Talk:Culture during the Cold War

Untitled

Good start User:Hires an editor. Thanks for creating the page I suggested so long ago. Might I suggest changing the namespace? Popular culture is a subset of culture in general - why begin by limiting our article's scope? Perhaps the article could be moved to Culture during the Cold War or Culture of the Cold War. What do you think?—Perceval 19:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

An excellent thought! Changing the namespace is good. I thought of Popular Culture just because I remember the protest songs of the 80's. How about "Cold War Culture"? Hires an editor 20:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I changed it to Culture during the Cold War because you're not supposed to suggest that one element of the title is subordinate to the other. That way "Culture" and "Cold War" are equally important. For example, rather than Azerbaijan's geography we use Geography of Azerbaijan.—Perceval 16:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I created an additional section, splitting the nuclear war in films from the films that would be more about a conventional war between the two superpowers. Ideas on this are appreciated. User:Enlightenedment

What about 'Back in the USSR' by the Beatles? Is that considered a cultural by-product of the Cold War?

World wide view

Most of the items in this article are only from the US perspective, and do not represent how the French, or Soviets/Russians, or others would have viewed the Cold War from their cultural perspectives, in terms of music, arts, movies and TV, etc. Hires an editor 18:19, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that the article be retitled 'United States Culture...' or 'American Culture...' as it doesn't deal with any non-US presepctives ahpook 11:03, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the article should be renamed with a specification that it is about American culture 128.227.40.209 (talk) 13:40, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

It's also very light on the 50's, 60's and 70's, as if the Cold War was started by Reagan.--Straw Cat (talk) 13:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:On the Beach DVD cover.jpg

Image:On the Beach DVD cover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 00:46, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Role of governments

As it currently stands, the article focuses primarily on the range of cultural "products" that were created during the period, and to some degree on how they reflected and were influenced by the Cold War. What's largely missing is a discussion of the role that was played by the various governments in terms of promoting, suppressing, or otherwise influencing cultural expression. This is hinted at in the Intro, and touched on briefly in the HUAC section -- but it really needs to be treated in greater depth. For instance, I'm going to add a short section on the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which thankfully already has an existing article to link to. Cgingold 07:29, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work on this! I'm stuck on what more to do/say about all these different things, and I've said before that this article is somewhere between list and discussion. I would like to see it less list, and more exposition. I've got more reading to do on this subject, too.

About the politics part, do you think that politics is/is not part of culture? I'm not sure either way, I imagine there would be arguments for both. Hires an editor 19:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Should we only add stuff "during" the Cold War

Hi, sorry guys about a month ago I added a 2003 video game "Freedom Fighters", to the games list. Are we only meant to add stuff that was done during the cold war??? (1945-1989) Ryan4314 (talk) 05:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think so, since it is "Culture during the Cold War". Hires an editor (talk) 17:42, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, I agree with the idea, but that means this article is going to need rewrite. Specifically Culture in which country? Ryan4314 (talk) 19:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see this reflected throughout the world, rather than US only. Particularly culture reflected in the Soviet Union, and other Eastern Bloc countries, is desired, since I wrote most of this from my own experience, and stole a bunch from other articles in wikipedia. I probably forgot to bring over sources, too. On top of that, this article is stuck between list and discussion; I'd like it to be discussion and not so much list. And better sourced! Hires an editor (talk) 00:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes is should be "about the world", if u can remember the bits you stole, we can get the sources. Writing an article like this gonna be tough, we preferably need an editor who lived in the Soviet Union for neutrality or something. If you want it to be like a discussion (not an actual discussion, but I know what you mean) then it's probably be best to work at 1 section at a time, e.g film. Take a load of films made during the cold war, then find sources saying how terrified people were of the Russians and Nuclear war. Then on the flipside find out about films made in the soviet union, where they as paranoid as us? etc etc Ryan4314 (talk) 06:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I calls dibbs on doing the games section :P Ryan4314 (talk) 07:58, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

James Bond

The James Bond Movie "A View to a Kill" includes also Cold War background. Max Zorin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.218.83.75 (talk) 20:25, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

From the Cold War Article

The Cold War has been extensively portrayed in Western popular media, and continues to be a current topic well after the end of the era, as seen in the numerous post-1991 Cold War-themed feature films, and the ongoing 2013 US television series, The Americans, a Russian-spies-in-America action drama set in the early 1980s.

Films

See also Category:Cold War films

Title	Year	Director	Cold War plot reference
The Third Man	1949	Carol Reed
The Manchurian Candidate	1962	John Frankenheimer	Soviets capture a prominent US politician's son fighting in the Korean War and secretly turn him, via brainwashing, into a sleeper assassin.
Dr. Strangelove	1964	Stanley Kubrick	US Air Force general unilaterally launches a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, believing the Russians have already attacked America by fluoridating US water supplies..
Fail-Safe	1964	Sydney Lumet
The Bedford Incident	1965	James B. Harris
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold	1965	Martin Ritt	Britain vs East Germany in an intricate spy game where agents and double agents jockey for survival.
Ice Station Zebra	1968	John Sturges
Gorky Park	1983	Michael Apted	Honest Russian policeman, murderous American businessman, corrupt Chief Prosecutor and KGB tangle over a high-stakes plan to smuggle Soviet sable.
The Osterman Weekend	1983	Sam Peckinpah	Rogue CIA agent hunts for KGB and his wife's killer, innocents get caught in the middle, leading to one violent weekend.
WarGames	1983	John Badham	Out-of-control US military supercomputer attempts to trigger all-out nuclear war with the Soviets.
Red Dawn	1984	John Milius	In an alternate 1980, the Soviet Union, with Cuban allies, invades the USA, resisted by a band of guerrilla-fighting high schoolers.
Top Gun	1986	Tony Scott	Elite US Navy fighter pilots engage Russian jets in deadly aerial showdown, to protect a ship that has drifted into Soviet-patrolled waters.
Red Heat	1988	Walter Hill	Russian cop teams up with American cop in Chicago, to hunt escaped Russian crime kingpin.
The Falcon and the Snowman	1985	John Schlesinger	Two privileged young Americans, motivated by idealism and greed, get caught selling state secrets to the Russians - based on a true story.
No Way Out	1987	Roger Donaldson	Deep-cover KGB spy, serving as a US Navy officer, races against time to avoid discovery during a fast-moving manhunt in the Pentagon.
Little Nikita	1988	Richard Benjamin	Spy-vs-spy in southern California: KGB sleeper agents as a family with an unsuspecting teenage son, an FBI agent hunting them, a rogue KGB agent killing other KGB agents, and a spy-catcher from Moscow hunting him.
The Hunt for Red October	1990	John McTiernan	Soviet naval captain commanding latest-technology nuclear sub engineers tricky defection to the US, evading Russian pursuers and convincing hostile American forces.
Crimson Tide	1995	Tony Scott
Thirteen Days	2000	Roger Donaldson	Docudrama goes behind the scenes in the Cuban missile crisis.
K-19: The Widowmaker	2002	Kathryn Bigelow
The Manchurian Candidate	2004	Jonathan Demme	Remake of the 1962 original.
The Good Shepherd	2006	Robert De Niro
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	2008	Steven Spielberg
X-Men: First Class	2011	Matthew Vaughn	In an alternate 1962, super-powered human mutants intervene during the Cuban missile crisis.
Ginger and Rosa	2012	Sally Potter	Coming-of-age story of two teenage girls in 1962 London, against a backdrop of Ban the Bomb and the Cuban missile crisis.
Phantom	2013	Todd Robinson	Set in the Sixties, rogue Russians led by a KGB agent attempt to commandeer a Soviet submarine and use its nukes to start a war between the US and China.

Television

• The Americans (2013-) TV series set in the early 1980s, follows two KGB agents, operating in the USA while under cover as an American family with children.

Literature

See also Category:Cold War novels

• Ian Fleming's From Russia, With Love
• Peter George's Red Alert (1958)
• Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's Fail-Safe (1962)
• John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
• John le Carré's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)

Comics & graphic novels

• The Coldest City by Antony Johnston (2012) Graphic novel set in the dying days of Soviet Communism.