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The destruction of New York City: A recurrent nightmare of American Cold War cinema

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 9; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14682740903198247

1743-7962

Lori Maguire,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Abstract This article examines the repeated appearance of scenes showing the partial or complete destruction of New York City in American cinema of the Cold War. While this theme goes across genres, it has been especially prevalent in science fiction films which are the focus of this study. It begins by showing the particular reasons for this morbid fascination and the history of such imagery in nineteenth and early twentieth century literature and cinema. The paper then analyses the changing presentations of destruction from the 1950s to the 1980s and relates them to the dominant fears and anxieties of each period. It concludes by taking a brief look at the continuation of the theme in the post-Cold War period. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Arnaud Regnauld and Henri Zuber for their help and advice. Notes [1] Numerous studies of science fiction cinema exist. To name but a few: Kuhn Kuhn, Annette, ed. 1990. Alien Zone, London: Verso. 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There are many others that there is not the space to list here. [2] A number of films outside the science fiction genre also played with this theme, such as Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet, 1964). Others showed New York as a crime-ridden wreck, like Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973), Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) and The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979). 1981's Fort Apache, the Bronx (Daniel Petrie, 1981) showed a corrupt and racist police force battling even worse criminals and Nighthawks (Bruce Malmuth, 1981) concerned the arrival of Europe's most famous terrorist in the city. [3] New York, of course, was also faulted for its seediness: bars, prostitution, etc. For histories of New York, see Lankevich Lankevich, George. 1998. American Metropolis? A History of New York City, New York: New York University Press. [Google Scholar], American Metropolis?; Moorhouse Moorhouse, Geoffrey. 1989. Imperial City: the Rise and Rise of New York, London: Hodder & Stoughton. 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Ric Burns wrote in the companion volume to the PBS history of New York: 'To many foreigners it represents America; to many Americans, it represents all that is foreign'. Burns and Sandars Burns, Ric and Sandars, James. 1999. New York: An Illustrated History, New York: Knopf. [Google Scholar], New York, xiii. [15] As far as I can tell, the first film to destroy New York was The Battle Cry of Peace (Wilfrid North, 1915), now lost. It details the city's invasion by an unidentified enemy that looks German. It was generally seen as Allied propaganda. See The New York Times' review, 7 August 1915. New York was attacked again in a forgotten pacifist film of 1933, Men Must Fight (Edgar Selwyn). [16] Wollen Wollen, Peter. 1992. Delirious Projections. Sight and Sound, 2(4): 24–7. [Google Scholar], 'Delirious Projections', 25 sees some parallels between the skyscraper, and film, which developed at the same time. [17] Sontag Sontag, Susan. 1966. "The Imagination of Disaster". In Against Interpretation and Other Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. [Google Scholar], 'The Imagination of Disaster', 213. See also Murphy Murphy, Brian. 1972. Monster Movies: They Came from beneath the Fifties. Journal of Popular Film, 1(1): 31–44. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], 'Monster Movies'. [18] Quoted in Whitfield Whitfield, Stephen. 1991. The Culture of the Cold War, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], The Culture of the Cold War, 77. Barry Keith Grant Grant, Barry Keith. 1999. "Sensuous Elaboration": Reason and the Visible in the Science Fiction Film". In Alien Zone II, Edited by: Kuhn, Annette. London: Verso. [Google Scholar] wrote: 'We eagerly await the climactic tidal wave that will sweep over New York and its landmarks of western civilisation'. '"Sensuous Elaboration"', 22. [19] For more on this see Evans Evans, Joyce. 1998. Celluloid Mushroom Clouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 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[Google Scholar], By the Bomb's Early Light. [22] See, for example, Weart Weart, Spencer. 1988. Nuclear Fear: A History of Images, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Google Scholar], Nuclear Fear, 194 [23] As Sandars Sandars, James. 2001. Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, London: Bloomsbury. [Google Scholar] observes in Celluloid Skyline, 387–8: 'How better to convey the end of the world than to show the destruction of its best-known place … In the nuclear era, the greatest symbol of civil society was inevitably the greatest possible target, whose annihilation would provide the most wrenching symbol of atomic nightmare'. [24] For more information on the film and examples of publicity shots and posters see http://www.conelrad.com/features/invasionusa/index.html. Accessed 15 January 2003. [25] The trailer can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = cNZaMm5q_BA. Accessed 20 February 2009. [26] See Doherty Doherty, Thomas. 1988. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenalization of American Movies in the 1950s, Boston: Unwin Hyman. [Google Scholar], Teenagers and Teenpics, 152. [27] Ibid. [28] And even some that belong to the domain of fantasy like the television series I Dream of Jeannie. [29] See Dean Dean, Joan. 1978. Between 2001 and Star Wars. The Journal of Popular Film and Television, 7(1): 32–41. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 'Between 2001 and Star Wars'. Fried's Fried, Richard. 1998. The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming: Pageantry and Patriotism in Cold War America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] The Russians Are Coming! shows the decline of patriotic displays at the end of the 1950s. The following decade saw increasing cynicism about American institutions and values caused by the revelation of racial inequality through the civil rights movement and disillusionment with the Vietnam War. Watergate, of course, further increased cynicism in the 1970s. [30] The inscription on the Statue, by Emma Lazarus, reads: 'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.' [31] The script is available online at http://pota.goatley.com/scripts/pota_finalshoot2.pdf. Accessed 25 February 2009. Interestingly enough, only the first words 'My God!' can be found in the shooting script. The rest seems to have been added during filming. [32] For more on this see Greene Greene, Eric. 1996. Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics and Popular Culture, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. [Google Scholar], Planet of the Apes. [33] The script can be found at http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Escape-From-New-York.html Accessed 25 February 2009. [34] See, for example, Biskind Biskind, Peter. 1983. Seeing is Believing, New York: Pantheon. 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