"The Destruction of New York City: A Recurrent Nightmare of American Cold War Cinema"

"The Destruction of New York City: A Recurrent Nightmare of American Cold War Cinema"

[SHS:HIST] Humanities and Social Sciences/History

Cold War

popular culture

film studies

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 particularly 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 19th and early 20th century literature and cinema. The paper then analyzes 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.

Maguire, Lori

Cold War History

ISSN:1468-2745

2009-11

ENG

article in peer-reviewed journal

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00606513

DOI: 10.1080/14682740903198247

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/60/65/13/PDF/The_Destruction_of_New_York_City.pdf