Kirshner | Subverting the Cold War in the 1960s: Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Planet of the Apes Subverting the Cold War in the 1960s: Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and The Planet of the Apes Jonathan Kirshner Cornell University The election of John E. Kennedy get in trouble by saying the wrong in 1960 was, in retrospect, a crucial thing.- But more profoundly, these infiection point in the trajectory of the films subverted the very idea of the Cold War. Certainly the ideology of Cold War itself. Rather than switch- anti-communism pervaded American ing, as much scholarship did, from life in the 1950s. But after the hyste- an ideological position that blamed ria of its first half-decade, the practi- the USSR to one that accused the US, cal conduct of the superpower conflict these politically charged films were became routinized during the cautious ultimately a-political statements. and conservati\ e Eisenhower admin- They did not take sides, but instead istration. Kennedy, however, had ridiculed both and trivialized their campaigned against American com- conflict, asserting that the differ- placency, and even weakness in the ences between them were meaning- shadow of the Soviet threat. Addition- less. ally, as difficult as it is to conceptual- ize today, the Soviet Union was at this time viewed as an economic success Left or Right? story, with international assertiveness The Manchurian Candidate, to come on the heels of its material directed by John Erankenheimer and achievements. written by George Axelrod (from the The first two years of the novel by Richard Condon), is the Kennedy Administration were charac- most explicit in equating the far left The Manchurian Candidate {The Manchurian Candidate). terized by ubiquitous superpower con- with the far right. The principal vil- frontation, culminating in the Cuban lain, portrayed by Angela Lansbury, Missile Crisis of October 1962, at which time Kennedy estimated is the puppet master behind her second husband. Senator Johnny that the chance of nuclear war was better than one in three.' The Islen, a drunken, vacuous McCarthy stand-in. In one of the film's second half of the decade witnessed the Vietnam War. an instru- most chilling (and prescient) images, Islen attacks the Secretary mental and perhaps inevitable outgrowth of the Cold War. The of Defense at a press conference, while Lansbury, in the back- war not only became the principal outlet of the larger confiict, but ground of the room, dominates the screen as she towers over a also over time reshaped the nature of Cold War scholarship. In television monitor that captures the unfolding action.' the 1950s, the Cold War was unquestionably attributed to the So- Lansbur)' also dominates her son from a previous mar- viet Union and its communist ideology. By the early 1970s, a riage, Raymond Shaw, who has just returned from Korea to a thriving "revisionist" school now blamed the United States and hero's welcome. Shaw received the Congressional Medal of the imperative of capitalist expansion. Honor for saving his patrol, but in fact his heroism is an illusion In the midst of all this, three remarkable films. The Man- created by the Chinese and Russians who captured and brain- churian Candidate (1962), Dr. Strangelove {or How I Learned washed his entire squad. Shaw has been programmed as the to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) (1964), and Planet of the perfect assassin, and after a few bloody tests of his skills back in Apes (1968), subverted the Cold War. They "subverted" the war the States, he is turned over to his American handler. in two ways. Eirst they challenged the fundamental ideological In the film's most stunning twist, Raymond's American tenets upon which U.S. policy was based. This was quite dar- handler turns out to be none other than his mother. She has ing, especially for the first two films, made at a time when anti- arranged to secure the vice-presidential nomination for Islen, communism pervaded American society, and people could still and has instructed Raymond to kill the presidential nominee as 40 I Film & History Jonathan Kirshner | Special In-Depth Section he addresses the party convention at Madison Square Garden. ludicrous McCarthy-style far-right politics are and how danger- Islen. the ultimate anti-Communist, will then be swept into of- ous the far-left is also, how the\ were really exactly the same fice, leaving his wife, a Soviet agent, running the show. thing, and the idiocy of it all." These plans come undone as Raymond's commanding of- A bold argument to make in 1962, The Manchurian Can- ficer (portrayed by Frank Sinatra), haunted b\ nightmares from didate was a box office success, but its sustained influence was the brainwashing, is slowly able to piece together key elements almost certainh' limited by the fact that it was withdrawn from of the conspiracy. He deprograms Shaw, but fails to pre\ent circulation shortly after the Kennedy assassination. That event him from executing his own \ariation of his instructions: at- had a more modest effect on the profoundly influential Dr tending the convention as ordered and assassinating Islen and Strangelove. causing its first screening for critics to be postponed his mother. from Its originally scheduled date, No\ember 22, 1963.' At first glance, it can be argued that Tlie Manchurian Can- didate is simply a leftist critique of America and its icons and values. Indeed, one review called it a "refreshingly un-American Nuclear War and its Discontents film."^ The chief antagonist is in many w ays a nightmarish ex- While The Manchurian Candidate played in theatres dur- tension of the American vision of motherhood itself. The ease ing the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Dr Strangelove that took with which U.S. soldiers are tumed into brainwashed killers is head on the most pressing issue of the day. the danger of nuclear also a challenge to a society based on the exaltation of the indi- w ar, and total human annihilation. Presented as a comedy, it w as vidual and of free will. The use of Lincoln's image, which ap- also a Stanley Kubrick film, and thus bore the stamp of his ob- pears throughout the film, is not only a nod to America's most sessive realism. Kubrick studied nuclear strategy for years, read- famous assassination, but also mocks the m\ thic American val- ing scores of books and countless journals, absorbing the w ork ues with which Lincoln is associated. This reaches its apex at a of leading scholars such as Thomas Schelhng and Herman Kahn.^ costume party when Islen appears in full Lincoln garb. Islen's Source hghting, enclosed spaces, and the judicious use of hand McCarthy figure is such a buffoon that he senles on "57" as the held cameras (during the raid on Burpelson Air Force Base) vi- number of communists he can prove are in the Defense Depart- sually complement the film's technical accuracy. Now close to ment solely because, thinking of ketchup, it is an easy number to fort) years old, it is still routinely show n to students to illustrate remember. As both Lincoln and McCanh\, there can be no doubt elements of deterrence theory. that his character is a slap in the face of the far right. Like The Manchurian Candidate. Dr Strangelove is criti- cal of American society - where else would one find a machine Certainly any film that can end, logically, w ith its central gun in a golf bag - but its principal target is the Cold War itself, character murdering his mother w hile dressed as a priest w ear- and the moral equnalence, and folh. of both sides. The action ing the Congressional Medal, can be fairh labeled "un-Ameri- of the film is limited almost entirely to three restricted senings. can." But there is a fundamental difference between an There is the office of General Ripper, w ho has ordered his squad- "un-American" film, and an anti-Amencan film in the context ron of B-52s to attack the Soviet Union. Here, his British assis- of the Cold War. The Manchurian Candidate could just as eas- tant Mandrake (pla> ed b\ Peter Sellers, w ho has three roles in ily be called "un-Communist," as the far left does not fare any the film I engages Ripper in a desperate anempt to figure out the bener than the far right. In fact, the Communists are portrayed recall code that w ill bnng the planes back. The second setting is as so evil and ruthless, that some have interpreted the film as an the war room, where the President (also Sellers), his advisors, anti-Communist wake-up call." Aside from the horrors visited and the Russian Ambassador anempt to diffuse the situation. Here upon Raymond (at one point he is forced to kill his true lo\ e) no iron curtain figure is endowed with a single positive attribute. The main Russian antagonist would "gladh" ha\e Raymond kill one of his underlings as a test, but since he is understaffed, some random innocent victim must be chosen. The ke> Chi- nese figure is not just murderous, but cynical and materialist, and takes advantage of his trip to New York to take care of a long shopping list at Macy's. Clearly, this w as not a piece of leftist propaganda. Con- demned by both the American Legion and the Communist Party, the fikn was one which "if the nghtists hated [it]... the liberals hated it even more."" The target was not one side in the con- flict, but the confiict itself.