Hollywood and the End of the Cold War

The Cold War was perhaps the most critical and defining aspect of American culture from the late 1940s until the early 1990s, influencing popular culture products ranging from television to music to film. As one of the most popular forms of entertainment, film was at the center of the battle for the hearts and minds of the American public throughout the Cold War.

Both on and off the screen, the Cold War influenced how films were made, which films got made, and how audiences understood the films they watched. In the post-Cold War era some genres of film suffered from the shift in our national narratives while others were quickly re-imagined for an audience with different understandings about what constitutes cultural norms.

This volume compares films from the late Cold War era with films of the same genre, or of similar themes, from the post-Cold War era, paying particular attention to shifts in narrative that reflect changes in American culture, attitudes, and ideas. It explains how the absence of the Cold War has changed the way we understand and interpret film.