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Singer | Fear of the Public Sphere: The Boxing Film in Cold War America Fear of the Public Sphere: The Boxing Film in Cold War America (1947-1957) Marc P. Singer The Cold War played a major role in shaping the everyday lives of Americans: the way they lived, the way they thought, the way they defined themselves. Of course, demographic and geographic shifts were also crucial factors in the years after World War II, but these latter developments in the way Americans lived and interacted with one another—changes in where they lived, in what kinds of dwellings they lived, amongst what kinds of neighbors they lived, the level of comfort in which they lived—could not have occurred without the change in political ideology and philosophical attitude inAmerican thought and culture directly brought about by the circumstances of the Cold War. This shift in political and existential philosophy was one of the most significant effects of the Cold War uponAmericans, leading them to redefine the way they saw themselves as individuals, as members oftheir families, and as members oftheir communities . In other words, it redefined for many Americans the ideal of citizenship itself. The policies of government and other public institutions had a major hand in shaping new notions of American citizenship and exceptionalism, but these notions were also clearly reflected, and to some extent aided in their development , through Hollywood films of the era. It would be easy to assume that changing notions of citizenship in the early Cold War era would have been instruments ofcoercion and control imposed uponAmericans by a government attempting to dominate its citizens and restrict their range of political motion: the relationship of US government to US citizens during the postwar years is often characterized as repressive and paranoid, employing a red-baiting , McCarthyite style of leadership in order to stifle political dissent.1 This view may have been partly true. An examination ofAmerican popular culture of the years immediately following World War II suggests a more problematic relationship among Cold War political realities, shifting American ideals of citizenship, and the transmission of values by modes such as the Hollywood motion picture. Examples of how several boxing films use the standard tools and conventions of the genre to communicate very different notions of self show that citizenship was to be constructed both from above and below— that it could function at the same time as an allegiance to the existing order and as a withdrawal from it. The boxing film genre is worthy of investigation here because boxing settings have often been utilized by filmmakers in order to convey the complex social milieu of a gritty urban environment. Boxing films, perhaps because of the midKirk Douglas in the climactic scene of Champion. 20th century perception ofboxing as essentially individualistic and elemental, often seem to be ideal vehicles for the exploration ofissues ofmasculinity, individuality, social mobility, and— usually through the well-worn convention of the boxer faced with the dilemma of throwing a fight at the behest of organized crime—corruption. The boxer is alone, practically naked before the forces with which he must contend. The existential angst and the search for meaning inspired by World War Two led to new exploration and redefinition of these issues during the Cold War. Perhaps because of the suitability of the boxing geme as a vehicle for such existential exploration , over 50 films with themes or storylines revolving around boxing were made by Hollywood during the years 19471957 . In fact, subtle but important changes in the themes of Hollywood boxing films indicate a shift in American views toward citizenship: the obligations an individual has toward family and toward himself (I use the masculine form here because boxing has, until fairly recently, been an almost exclusively male endeavor. As a result, the notion of citizenship examined here is more precisely that of male citizenship; other writers have examined the construction offeminine ideals in other Hollywood films of this era. See, for example, Gledhill), and the extent to which one may allow himself to be involved in the lives of his community. By 1949, the outside world is increasingly seen in these films as a dangerous, corrupting, entangling place...

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