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

Lori Maguire (1)

1 TransCrit - Transferts critiques anglophones

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.

Mots clés: Cold War; popular culture; film studies

Domaines: Histoire

Lori Maguire. "The Destruction of New York City: A Recurrent Nightmare of American Cold War Cinema". Cold War History, 2009, 9 (4), pp.513-524. ⟨10.1080/14682740903198247⟩. ⟨hal-00606513⟩