Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

adopted as a House initiative by Senator Joseph McCarthy, from whom it has acquired the
name McCarthyism, although many other people and agencies were actively involved in
the campaign. The people that were especially targeted were those involved in departments
of government and the military, as well as those working in the entertainment industry.
Any supposed or alleged affiliation to Communism would be subject to harsh
investigations and posed an evident threat to one’s personal or professional life. There are
many accounts from artists or industry-connected people who, given suspicion about their
leftist connections or beliefs, saw their careers totally destroyed and some were even sent
to prison.
Many factors can account for this regretful episode, from even before Joseph
McCarthy became involved in the political phenomenon. Firstly, the political sway that
leftist elements gained especially in the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s, and the way
that labour unions began to assert themselves. The damaging strikes at the Disney studios
in 1938/9 are the best example of this, and help to explain Walt’s later fervent anti-
Communism. Secondly, the way they actively opposed fascism should also be taken into
account. Thirdly, the entrance of the United States into World War II allying with the
Soviet Union meant that the issue of anti-Communism was repressed to a great extent, and
only after the end of the war, when the Cold War began, did the strong and suppressive
movements of Communism assume relevance with their puppet regimes spread out all over
Central and Eastern Europe. The effects of threats from Communism in the United States
were soon also felt right across the country, in particular at the beginning of the fifties.
Moreover, a full set of international events took place during this period of great
instability, fear and a sense of anguish: from the tests of the atomic bomb, 42 Mao Zedong’s
Communist army takeover of China to the considerable expansion in espionage activities
during the Soviet Cold War. Infiltration was felt to be reaching the highest levels in the
political and social arena, with such people as Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley, Alger
Hiss - who was first accused of espionage - (and Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain who
confessed to being involved with the Soviet Union helping them with atomic bomb
secrets), constantly in the newspaper headlines.
42 Some noir productions began to make references to the panic of bombs threats and other nuclear wars,
such as Kiss Me Deadly to radiation poisoning as in D.O.A. (1950), accentuated by factors of cynicism,
alienation, chaos, and the corrupt nature of society to convey a dark vision of contemporary America.
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