He finds no evidence that Hollywood had any direct influence on U.S. Shaw also provides an often intriguing backstory in which particular forces and folks make the artifacts of mass culture that help shape perceptions (though not, the author hastens to add, policies). This theme is traced from Ninotchka (1939) to Red Heat (1988) in Tony Shaw’s sprightly and very informative volume, which analyzes how Communists and their adversaries were shown on the big screen.
The Manichaeanism that has so often been considered indispensable to audience identification and involvement could find no contests outside the movie palaces in which the stakes were higher than the East-West struggle. Her wistfulness is undoubtedly shared by the filmmakers whose predilection for simple moral dichotomies often seemed to coincide with the global conflict that dominated the second half of the twentieth century. “Christ, I miss the Cold War,” the British spymaster M (played by Dame Judi Dench) sighs near the beginning of a recent James Bond escapade, Casino Royale (2006).
