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(Re)Imagining the 1950s: The Crux of Board Games, Wonder Woman, and the American Ideal

Year 2017, Issue: 46, 63 - 84, 01.04.2017

Abstract

12 Mart 1947’de, Başkan Harry Truman dünyayı ve daha da önemlisi ABD’yi komünizmden korumaya yönelik planını açıkladı. Amerikan Karşıtı Faaliyetleri İzleme Komitesi’nin kuruluşu ve meşhur Hollywood kara listelerinin ortaya çıkışı ile somut olarak görülemeyen, varsayımsal bir tehdit karşısında tüm ülke bir araya geldi. Komünizm ile savaşmak ve ABD’nin ulusal güvenliğini korumak için düzenlenen bu propaganda kampanyası, Amerikan hayatının her noktasına nüfuz etmeyi hedefliyordu ve Truman’ın çevreleme politikasını açıklamasının ardından bilinen en uzun ve en sert propaganda kampanyası ortaya çıktı. Savaşın hemen ardından ortaya çıkan bu propaganda, çok farklı yöntemlerle sistematik bir biçimde genişledi. Amerikan çocuklarının korunması için çağrıda bulunan posterlerden, ana karakterlerinin “komünizm tehdidi” olduğu filmlere, devlet destekli cadı avlarına ve kadınların ev kadını olarak yüceleştirilmesine kadar çeşitli yöntemler kullanıldı. Bu yıllar boyunca toplum, kadınların evden uzaklaştırılmasını ulusal güvenlik ve Amerikan değerlerinin korunması için gerekli görmekteydi. Barışın patlak vermesi diye adlandırılan süreç ve çevreleme politikasının baskısıyla, kadınlar ticari ürünler ve popüler kültür unsurları üzerinden yapılan çeşitli yöntemler aracılığıyla nasıl davranacakları konusunda yeniden bir biçimlendirmeye tabi tutuldular. Milton Bradley’in popüler Battleship Amiral Battı masa oyunu bu karmaşık ve çok tartışılan 1950’ler atmosferine yönelik ilginç bir bakış açısı sağlamaktadır. Evde sergilenmesi gereken davranış biçimlerini gösteren ve dayatan bu gibi unsurlar, 1950’ler propaganda dalgasının tek türü değildir. 2. Dünya Savaşı sırasında ortaya çıkan cesur ve seksi kahraman Wonder Woman Harika Kadın sadece komünist tehdit ile savaşmakla kalmaz, kendisi ve altbenliği Diana Prince , uyum ve huzur sağlama amacıyla kullanılan çeşitli etkinlikler ile kadın ve çocukların aile içinde beklenen davranış biçimlerini de topluma dayatır ve kendisinin de döneceği bir yuvası olması özlemiyle bir aşk ve sevgili arayışı da sergiler. Amerikan ailesi ve kadını miti, çizgi romanlar, reklamlar ve sansasyonel bir biçimde sunulan Rosenberglerin davası gibi olaylarla pekiştirilmiştir. Banliyö evleri, arabalar ve hatta konserve gıdalar üzerinden sunulan bu hayali umut ve bolluk durumu, gittikçe militer bir hal alan bir süper devleti ve derinden bölünmüş ülke gerçeğini gizlemiştir. Bu çerçevede, bu makale kadın imgesinin biçimlendirilmesi açısından 1950’lerin düşleri ve fantezilerini incelemektedir

References

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  • Brookhaven National Laboratory, “The First Video Game?” http:// www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php. 17 February 2015 last access.
  • Brown, JoAnne. “A if for Atom, B is for Bomb: Civil Defense in American Public Education,” in The Journal of American History 75, no. 11 (June 1988): 68-90.
  • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Tenth Anniversary Edition, New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Reprint, 1999.
  • Code of the Comics Book Association of America, Inc. Adopted 26 October 1954.
  • Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in post-war America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
  • Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
  • Cowen, Tyler. In Praise of Commercial Culture. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998.
  • Daniels, Les. Wonder Woman: The Life and Times of the Amazon Princess. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
  • Eisler, Benita. Private Lives: Men and Women of the 1950s. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986.
  • Endy, Christopher. Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
  • Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women. New York and London: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1991.
  • Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1990.
  • Fleisher, Michael L. The Original Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Featuring Wonder Woman, Volume II. New York: DC Comics, 2007; originally published as The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Volume Two—Wonder Woman (1976).
  • Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique, Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1963 and 1983.
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  • Hofer, Margaret. The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003.
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  • Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
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  • ---. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1998.
  • Parlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Peterson, Val. “Panic: The Ultimate Weapon?” Collier’s. 21 August 1953: 99-109.
  • Pollitt, Katha. “Wonder Woman’s Kinky Feminist Roots: The Odd Life and Psyche of the Man Who Invented Her.” The Atlantic. 314. 4 (2014): 50-53.
  • “The Man behind Wonder Woman Was Inspired by Both Suffragists And Centerfolds”, Fresh Air. Oct 27, 2014 (NPR).
  • Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency, Interim Report, 1955 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955).
  • “Seven Days to Doom” Wonder Woman. 58: DC Comics, March-April 1953.
  • Sherry, Michael S. In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.
  • Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
  • “The Forest of Giants.” Wonder Woman 100. DC Comics: August 1958. “Top Secret.” Wonder Woman 99: DC Comic, 1958.
  • Truman, Harry S. Executive Order 9981, Federal Register 13. 4313 (26 July 1948): 4793.
  • Truman, Harry S. Executive Order 10222 of 8 March 1951: Providing for Certain Transfers to the Federal Civil Defense Administration. Federal Register 16, 3 CFR, 1949-1953 Comp. (9 March 1951): 2247.
  • Wertham, Fredric. “Comic Books—Blueprints for Delinquency.” Reader’s Digest. (May 1954): 24-29.
  • ---. “Readers Write.” Ladies Home Journal. (February 1954): 4-6.
  • ---. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1954.
  • ---. “What Parent’s Don’t Know About Comic Books.” Ladies Home Journal. (November 1953): 50-53 and 214-20.
  • Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
  • Wilmore, Kathy. “Wonder Woman: The Story behind the Most Popular Female Superhero of All Time.” Junior Scholastic/Current Event. 16. 117 (2015): 14-20.
  • “Wonder Woman’s 100th Anniversary!” Wonder Woman 100 (DC Comics: August 1958).
  • “Wonder Woman’s Wedding Day.” Wonder Woman 70 (November 1954).
  • Végsö, Rola nd. The Naked Communist: Cold War Modernism and the Politics of Popular Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.
  • Zarlengo, Kristina. “Civilian Threat, the Suburban Citadel, and Atomic Age Women.” Signs 24. 4 (Summer 1999): 925-958.

(Re)Imagining the 1950s: The Crux of Board Games, Wonder Woman, and the American Ideal

Year 2017, Issue: 46, 63 - 84, 01.04.2017

Abstract

On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman unveiled his plan to protect the world—and most importantly the United States—from the threat of Communism. With the institution of the House Un-American Affairs Committee, and the infamous blacklist in Hollywood, the country united under the surmise of an intangible threat. This propaganda campaign, to fight communism and protect the national security of the United States, sought to reach every aspect of American life, and the events following the announcement of Truman’s containment policy instituted one of the longest and most brutal propaganda campaigns of its kind. The propaganda of the immediate post-war period developed in a systematic manner via a plethora of genres, and agencies by proxy. These depictions ranged from posters crying out for the protection of US children, movies with the “Commie menace” as the protagonist, government sponsored witch-hunts, and the idealization of women as housewives. During these years, society viewed women’s removal from the home as essential to national security and the protection of American ideals. Yet, with the so-called outbreak of peace and pressures for containment, women—as portrayed via products and elements of popular culture—needed to be re-educated on their behavior. Milton Bradley’s popular Battleship game provides a subtle window into this turbulent, and much discussed, soul of the 1950s. The printed and prescribed modes for activities within the home were not the only propaganda waves of the 1950s. Wonder Woman, the valiant and sexy hero birthed during the Second World War, not only fought the commie menace but she and her alter ego Diana Prince reinforced the modes of domestic behavior for women and children via exploits to bring harmony and peace and find her own love and man to come home to. The myth of the American family and women was perpetuated via the fantasy orchestrated in comics, advertisements, and sensationalized trials like the Rosenberg’s. This dream state of harmony and abundance via suburban homes, cars, and even canned food masked the reality of a growing military superstate and a deeply divided America. Accordingly, this paper examines the dreams and fantasies of the 1950s via the manipulation of the female’s image

References

  • Association of Comics Magazine Publishers Code. Adopted 1948. Babic, Annessa Ann. Undoing Glory: Constructions of US Gendered Patriotic Iconography in the Twentieth Century. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, forthcoming.
  • ---. “Wandering Eyes for Turkish Delights Upon an Asian and Middle Eastern Axis: Cultural and Travel Appeals for Turkey.” Europe Facing Inter-Asian Cultural, Literary, Historical, and Political Situations. Eds. Lina Unali and Elisabetta Marino. Rome: Universitalia, 2014: 69-82.
  • ---. “Wonder Woman as Patriotic Icon: The Amazon Princess for the Nation and Femininity.” Comics as History, Comics as Literature: Roles of the Comic Book in Scholarship, Society, and Entertainment. Ed. Annessa Ann Babic. Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014: 93-106.
  • Barson, Michael and Steven Heller, Red Scared!: The Commie Menace in Propaganda and Popular Culture, San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.
  • Bloom, Nicholas Dagen. Editor. Adventures in Mexico: American Tourism beyond the Border. Lanham, Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
  • “Board Games that Bored Gamers” http://www.npr.org/sections/nprhistory-dept/2015/03/26/395507051/board-games-that-boredgamers. 31 January 2016 last access.
  • Brookhaven National Laboratory, “The First Video Game?” http:// www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php. 17 February 2015 last access.
  • Brown, JoAnne. “A if for Atom, B is for Bomb: Civil Defense in American Public Education,” in The Journal of American History 75, no. 11 (June 1988): 68-90.
  • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Tenth Anniversary Edition, New York and London: Routledge, 1990. Reprint, 1999.
  • Code of the Comics Book Association of America, Inc. Adopted 26 October 1954.
  • Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumer’s Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in post-war America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.
  • Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
  • Cowen, Tyler. In Praise of Commercial Culture. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998.
  • Daniels, Les. Wonder Woman: The Life and Times of the Amazon Princess. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
  • Eisler, Benita. Private Lives: Men and Women of the 1950s. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986.
  • Endy, Christopher. Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
  • Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women. New York and London: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1991.
  • Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume I. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1990.
  • Fleisher, Michael L. The Original Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Featuring Wonder Woman, Volume II. New York: DC Comics, 2007; originally published as The Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes: Volume Two—Wonder Woman (1976).
  • Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique, Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1963 and 1983.
  • Griswold, Robert L. Fatherhood in America: A History. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
  • Hofer, Margaret. The Games We Played: The Golden Age of Board and Table Games. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003.
  • Kennedy, John F. Executive Order 10952 of 20 July 1961: Assigning Civil Defense Responsibilities to the Secretary of Defense and Others. Federal Register 26 (22 July 1961): 6577.
  • Kidman, Shawna, “Self-regulation through Distribution: Censorship and the Comic Book Industry in 1954.” Velvet Light Trap. 75 (2015): 21-38.
  • Lepore, Jill. “ReReading Wonder Woman: The Feminist.” The Guardian Review. 5 December 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/ books/2014/dec/05/wonder-woman-the-feminist. 31 January 2016.
  • ---. The Secret History of Wonder Woman. New York: Knopft, 2014. May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
  • McEnaney, Laura. Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000.
  • Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Post-war Mass Culture, 1946-1958.” Journal of American History 79 (March 1993): 1455-1482.
  • Nelson, Lin. “Promise Her Everything: The Nuclear Power’s Agenda for Women.” Feminist Studies 10:2 (1984): 294-298 and 305-307.
  • Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
  • Nyberg, Amy Kiste. “Comic Book Censorship in the United States.” Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Post-war Anti-Comics Campaign. Ed. John A Lent. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickenson Press, 1999: 42-68.
  • ---. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press, 1998.
  • Parlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Peterson, Val. “Panic: The Ultimate Weapon?” Collier’s. 21 August 1953: 99-109.
  • Pollitt, Katha. “Wonder Woman’s Kinky Feminist Roots: The Odd Life and Psyche of the Man Who Invented Her.” The Atlantic. 314. 4 (2014): 50-53.
  • “The Man behind Wonder Woman Was Inspired by Both Suffragists And Centerfolds”, Fresh Air. Oct 27, 2014 (NPR).
  • Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency, Interim Report, 1955 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1955).
  • “Seven Days to Doom” Wonder Woman. 58: DC Comics, March-April 1953.
  • Sherry, Michael S. In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995.
  • Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000.
  • “The Forest of Giants.” Wonder Woman 100. DC Comics: August 1958. “Top Secret.” Wonder Woman 99: DC Comic, 1958.
  • Truman, Harry S. Executive Order 9981, Federal Register 13. 4313 (26 July 1948): 4793.
  • Truman, Harry S. Executive Order 10222 of 8 March 1951: Providing for Certain Transfers to the Federal Civil Defense Administration. Federal Register 16, 3 CFR, 1949-1953 Comp. (9 March 1951): 2247.
  • Wertham, Fredric. “Comic Books—Blueprints for Delinquency.” Reader’s Digest. (May 1954): 24-29.
  • ---. “Readers Write.” Ladies Home Journal. (February 1954): 4-6.
  • ---. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1954.
  • ---. “What Parent’s Don’t Know About Comic Books.” Ladies Home Journal. (November 1953): 50-53 and 214-20.
  • Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
  • Wilmore, Kathy. “Wonder Woman: The Story behind the Most Popular Female Superhero of All Time.” Junior Scholastic/Current Event. 16. 117 (2015): 14-20.
  • “Wonder Woman’s 100th Anniversary!” Wonder Woman 100 (DC Comics: August 1958).
  • “Wonder Woman’s Wedding Day.” Wonder Woman 70 (November 1954).
  • Végsö, Rola nd. The Naked Communist: Cold War Modernism and the Politics of Popular Culture. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.
  • Zarlengo, Kristina. “Civilian Threat, the Suburban Citadel, and Atomic Age Women.” Signs 24. 4 (Summer 1999): 925-958.
There are 53 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects African Language, Literature and Culture
Journal Section Research Article
Authors

Annessa Ann Babic This is me

Publication Date April 1, 2017
Published in Issue Year 2017 Issue: 46

Cite

MLA Babic, Annessa Ann. “(Re)Imagining the 1950s: The Crux of Board Games, Wonder Woman, and the American Ideal”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 46, 2017, pp. 63-84.

JAST - Journal of American Studies of Turkey