tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post128503760532890386..comments2023-10-22T05:25:58.606-07:00Comments on Shock!: SHOCK! and the Communist MenaceUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-53478458310858937962011-01-16T14:17:31.384-08:002011-01-16T14:17:31.384-08:00michael, your point about the easy slide from Red ...<b>michael</b>, your point about the easy slide from Red a-bombs to JDs is right on. It has been a tough knot for me to untangle as I'm working on that "Moral Panic and SHOCK!" piece for this blog. There is a <i>lot</i> of scholarship written on the historical construction of "teenagers" and especially "juvenile delinquency"-- I've been in over my head as I try to figure out what the arguments were for "protecting" kids from monster movies. The stuff about the crackdown on horror comic books in the 1950s has been very helpful, but it's not always the same thing as late-night SHOCK! movies. <br /><br />It's strange, isn't it, how fears of attack from within and without can be so easily linked in the popular mind? It's like the crazy-talk we hear every once in a while these days about how al-Qaeda is involved in flooding the southern US border with immigrants from Central and South America.The Creeping Bridehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06164625940022489443noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-35492685621263865972011-01-14T23:06:09.126-08:002011-01-14T23:06:09.126-08:00In researching local newspapers from the late 50s,...In researching local newspapers from the late 50s, it was fascinating to see the same sort of unhinged panic about Sputnik and the A-Bomb applied in equal measure to juvenile delinquents and youth crime. These stories often appeared side-by-side in the front sections of the daily papers, and pitched as if orbiting Soviet atomic space platforms and purse snatchers in Pittsburgh were somehow connected in a bond of society-destroying fear. The San Francisco paper literally ran a story and photo of a purse-snatching punk in Pittsburgh who was caught hiding under a car - like that was supposed to mean something to people in the Bay Area. <br /><br />Then as now, the pitch has always been that society is being attacked from without and collapsing from within. It's all about the terror of things we can't control.DokGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08056695558091017289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-27669950270387890422011-01-13T08:01:43.289-08:002011-01-13T08:01:43.289-08:00...which is at least one view that Dixon perhaps t......which is at least one view that Dixon perhaps tacitly shared with the Stalinists, if this editorial is any indication.The Creeping Bridehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06164625940022489443noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-84246702080654956552011-01-12T18:30:44.897-08:002011-01-12T18:30:44.897-08:00Fascinating! Interestingly enough, totalitarian re...Fascinating! Interestingly enough, totalitarian regimes did not and do not favor horror films for their populace, so the Soviet Union would not have accepted such an imagined trade.Mirekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07502496299200777562noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-28851951935440383682011-01-11T14:24:14.052-08:002011-01-11T14:24:14.052-08:00I would go even further, prof, and say that politi...I would go even further, <b>prof</b>, and say that political scapegoating of pop culture from any point on the spectrum tends to be kinda silly, whether it's about communists in Hollywood or back-masking Satanic messages on rock albums or violent video games or rap videos or whatever. <br /><br />I really wish that some hot-shot indie documentarian would put together a film about the PMRC panic of the mid-'80s-- now <b>there's</b> a brouhaha that crisscrossed the Washington DC political establishment from Tipper Gore to Strom Thurman. Remember Zappa's Senate testimony? Damn, that was good!<br /><br />Politicians just can't seem to get a grip on pop culture, and their efforts to politicize it always seems to come across as ill-informed, incorrect, and square, even those who come from the heart of it, like Reagan and Schwarzenegger-- the latter's endless TERMINATOR references in his speeches while running for governor were painfully cringeworthy.The Creeping Bridehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06164625940022489443noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6192773387267481562.post-5336730351419240642011-01-11T12:01:53.873-08:002011-01-11T12:01:53.873-08:00scapegoating always comes mostly from the Right an...scapegoating always comes mostly from the Right and is always absurd, nothing has changed...Prof. Grewbeardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16132543249418576650noreply@blogger.com