic media on the tural attitudes popularized after World can manipulate the subconscious minds masses, this trope disguises the militant War II by Philip Wylie and others. of the masses—using a feminized infor- antifeminist thrust of its logic and finds Likewise, Kevin Ohi’s 2005 queer stud- matics that stands in stark contrast to renewed life in visual representations ies approach to the film points to the masculinized norms of communication that are not as subversive as they seem. threatening nature of femininity and that link the sign with the objectified eroticism in this film that argues that referent. Keywords: 9/11, Cold War film, femi- even “heterosexual flirtation is [. .] Although the misogynistic trope’s nism and the media, informatics, the potentially indistinguishable from mind vigor is evident in the first film, its posthuman, security regimes. control” (163). renewal and intensity are equally clear Indeed, the film reinforces sexist in the second—a product of a new ince its release in 1962, John tropes that denigrate the feminine and post–9/11 security regime culture that, Frankenheimer’s The Manchu- the feminization of mass culture, as does as James Berger says in a recent PMLA Srian Candidate has been hailed its successor, Jonathan Demme’s 2004 article, often denigrates multivalency by scholars such as Stephen Whitfield version of The Manchurian Candidate. in its postapocalyptic rhetoric in which and Margot Henrikson as an effective Both films, although critical of the poten- “the world of semantical and moral tially oppressive national security states ambiguity has [. .] been swept away” Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications of their respective times, fail to interro- because the “logic and desire of terror- 121 122 JPF&T—Journal of Popular Film and Television ism and antiterrorism” seek “to restore in the twentieth century. Spigel shows War II, the world consists of “increas- [. .] perfect correspondence between that Wylie’s 1942 book Generation of ingly schizophrenic subjectivities. [. .] word and thing” to assert cultural hege- Vipers indicated that “American society Where there was once ‘meaning,’ ‘his- mony (343). Moreover, as Berger argues was suffering from an ailment called tory,’ and a solid realm of ‘signifieds,’ in After the End, such postapocalyptic ‘momism’” [a cultural motif cited as there is now only a haunted world of cultural tropes also typically denigrate a major influence on The Manchurian vacant and shifting signifiers” where feminism and femininity: “post-apoca- Candidate by post-1980s film scholars] “‘the sign is everything but stands for lypse in fiction” sometimes “causes a in which “American women had become nothing’” (171; emphasis in original). reversion to a kind of natural aristoc- overbearing, domineering mothers who Thus, after the war, there emerged racy, in which such decadent luxuries turned their sons and husbands into large implications, epistemologically as feminism, democracy, and social weak-kneed fools” (51). Moreover, they and culturally, for the confusion of justice must be jettisoned in favor of “had somehow gained control of the air- electronic (mass-mediated) space and more natural values more suited to waves,” using radio to control the minds reality spaces, as well as the gendered survival” (8). Moreover, the “problem- of the now feminized masses (51). In the boundaries that were associated with atic position of [. .] women’s sexuality 1955 edition of his book, Wylie claimed them, implications reflected in many is an enduring feature of apocalyptic a new menace, television, “would [. aspects of contemporary culture. The discourse,” for “there is an important . .] turn men into female-dominated blurring of electronic and reality spaces, strand of apocalyptic imagining that dupes” (52). It is therefore not surpris- plus the deconstruction of the public and seeks to destroy the world expressly ing that Wylie, as Michael Paul Rogin the private, have become major motifs in order to eliminate female sexuality” says, would eventually lay the blame of in the cultural schemas of postmodern- (11). Thus, this context helps explain McCarthyism at the feet of the momist ism. As Sconce shows, this is evident the survival of this misogynistic trope in televisual conspiracy (243). in Jean Baudrillard’s descriptions of our culture despite the feminist critique Wylie’s philosophy, however, as Spi- the implosive quality of social space of sexism in media. By embedding gel also shows, was only the tip of a in postmodern life, where the exterior itself in countercultural rhetorics that larger mediated cultural iceberg. It was and the interior no longer can be distin- express concern for the impact of media a widely held notion during the 1940s guished (182). This is also discernible on the masses, this trope disguises the and 1950s that the new electronic media, in postmodern conceptualizations of antifeminist thrust of its logic and finds and television in particular, “threatened informatics, as described by N. Kath- renewed life in visual representations to contaminate masculinity, to make erine Hayles. For Hayles, postmodern that are not as subversive as they seem. men sick with the ‘disease’ of feminin- informatics leads to the “denaturing” ity” (50–51). Linked to this “disease” of human subjects, the core of what she Misogyny and Mass Media in The is the larger cultural trope identified and others term the posthuman—the Manchurian Candidate (1962) by Huyssen that extended, according deconstruction of the human subject on Before the rise of the 9/11 regime’s to Spigel, into the postwar era: “Mass the grounds that the main elements of postapocalyptic culture, the misogynist amusements are thought to encourage human experience (language, context, trope was nurtured in earlier instan- passivity, and they have often been space, and time) are cultural constructs tiations of media cultures that similarly represented in terms of penetration, rather than natural creations (265). denigrated the masses and the feminine. consumption, and escape” (51). Hence, Baudrillard’s theory that human beings Andreas Huyssen argues that mass cul- “Broadcasting [. .] was shown to now live in a culture of simulation, ture was often gendered as feminine in disrupt the normative patterns of patri- says Hayles, parallels similar posthu- the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth archal (high) culture and to turn ‘real man conceptualizations of space where centuries with the purpose of denigrat- men’ into passive homebodies” (51). “context is seen as a construction to ing the mass culture industry. Thus, As Sconce has shown, these con- be manipulated rather than a preexist- the “fear of the masses [. .] is always cerns about the impact of the media ing condition” (274). “Like cyberspace, the fear of woman, a fear [. .] of the on human behavior link cultural theory [Baudrillard’s conception of] the hyper- unconscious, of sexuality, of the loss with popular entertainment in the cul- real [simulation] presupposes a radical of identity, and stable ego boundaries tures of late-modern and postmodern erosion of context” leading to a dena- in the mass” (52).
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