This course material © 1995 Leo Braudy. It may be reproduced for non-profit, educational uses, but publication in any profit-making form or in any book or magazine form must first be cleared with the author.

Leo Braudy (braudy@mizar.usc.edu), Department of English, Taper Hall of Humanities, University of Southern California, University Park, Los Angeles, CA 90089.

Fall 1994
T-Th 12:30-3:00
Dr. Leo Braudy
THH 114

English 471

American Film and Fiction after World War Two

I. The War and Masculinity

Sept 1:Introduction.
Kevin Rafferty, Jane Loader, Pierce Rafferty: Atomic Cafe (1982) (in class film).

Sept. 6: Norman Mailer: The Naked and the Dead (1948).
Sept. 8:William Wyler/Fredric March, etc.: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) (in class film).

Sept. 13: Mickey Spillane: I, the Jury (1947).
Sept. 15:Robert Aldrich/Ralph Meeker: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) (in class film).

Sept. 20:Robert Heinlein. The Puppet Masters (1952).

II. The Cold War Other.

Sept. 22:Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby: The Thing (1951) (in class film).
Recommended:
Robert Wise/Michael Rennie/Patricia Neal: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
Don Siegel/Kevin McCarthy: Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Sept. 27:Eric Bentley: Thirty Years of Treason (Selections from testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee) (xerox).
Sept. 29:Elia Kazan/Budd Schulberg/Marlon Brando/Eva Marie Saint/Rod Steiger/Karl Malden/Lee J. Cobb: On the Waterfront (1954) (in class film).
Recommended:
Laslo Benedek/Marlon Brando: The Wild One (1954).

III. Who Is an American?

Oct. 4:J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea (1952).
Oct. 6:Nicholas Ray/James Dean/Natalie Wood/Sal Mineo: Rebel without a Cause (1955) (in class film).
Recommended:
Richard Brooks/Glenn Ford/Sidney Poitier: Blackboard Jungle (1955).

Oct. 11:Midterm.
James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain.
Oct. 13:Joseph Mankiewicz/Sidney Poitier/Richard Widmark: No Way Out (1950) (in class film).

Oct. 18:Norman Mailer: The White Negro (1957) (xerox).
James Baldwin: "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" (1958) (xerox).
Oct. 20:Frank Tashlin/Jayne Mansfield/Tom Ewell/Edmond O'Brien: The Girl Can't Help It (1957) (in class film).
Recommended:
Stanley Donen/Howard Keel/Jane Powell: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)].

IV. Alternate Societies and the Force of Nature

Oct. 25:History of Rock and Roll.
Oct 27:Anthony Mann/James Stewart/Arthur Kennedy/Rock Hudson: Bend of the River (1952) (in class film).
Recommended:
Howard Hawks/John Wayne/Montgomery Cliff: Red River (1948)
John Ford/John Wayne: The Searchers (1956).

Nov. 1:Sylvia Plath: The Bell-Jar (1963).
Nov. 3:Billy Wilder/Marilyn Monroe/Jack Lemmon/Tony Curtis: Some Like It Hot (1959) (in class film).

Nov. 8:Jack Kerouac: On the Road (1951).
Nov. 10:Douglas Sirk/Rock Hudson/Dorothy Malone: Written on the Wind (1956).
Recommended:
Nunnally Johnson/Gregory Peck/Jennifer Jones: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956).

Nov. 15:Allen Ginsberg: Howl (1956).
Nov. 17:Elia Kazan/Marlon Brando/Jean Peters/Anthony Quinn: Viva Zapata (1952) (in class film).
Recommended:
Biberman/Wilson: The Salt of the Earth (1956).

Nov. 22:Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman (1949).

THANKSGIVING

Nov. 29:William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959).
Dec. 1:Walt Disney Productions: Beaver Valley (1954) (in class film).

Dec. 6:Final Discussion.
Dec. 8:John Frankenheimer/Laurence Harvey: The Manchurian Candidate (1962) (in class film).
Books:
Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain.
---. "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" (xerox).
Bentley, Eric. Thirty Years of Treason (xerox).
Burroughs, William. Naked Lunch.
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl.
Heinlein, Robert. The Puppet Masters.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea.
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road.
Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Dead.
---. The White Negro.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell-Jar.
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Spillane, Mickey. I, the Jury.
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire.

Course Requirements

This course deals with the shape of a crucial period in American life, from the end of World War Two to the election of John F. Kennedy as President in 1960. We will read novels, short stories, and essays and see films that appeared in those years. Through them we will also consider some of the problems of American life and culture in the 1950s, to which many of those works responded and out of which they emerged: the military, economic, and political threat of the USSR, the rising political consciousness of black Americans, juvenile delinquency, the changing social and sexual relations between men and women, and the expanding consumer economy that promised so much to so many.

There will be two papers required in the course, 5-8 pages in length. The papers are due on October 6 and December 1. In general, one paper should primarily stress fiction and the other film. The papers can deal either with topics suggested by the instructor or with topics devised by the student, in consultation with the instructor, that draw on the student's special interests. Because we have time to take only a whirlwind tour of the 50s in this course, I welcome you to use your papers to consider other works of the period--fiction, poetry, drama, films, art, music. Please remember to keep a copy of all written work you turn in. There may be short other assignments as well.

Attendance in class and participation in discussions is mandatory and will be considered in the final grade.

There will be a midterm examination on October 11, and a final examination at a time to be announced.

In-class films will be shown on Thursdays. You are urged to see outside of class at least one of the films listed as "Recommended." Many can be rented in video stores. They are also available either in Doheny Library or (a smaller collection) in the Audio-Visual Center on the third floor of Taper.

Short List of Suggested Background Readings

History and Politics
Alloway, Lawrence. Violent America: The Movies, 1946-1964.
Belfrage, Cedric. The American Inquisition, 1945-1960.
Caute, David. The Great Fear: The AntiCommunist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties.
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
Kanfer, Stefan. A Journal of the Plague Years.
Levin, Murray. Political Hysteria in America.
Lukacs, John. A New History of the Cold War.
Meeropol, Michael and Robert. We Are Your Children.
Miller, Douglas T., and Nowack, Marion. The Fifties.
Nizer, Louis. The Imposing Conspiracy.
O'Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945-1960.
Rogin, Michael Paul. The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter.
Starobin, Joseph R. American Communism in Crisis.
Stone, I. F. The Haunted Fifties.
Wittner, Lawrence S. Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate.

Movies and the other Arts
Biskind, Peter. Seeing Is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Us To Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties.
Ceplair, Larry, and Englund, Steven. The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960.
Ciment, Michael. Kazan on Kazan.
Dickstein, Morris. "Cold War Blues." Partisan Review, 41 (1974), 30-55.
Dowdy, Andrew. The Films of the Fifties.
Eisinger, Chester. Fiction of the Fifties.
Gow, Gordon. Hollywood in the Fifties.
Haskell, Molly. From Reverence to Rape. (image of women in American films)
Hoffman, Daniel, ed. The Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing.
Mailer, Norman. Marilyn.
Zolotow, Maurice. Marilyn Monroe.