Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age

by Alan Nadel

Alan Nadel provides a unique analysis of the rise of American postmodernism by viewing it as a breakdown in Cold War cultural narratives of containment. These narratives, which embodied an American postwar foreign policy charged with checking the spread of Communism, also operated, Nadel argues, within a wide spectrum of cultural life in the United States to contain atomic secrets, sexual license, gender roles, nuclear energy, and artistic expression. Because these narratives were deployed in films, books, and magazines at a time when American culture was for the first time able to dominate global entertainment and capitalize on global production, containment became one of the most widely disseminated and highly privileged national narratives in history.
Examining a broad sweep of American culture, from the work of George Kennan to Playboy Magazine , from the movies of Doris Day and Walt Disney to those of Cecil B. DeMille and Alfred Hitchcock, from James Bond to Holden Caulfield, Nadel discloses the remarkable pervasiveness of the containment narrative. Drawing subtly on insights provided by contemporary theorists, including Baudrillard, Foucault, Jameson, Sedgwick, Certeau, and Hayden White, he situates the rhetoric of the Cold War within a gendered narrative powered by the unspoken potency of the atom. He then traces the breakdown of this discourse of containment through such events as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, and ties its collapse to the onset of American postmodernism, typified by works such as Catch–22 and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence .
An important work of cultural criticism, Containment Culture links atomic power with postmodernism and postwar politics, and shows how a multifarious national policy can become part of a nation’s cultural agenda and a source of meaning for its citizenry.

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Alan Nadel is the Bryan Chair of American literature and culture at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches literature and film. He is the editor of May All Your Fences Have Gates (Iowa, 1993) and the author of Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (Iowa, 1991), Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age, Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan's America, and Television in Black and White America: Race and National Identity.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadel argues that the culture of postwar America can be read in terms of the Cold War notion of “containment.” He analyzes a number of texts in this respect. These include films (The Ten Commandments, Rear Window, The Lady and the Tramp, Pillow Talk, What’s Up Tiger Lily, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), novels (The Catcher in the Rye, Hiroshima, Catch-22, Meridian) and historical events (the Bay of Pigs incident, the Free Speech movement at Berkeley).

Acquired Jun 17, 2003
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadel writes, with a confident and easy manner, very stylish academic prose. Which is rare these days. This book explores Cold War culture and the ways it attempts and fails to contain, well, everything: sexuality, commerce, national politics, foreign policy, domesticity, etc. The many and diverse textual examples he reigns in adhere incrementally into a full argument very much invested in post-structuralist and postmodernist investigation. Some of my favorite textual readings here are the most surprising: Disney's "Lady and the Tramp" as indicative of the closeted stated of female sexuality; a reading of the Bay of Pigs and the CIA against Catch-22; Catcher in the Rye. This work is a touchstone for cultural studies in the Cold War period.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nadel's book may be a little dated, but it makes a lot of points that hold up 13 years later. His main idea revolves around the constant negotiation of containment in American culture. As always, our hero (culture) fights against political maneuvering and suspect premises, eventually showing their falseness. In particular, I liked the chapters on Catch-22, Lady and the Tramp,and Democracy.

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not always in the most transparent style. However, I enjoyed some of the chapters, especially the one on Playboy and Lady and the Tramp.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

He does some very interesting things with popular mass media