Customer Reviews

Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture

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I bought RED SCARED! several months ago, but idiotically shelved it for a long time. Finally I read it and regreted to have waited for so long reading it, because this book is fun.
RED SCARED! THE COMMIE MENACE IN PROPAGANDA AND POPULAR CULTURE details in an amusing way the troubled USA/USSR relation and the impact the cold war and the communist hysteria had on popular culture.
Beginning with the first red scare in the US in 1919, when a series of bomb explosions led to the deportation of 250 alien radicals, RED SCARED! explores the relation between Soviet Russia and the United States, from the alliance in the second world war to the cold war with its various conflicts. The focus however is on the influence of politics on popular culture and how changes in the political climate were reflected in mass media. Lavishly illustrated, never academic, written in a witty style, RED SCARED! entertains as well as educates.
Movies, TV-shows, novels, comics, pamphlets - all mass media felt the impact of the cold war. You surely know the charming film NINOTCHKA starring Greta GARBO or Stanley KUBRICK's Dr. STRANGELOVE but have you also heard about I MARRIED A COMMUNIST, INVASION USA, THE GIRL IN THE KREMLIN or I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI? Or did you know that John WAYNE once played an HUAC investigator, examining red un-American activities on the beautiful island of Hawaii (BIG JIM MCCLAIN, USA 1952)? All the above mentioned films and many more are presented with hugely interesting rare stills, lobby cards and posters. Capsule reviews are provided as well. The authors also discuss the successful TV series I LED THREE LIVES. Debuting in 1953 this 117 episode series about an undercover agent infiltrating a communist cell ran until 1956.
Impressive illustrations feature comics (my favorite being a horror comic titled THE RUSSIAN DEVIL, where a demonic looking kommissar digs a corpse up from a frozen grave, while the balloon above the evil red reads: "Get up, Ivan! You can't escape us by dying! We're not thru with you yet!") and lurid pulp paperback novels (RED RAPE). There's also an excerpt from a trashy Mickey SPILLANE mystery, where private eye Mike HAMMER battles the reds. There were even romance comics concerning the cold war ("THE ROMANTIC CURTAIN")!!! Other chapters revolve around red-baiter and FBI boss J. Edgar HOOVER, the sputnik shock, mind-boggling quotes from political pamphlets and anti-Communist bubble-gum cards (!)

RED SCARED! is an hugely entertaining time capsule ride. However it is not without flaws: Author Michael BARSON wrote a similar book in 1992 (BETTER DEAD THAN RED! A NOSTALGIC LOOK AT THE GOLDEN YEARS OF RUSSIAPHOBIA, RED-BAITING, AND OTHER COMMIE MADNESS) and he uses some of the material again. Several of the illustrations and stories looked quite familiar to me.
I also found it disappointing that several topics are only briefly touched upon or barely mentioned. For instance I would have liked to read more about the HUAC investigations of Hollywood.
Nonetheless is RED SCARED! essential reading for history buffs and people with interest in popular culture.

Michael Barson and Steven Heller's Red Scared! covers the Communist menace as seen through popular cultural icons and the media. The collections of posters, advertisements, and media presentations in color throughout provide a powerful visual survey of the ways in which Communism was presented to the public eye. A highly recommended pick.

This is a highly entertaining little book. Our feelings about Russia and China have changed so much that seeing this overheated, red-baiting material is a shock. But it was a daily reality at mid-century. This book is copiously illustrated with photos, newspaper clippings, book covers and even "If the Devil Would Talk," the virulently anti-Communist comic book published by the Catholic Church in the 1950's. You won't go wrong with this one.

The political cartoons published here would make this book worth five points. The political analysis given would make it worth zero. Hence the average is 3. As is the case with most liberals, the author Barson is blind to the nature of Communism and only condemns what he considers the "hysteria" produced by anti-Communism. This is rather like warning people to be afraid of firefighters and firetrucks while saying nothing about the dangers of house fires with people inside. Barson even asserts that the fear of Communism almost destroyed American free speech. That is utter nonsense. And, far from being a time of hysteria, the Fifties were a relatively quiet time in US history. Anyway, since when is fear of a mortal enemy a form of hysteria? Typical of liberals, Barson has more concern about McCarthyism, under which not a single person died than he does of Communism, under which tens of millions were murdered. And the involvement of Communists (mostly covert ones) in the US is well documented. The Hollywood Left is well known to this day. And it was the extensive network of Communists and fellow travelers in Roosevelt's administration that allowed Roosevelt to call Stalin "Uncle Joe" and to subject Poland and the other eastern European nations to a half-century of servitude under the Soviet Union. The chief flaw of McCarthyism was the fact that it came at least twenty years too late. One of the cartoons shows Nikita Kruschev saying "We will bury you." Does Barson suppose that Kruschev was only kidding? After all, to Barson, the threat of Communism was only imaginary.

As the title suggests, this book deals with propaganda aimed at fighting the "Red Menace" (i.e. communism). Starting with the beginning of the Soviet state and going all through the Cold War, the authors, using a tongue-in-cheek style, show the variety methods used in the US to get the anti-communist message across. These methods ranged from pamphlets and posters to magazine articles and comic books. The book's only serious problem is the downplaying of how much of a menace the communist world was (and still is in the case of North Korea and the other Red holdouts).

This text is a concerted effort to trivialize the opposition to the ruthless totalitarian system that took more than 100 million lives. Documents now available show that Lenin created the police state, which was imitated by Mao and Pol Pot. Readers are advised to read Gulag Archipeligo to find out what Communism was.
Barson and Heller would like us to forget the thousands of missiles created destroy not only America but the entire West