Shion Chang
A Review of the Literature Concerning Popular Media and the 1950s
There is a significant body of literature written by historians and sociologists that has
validated popular media forms as reflections of American society. The depth of this connection
between Hollywood film and Broadway play with society as a whole has been debated by
scholars. Earlier scholarly interpretations of thematic elements as straightforward depictions of
historical events are too simplistic. Also, the media has until recent years been considered a
saccharine and whitewashed depiction of American society concerned primarily with
consumerism and utilized as a vehicle to convey the societal norm of materialism devoid of
politics. While it is true that the United States Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 had
considerable influence over which films reached production, effectively censoring the contents
of Hollywood films, popular media during the decade were not entirely apolitical. Elia Kazan’s
1954 On the Waterfront is a thinly veiled defense of the contentious issue of friendly testimony
before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Broadway, less constrained than its
California counterpart, managed to successfully produce plays that served as an arena to voice
political messages, as in Arthur Miller’s 1953 popular and critical success The Crucible. The
development of the historiography is indicative of a subject that has only recently garnered
serious academic attention.
Phillip Davies and Brian Neve’s 1981 compilation of essays entitled, Cinema, Politics,
and Society in America is one of the earlier studies that examines film produced in the 1950s and
makes a serious inquiry into the political messages within. Davies and Neve are particularly
interested in the contemporary rise in interest amongst scholars of the “social significance of the
recurring themes and images of American film, and a growing body of work on the political and
2
economic history of the American film industry.”1 Neve’s analysis of Kazan’s On the Waterfront
seeks to understand the meaning behind the critical and box-office success of the film and what
the American audience’s reaction to the film might imply in a social context. Neve contends that
the reason Marlon Brando’s character, Terry Malloy, testifies in front of the Crime Commission
investigator is “getting the facts to the public,” and that the stigma associated with denunciation
will be “worth it if we can tell the waterfront story the way the public have a right to hear it.”2
This mirrors Kazan‘s own motivations for giving his friendly testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The argument that the dramatic shift in the attitude with which
Americans regarded denunciation and informants coincided and is revealed by the critical and
popular acclaim which Kazan garnered with his On the Waterfront is bolstered by Neve’s
analysis of the film. This particular interpretation of Kazan’s work serves as a foundation upon
which later film historians and scholars will alternately build on or dismantle.
Peter Biskind sets out in his 1983 book, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us
to Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties, not to analyze and interpret the intention of the filmmaker
but to make sense of the public’s reaction to film and what that revealed about American society
during the 1950s. Biskind addresses the long-standing American societal norm against
denunciation that was encapsulated so well by Miller’s The Crucible. What began as Kazan’s
personal defense of his friendly testimony ultimately resulted in a wholesale shift in the
mentality of Americans. Biskind interprets denunciation in Kazan’s film as the betrayal that had
for so long went “against the American grain,” yet through careful casting, brilliant acting and a
socially and politically relevant story, betrayal is portrayed as something almost positive—the
1
Phillip Davies and Brian Neve, eds., Cinema, Politics, and Society in America (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
2
Ibid., 108.
3
betrayal of corrupt and craven silence for “mainstream, middle-class values disguised as
morality.”3 For Biskind, Kazan not only encapsulated a paradigm shift in American society but
also revealed a vehicle of social control.
In a similar manner, Robert B. Ray’s Marxist interpretation of film in his 1985 work, A
Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980, is as a reflection of contemporary
society. Ray adds however a new dimension of analysis absent from the studies of Biskind and
Neve. Whereas Biskind and Neve gloss over the complexities surrounding the use of film as an
historical source, Ray embraces these “extra cinematic” elements as an opportunity to investigate
both “‘relatively autonomous determinants of film (e.g., technology, economics, actors and
directors) and of their specific articulations in individual movies or groups of movies.”4 Analysis
of these integral components to the finished media product adds a layer of depth missing from
previous analyses and results in list of elements commercially successful films have employed
consistently and provides an explanation for the popular approval of the inclusion of such
elements.
Although it is generally agreed upon by contemporary scholars that 1950s were imbued
with political messages, many of the earlier studies fail to account for the reasons for or results of
the ongoing shift in 1950s American society. Kellner and Ryan’s 1985 study, Camera Politica:
The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film, is helpful in closing this gap as it
details the perceived shift in prevailing social movements from the left to the right during the
1960s towards the mid-eighties. Although its examination of films lies outside the scope of this
3
Peter Biskind, Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and
Love the Fifties (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 182.
4
Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985), 9-10.
4
research project, Kellner’s argument, that Hollywood film is an important “mobilizer of public
energies…actively promoting the new conservative movements on several fronts…” is worth
taking note of.5 Although this study is left-leaning and seems to have been written at times as a
guide to liberalize American society through the medium of film, it provides a unique
interpretation of the purpose of film—rather than merely a societal mirror, Kellner and Ryan
contend that film can and has been utilized to stimulate changes in society and politics, plumbing
the depths of Biskind’s initial observation of popular media as a social control mechanism.
Ronald L. Davis 1997 Celluloid Mirrors: Hollywood and American Society Since 1945
draws direct parallels between popular media and contemporary society and also examines the
extracinematic elements emphasized by Ray and subsequent scholars. Absent from this most
recent study however are the theories introduced by Kellner and Ryan as well as Ray that delved
farther into the notion of popular media as more than a simple reflection of society.
The historiographical trends reflect the nascent nature of historical analysis of popular
media among scholars. Chronologically earlier works are devoid of analytical interpretation
outside of the context of the media studied. Later works introduce varying interpretations of not
only the message contained in popular media but also its effects on society, providing theories
into the reason for their production. Still later works factor in the complexities surrounding the
creation of popular media and its distribution, adding a dimension to a historiography reaching
maturity. The research to be conducted focused primarily on the popular reception of media as an
indicator of societal trends that are difficult to measure by direct methods and will draw heavily
from the studies of later scholars that analyzed popular media as more than a societal mirror.
5
Douglas Kellner and Michael Ryan, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of
Contemporary Hollywood Film (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1979), xi.