The Totalitarian Soviet Ideal and The Circus
In Grigori Aleksandrov’s (1936) Soviet film The Circus, an American white woman named Marion Dixon is chased out of the racist South after giving birth to a black baby. She escapes by train and is pr Continue Reading...
Film -- Kundera, the Unbearable Lightness of Being
When Milan Kundera wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he was a political exile from Czechoslovakia, living in France, whose books were banned in his native country. Thus, it is not surprising Continue Reading...
Nazism and Stalinism: An Examination
Compare the two most cruel and inhuman dictatorships of the 20th century, Nazism and Stalinism
Like any regime which engages in the use of terror and violence, one can trace the roots of both Nazism and Stalinis Continue Reading...
Cold War and Film
Generally speaking, the Cold War has been depicted as an era of spy games and paranoia in popular films from the 1960s to the present day, but the reality of the era was much more complex. The Cold War was a period of military and Continue Reading...
Orwellian World
The Accuracy of George Orwell's Predictions and What They Hold for Our Future
When, in 1949, George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four, the world had just witnessed one of the most trying and tumultuous periods in all of human h Continue Reading...
This tactic has proved probably the most effective out of the previous mentioned. Unlike Hitler who was only in power a short period before loosing control of his newly created empire to the United States and the Soviet Union, Stalin held his red Ru Continue Reading...
Beatles
On December 27, 1963, the London Times reported, "The social phenomenon of Beatlemania, which finds expression in handbags, balloons and other articles bearing the likeness of the loved ones, or in the hysterical screaming of young girls wh Continue Reading...
Terror
Robert Conquest's The Great Terror: A Reassessment is a book that is an absolute 'must read' for anyone who is interested in the history of Communism, and more important, the issue of human rights. In fact, it can be said that the book is pe Continue Reading...
Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall
More than any other single person, President Ronald Reagan was responsible for the destruction of the Berlin wall and the defeat of Communism. It was his policies as President of the United States (U.S.) that led to Continue Reading...
The inability of some workers to comply led to absenteeism. More repressive measures were introduced, such as records of tardiness, poor workmanship and charges of sabotage against the Five-Year Plan. Violators could be shot or sent to forced labor Continue Reading...
Louis Althusser (1918-90) was one of the foremost Marxist theorists in the Western world, and advocated an especially orthodox version of Marxism that was always close to the Communist Party line. He regarded Bertolt Brecht as one of the great Marxis Continue Reading...
1. The clip “What is Capitalism?” presents a certain vision of capitalism. Do you feel that the image they present is realistic?
I do not feel that the image of capitalism that is presented is realistic because it imagines that the Continue Reading...
Complicating matters in Spain was the duty to the State that the Franco regime saw as a natural extension of these Catholic (and admittedly pan-Western) traditional beliefs of gender roles and the proper actions and attitudes for women to hold. At t Continue Reading...
Take, for example, the entertainment industry; Hollywood has set the world's standard for movies, and that has largely been due to immigrants or the early-generation Americans. Americans have a diverse selection of art, music, and food, due to the i Continue Reading...