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We couldn’t do a season on the Cold War without talking about Bond . . . James Bond. He was there from the beginning and has of course survived into the post-Cold War era. So many films, so many Bonds. We’ve talked about nuclear warfare, espionage and intrigue, evil deep state corporations and corrupt national security institutions, and human stories of love and loss behind the Iron Curtain. Bond’s been through it all. Our films cover four Bonds - Sean Connery’s From Russia With Love (1963), Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only (1981), and Pierce Brosnan’s Goldeneye (1995). We end with a discussion of the post-9/11 Bond, Daniel Craig, especially 2012’s Skyfall. We demonstrate how Bond transcends the Cold War, acts as an avatar for a Britain that no longer exists, and, despite a number of cosmetic changes after 9/11, demonstrates surprising continuity over 60 years.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Remember Khrushchev-Nixon Kitchen Debate? America recognized its consumer culture was a Cold War weapon. By the early 80s, the home computer in the hands of teenagers further demonstrated American dominance on the economic and cultural fronts. But what happens when teenagers check out of real life and responsibilities too much? We look at films that can be taken as cautionary tales about the dangers of teenagers (or young adults) who don’t take the Cold War seriously. The focus is on the seemingly apolitical, irresponsible and anti-social nature of the modern, video game playing white, affluent American youth. Our more serious films are Wargames, from 1983, and The Falcon and the Snowman, from 1985. But we also throw in a little bit of The Last Starfighter (1984) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) just to spice things up.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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This episode and the next look back at films that came out in the 1980s, a decade when Hollywood seemed to cater to teenage audiences like never before. So it makes sense that the geo-political structure that shaped and influenced so much of global political action - the Cold War - would show up in movies targeting teen audiences. In the broader media landscape, the question was being asked: Could these post-Vietnam teenagers hack the reality of conflict like their dads and granddads had to? We break down two films about teenagers as soldiers - Taps, released in 1981, and Red Dawn, released in 1984. In both cases, what we see is a conversation about American military culture, whether it can still be counted on when times get tough. And if it can’t, if America’s youth reject it, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Lia and Brian revisit the first two seasons of Lies Agreed Upon for new listeners. Their conversation relates some specific episodes to current events in 2022. The first season traced the long cultural shadow of 9/11 in films about historical events. How did 9/11 influence our collective memory about ancient history and the Middle East? What about McCarthyism? Other incidents of terrorism? And how did Hollywood eventually take on the event itself? Season two is about revolutions and revolutionaries. From the American Revolution to the Bolshevik Revolution to feminists and labor organizers, Hollywood is always attracted to human stories amid great upheaval. What happens to our myths when we look at history from below? How do we incorporate the darker side of the mythologized American Revolution at a time when the history wars rage in public schools. And how does Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of imperial and revolutionary Russian history stack up against the reality of his regime?
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In the late 1980s, Hollywood reflected the real world thaw in the Cold War by depicting the idea of two Russias: the cold bureaucratic state run by grey men intent on propping up a crumbling regime, and the beautiful, little known country of real, everyday Russians who live rich and full lives despite it all. Our three films this week show the two Russias in different ways and in different stages of the 1980s Cold War. White Nights, the story of a Russian ballet dancer who defected to America and is forced to return, came out in December 1985. The Hunt for Red October, based on a 1984 Tom Clancy novel, was released in March 1990, a few months after the world changed. The Russia House, based on John le Carre’s 1989 novel came out Christmas Day, 1990, exactly one year before the Soviet Union closed up shop for good.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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We could do a whole season on Vietnam war films, but in this episode we chose three films that highlight the Cold War’s omnipresence in daily life. You wouldn’t associate any of these films with how Vietnam figured into the Cold War dynamic because they are about the homefront. The Deer Hunter (1978), Coming Home (1978), and Da Five Bloods (2020) are reminders (or are they revelations?) that the Vietnam War deeply wounded American society from top to bottom. Whether it’s working class immigrants in rural Pennsylvania, severely wounded veterans and their caretakers, or Black and Brown soldiers contending with racism and shattered lives decades removed from the war, our three films depict the Cold War homefront in vivid detail. We often think of the Cold War as an impersonal contest between global powers that nearly ended the world, but the Vietnam War was incredibly personal for millions of Americans and Vietnamese.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Last episode we discussed films about how a nuclear war would start, particularly the insane logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In this episode we explore how American, British, and Australian filmmakers imagined the unimaginable - Armageddon and the literal and figurative fallout. We look at On the Beach (1959), The Day After (1983), and Threads (1984). We challenge the conventional wisdom that the West only seriously worried about nuclear after the Cuban Missile Crisis, provide some background on the history of anti-nuclear social movements, and compare how these three unforgettable films chose to depict nuclear destruction. How accurate were they? Did they make a difference? And, how many of us are still traumatized by seeing them?
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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The world lived under the shadow of the acronym MAD for forty years. Mutually Assured Destruction was no laughing matter, but Stanley Kubrick thought dark comedy was the only way to approach a topic as ridiculous as MAD. In this episode we compare and contrast Dr. Strangelove (1964) with Failsafe, a serious film about the same subject that came out the same year. We reveal just how spot on Dr. Strangelove was about MAD versus Failsafe’s unwarranted optimism that limited nuclear war was possible. An army of political scientists and bureaucrats game theoried fighting and winning a nuclear war like it was just another social science problem. Civilians are the warmongers in our MAD films. Dr. Strangelove may be a deranged Nazi freak, but everything he said was seriously considered by real life MAD Men.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Can you imagine living in a society that is ostensibly a democracy but secret forces are working behind the scenes to manipulate events? What if our intelligence agencies run amok with no oversight? What if the president is a criminal and would do anything to stay in power? These sound like current events, but they were major preoccupations during the 1970s in the wake of Watergate and congressional hearings about CIA and FBI abuses. Hollywood responded by dramatizing the unfettered power of what some like to call “the deep state” in three films we cover this episode - The Parallax View (1974), The Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All The President’s Men (1976). Each features protagonists unraveling conspiracies at the heart of our national security state, but is exposing the truth enough?
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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We are back for a third season! The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded us all that “everything old is new again” and that includes Cold War tensions, nuclear fears, and paranoia about “unseen enemies.” With our organizing principle of the Cold War and Hollywood representation, we begin with the Red Scare. We discuss Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and The Way We Were (1973). Together these films reveal how the Red Scare cast a wide and enduring shadow on our culture. We highlight three themes. First, Cold War paranoia was a bipartisan issue. Second, the Korean War cast doubt on the relative strength of the military and our institutions long before Vietnam did. And finally, we dispute the comforting lie that progress is inevitable, that we are always on a path towards improvement, advancement, an expansion of rights, and a greater equality among people.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Dr. Zhivago (1956) and Reds (1981) humanize and problematize the Bolshevik Revolution during periods when the Cold War was particularly intense. When and why these films were made are as fascinating as the stories they tell. In our final episode of season two, we examine how the two iconic films push back against prevailing Western interpretations of the Bolshevik Revolution, namely that it was destined to end in totalitarian dictatorship and forever tarnished viable alternatives to capitalism.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Continuing the theme of social revolution, this episode looks at cinematic depictions of the struggle for basic workers' rights and tolerable conditions. History is rarely the story of uninterrupted progress, and that goes for unionization and safety. Our three films were produced within a decade of each other, 1979 to 1987, when labor faced immense struggles in the face of the Reagan Revolution. Not only did Reagan fracture the normally reliable Democratic coalition of voters, peeling off many blue collar workers, his administration slashed and burned decades of meaningful worker protections in basically every industry. We start with John Sayles’ Matewan (1987), a film about the infamous 1920 coal miners strike in West Virginia. Next is Norma Rae (1979), Martin Ritt’s film starring Sally Field and based on a true story of a North Carolina textile worker who pushes for unionization. And then a darker story, Silkwood (1983), about Karen Silkwood, the nuclear power whistle blower and union activist who died under mysterious circumstances in 1979.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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Social revolutions may not always be bloody or prompt regime change, but they are vital to a healthy democracy. In this episode we cover popular representations of the women's suffrage movement and the more prolonged and incomplete struggle for equal rights. The vote was just the start, and Hollywood loves that story, but what about the rest? We break down Iron Jawed Angels (2004), Suffragette (2015), and the FX miniseries Mrs. America (2020).
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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In this episode we cover Australian director Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and the unforgettable docudrama The Killing Fields (1984), directed by Roland Joffe, which came out in 1984. The Year of Living Dangerously recreates Indonesia’s descent into revolution and genocide in the mid-1960s. The KillingFields centers on the real-life ordeal of Dith Pran, Cambodian journalist and interpreter for New York Times journalist Sydney Schanberg during the Cambodian genocide.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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On the theme of “covering the revolution”, we first take on two films that drop us in the middle of Latin America at the beginning of a bloody new chapter of the Cold War – Oliver Stone’s Salvador (1986) and Roger Spottiswoode’s Under Fire (1983). Both communicate the the early 1980s zeitgeist concerning revolutionary turmoil in El Salvador and Nicaragua. They also leave us overly romantic portraits of journalists “under fire”.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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In this third and final episode on the American Revolution, we look at the momentous events through an entirely different genre - the musical. You didn't think we could get away with not talking about Hamilton did you? But first, we travel a bit further back in time to appreciate the historical context of the first of the first musical about the revolution - 1776, which was the Tony award winner for best musical in 1969, and then a 1972 movie with almost the same cast. Hamilton was first staged off-Broadway in 2015. It’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, worked on it for years however, inspired by Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton. 1776 came out amid great political turmoil inspired by the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. Hamilton was itself revolutionary - a hip hop musical about the Founding Fathers with a cast made up almost entirely of non-Caucasians. As you might expect, each musical had a lot to say about their respective moments in history. As Lin-Manuel Miranda stated, “This is a story about America then, told by America now.”
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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In episode two we continue to examine the American Revolution, but we look at two series that focus less on the famous Founding Fathers and, instead, highlight the experiences of "ordinary people" people forced to negotiate fast-moving and complex events. They are Turn: Washington’s Spies and The Book of Negroes . We really want to emphasize how Turn and The Book of Negroes bring the stories of ordinary people to life, but in very different ways. When the Founding Fathers do make the occasional appearance on screen it works to reveal the contributions of those who are the invisible movers of events - farmers turned spies, for example, or enslaved people caught in the middle of a dispute that, if anything, could only worsen their plight.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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This season, we’re going to be looking at the general theme of rebels and rebellions, revolutionaries and revolts, insurrectionists and traitors, freedom fighters and patriots. All of these are terms that have come up a lot over the past year, particularly since January 6th, 2021. So we’re going to take a long look at how Hollywood responded to contemporary events in the 20th and 21st centuries by retelling the stories of rebels and revolutionaries, and the rebellions and revolutions they were part of. Along the way, we’ll also be exploring what gets called a revolution, and who gets counted as a revolutionary. Spoiler alert - sometimes those labels are compliments and sometimes they’re accusations. In our first episode, we compare and contrast the HBO prestige miniseries John Adams, which solemnly recounts the life of our founding father and second president, and the History Channel miniseries Sons of Liberty, which reshaped revolutionary history into an action-packed adventure tale starring his cousin, Sam.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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In this second of two discussions about SciFi and 9/11, we look at 3 tv series: Battlestar Galactica, Falling Skies and The Leftovers. This is the last episode of Season 1. We will return later in the year with Season 2, in which we look at how Hollywood has represented revolts and insurrections over the years, and how current events influenced those depictions at the time.
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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In our final 2 episodes of Season 1 we’re doing something a little different. Our focus has been on how historical events are portrayed on screen after 9/11 - from Antiquity to 9/11 itself. But if we confine ourselves to film and tv with historic narratives, we’re actually going to be ignoring where we find the most commentary on the 9/11 and its legacy - science fiction.
We had so much to say that we've broken our conversation into 2 parts. So in Part I this week, we're talking about films, most notably War of the Worlds (2005) and Cloverfield (2008). In Part II next week, we'll be talking about TV series, focusing on Battlestar Galactica (2003-2008) and The Leftovers (2014-2017).
Lia Paradis is a professor of history at Slippery Rock University. Brian Crim is a professor of history at the University of Lynchburg. For more on Lies Agreed Upon, go here.
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