To clarify, McCarthy went after the people you say he should have gone after…Communists in the armed forces and government. HUAC was the group that investigated Hollywood. McCarthy had nothing to do with it.
Remember, also, that the only power HUAC had was to charge uncooperative withnesses with Contempt of Congress. If anybody ruined lives during the whole affair, it wasn’t Kazan, and it wasn’t HUAC. It was the studios, who overreacted and set up a pretty stupid blacklist
Yet nobody in that thread said the “film industry is influenced by an enemy ideology.” The point people were making was that, at the time, Hollywood was influenced by communism which was the ideology of the Soviet Union.
The point was made that informing HUAC that a communist was a communist is not a betrayal. That’s a debatable proposition (and it’s being debated in the thread), but it’s a far cry from saying Hollywood is currently influenced by an enemy ideology, then making fun of the comment because communism is impotent.
And in her post in the linked thread she compared communism with Judaism, paganism, or being a Republican in response to comparisons of communism with the Klan. She apparently sees communism as benign rather than threatening. That’s a legitimate position to hold. But to support it by starting a pit thread claiming people are saying things they didn’t say isn’t the way to support the point. If she wants to argue that what Kazan did was similar to informing on a Republican, then she needs to discuss it in the context of the time in which Kazan acted. She shouldn’t say communism is like being a Republican because communists are impotent today.
I’m trying not to get into a broader argument about the merits of communism. But in the 1940’s and ‘50’s the USSR was run by Uncle Joe who was a butcher, and CPUSA was cooperating with the Soviets. That’s a very different situation than today.
Thanks for the correction, Captain. And it sounds like there was stupid enough to go around, back then. (Nothing at all like our own utterly rational and enlightened times, of course.)
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Add Triumph of the Will and you’ve got one heckuva double feature.
There’s a super-sized Havahart trap ready for any Commie that tries to communalize my garden. And a waiting compost heap.
I’m also tired of people demonizing the North American Marlon Brando Look Alikes. What did they ever do to hurt anybody?
Wwwait a minute. Female communists have loose morals? As in they might have sexual intercourse with me before marraige? hmmm…
Why didn’t anyone tell me about this before now, comrade?
Zoff - BigGirl was quoting a poster in this thread who did say precisely that.
goes back to lurking in this thread, since she is pretty uninformed on this topic
Just to nitpick, my use of the word “is”, was as part of a hypothetical rhetorical question. I’m not asserting that Hollywood now is “influenced by an enemy ideology” (or for that matter, that it was in the 1940s-50s)
What the hell are you talking about?
I am neither condoning nor judging Kazan’s actions during the HUAC hearings, I am simply stating that this has no bearing on the effect or quality of the cinematic masterpieces he created. His geniues in the medium of film has nothing to do with his politics. He did the things did for a reason. Good or bad, it was justifiable to him and that’s all that matters. Rocks. Glass houses.
Will you deny that Triumph des Willens was not a cinematic masterpiece? The message was evil and horrible, but it was an excellent film. One has no bearing on the other.
Why, oh why can I not be as pithy as I Love Me?
I used the Kazan thread as a jumping off point. 50 years and it seems few have learned any lessons from the paranoia and utter stupidity of those Cold War years. A half a century later and Kazan’s apologist say what he did to his friends and co-workers was A-OK because they were Communists (as was he).
50 years later there are people who still see American Communists through a Red haze of irrational fear and anger. It shows my optimism about the outcome of our current haze of fear and anger is pretty ill-founded.
Ilsa_Lund, Polanski is a supremely talented man, no doubt about it.
However, he didn’t just “sleep with an underage girl.” He drugged her and then raped her. She was all of what-13, I believe?
I think all governments “communalize and socialize” us in different ways. Some more than others. It has always been like that. Whats the point? --> 1984
It’s not paranoia if it’s true. The Communist Party of the USA was indeed taking direct orders from Moscow with the goal of overthrowing the US government and replacing it with a Soviet satellite. Saying that such a thing isn’t the proper concern of Congress is a reach.
Is that your ideology?
I’m well aware that your tongue was quite acquainted with your cheek when you posted this, but in all seriousness I absolutely agree with the sentiment that these are bad things (except for maybe the health and safety regs part because of the market failure inherent in that realm).
TaxGuy, are you SERIOUSLY saying that regulations against child labor are bad things?
Hey, kids gotta eat too.
Please, tell me you’re kidding.
I think “kidding” would by somewhat at variance with “in all seriousness,” Guin.
I am so sick and tired of people knocking girls with loose morals. For fuck’s sake, people! Girls with loose morals do so much for so many. They give a disenfranchised segment of the population (monarchist computer geeks) a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak world.
So, say what you want about Communists and NAMBLA and the Klan but leave girls with loose morals out of it!
Other than that, fine rant, Biggirl. Communists are pretty much harmless. Were back then, too. They were harmless in the 30s, when most of the people (at least the ones you’ve heard of) investigated by the HUAC had been communists (and were for the three reasons most Americans ever joined the Communist Party: they were concerned with social justice, it was hip, and maybe they’d meet girls with loose morals). They were harmless in the 50s, when those same people had long before stopped being communists and were channeling their desire for social change and improvement through their work and garden-variety liberal politics, were hip, and were getting laid by Hollywood starlets.
Yes, some scientists and government workers provided secrets to the Soviets, some even for ideological reasons, making Moscow happy, no doubt, because ideological spies are cheaper than ones you have to pay. But American communists in the 50s were mostly harmless. The effort made to root them out was a big waste of taxpayers’ money considering the payoff.