Comparing The Manchurian Candidate And Mccarthyism

Although The Manchurian Candidate film starts with a flashback to the proxy war with the Communists, known as the Korean War, the film centers around the present day United States Presidential Elections several years after the war had ended. As World War II came to an end, there were two competing political forces at work: capitalism and communism. In the United States, fear was rampant as European governments became puppets controlled by the Soviet Union. The United States saw a rise in Soviet espionage. The Alger Hiss espionage conviction and the revelation that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union caused anxiety in America. Americans were afraid what was happening behind the Iron Curtin could happen

in the United States. This fear allowed the House Committee on Un-American Activities to begin to look for Soviet agents in the United States. These agents included sleeper agents that might not even know they are acting as Soviet agents. In The Manchurian Candidate film, American Soldiers were taken hostage and brainwashed by the Soviets to work unknowingly for the Soviet Union. Throughout the film, the influence of McCarthyism encompasses the American Soldiers’ return to the United States, their fight to differentiate fact from fiction, the ensuing struggle to take control of their own thoughts and minds, and finally their decision to figure out what they have done and what had been done to them as Soviet Agents seeking to take over the United States government.
At the beginning of The Manchurian Candidate, Sergeant Raymond Shaw is flown home as a Medal of Honor hero who saved his platoon from the Communists. His mother, Eleanor Iselin, and step-father, Senator Johnny Iselin, to his surprise, arranged an elaborate parade for him. It turns out that the parade was not for him, but to further Senator Jonny Iselin’s political career. At this time, the position of the vice-presidential candidate was up in the air and Senator Johnny and Eleanor Iselin were craving political power. Like Senator McCarthy, Senator Johnny Iselin was a right wing extremist who called anyone who disagreed with him and stood in his way, a Communist. Senator McCarthy and Senator Iselin cherry-picked what they believe would improve their public image. They saw an opportunity to gain power by going on a Communist witch hunt. The audience is shown numerous McCarthyism examples in which the American media and public are criticized and manipulated by Senator Iselin. Many people believe that Senator McCarthy was just a pawn. Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist ideas were embraced by the Republicans to run the Democrats out of office. We learn that Senator Iselin is the puppet of his controlling wife, Mrs. Iselin. Mrs. Iselin used Senator Iselin as her lap dog. She was an elitist, manipulative, woman who torments, betrays, and ultimately is willing to send her son to his death. Both of these men, who Mrs. Iselin refers as “my boys, my two little boys,” are puppets for her pursuit of power masked as the national good.
From 1950 to 1956, America was entangled by the anti-communist McCarthy movement. The movement stretched across the United States. The movement had an impact on everyone from actors in studios to the houses of the government. During this era, it was not just Communists afraid of being discovered; people, who were not communist, were afraid they might be inadvertently labeled a communist because someone wanted them out of the way. Being Black Listed could mean losing your job for good. The McCarthy era created an environment of paranoia, hate, and fear. “Richard Rovere wrote that McCarthy had ‘held two presidents captive—or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the United States have ever been held…and could never act without weighing the effect of their plans upon McCarthy.’” This is what sets the atmosphere of The Manchurian Candidate. “Arthur Miller, of course, had explored the psychology of the witch hunt in The Crucible (1953), a treatment of the Salem witch trials whose modern-day referents were transparent to all,” to describe the mass fear and hysteria of McCarthyism.
The Manchurian Candidate film is a good example of the ideas that were discussed in the book, What Have They Built You to Do? The film shows the connection between brainwashing and communism’s loss of individualism. This film shows not only the way in which group interactions can overwhelm an individual into doing something they would not normally do, but that a person’s emotional state can create a suitable opportunity to undermine a person’s moral framework. As Doctor Yen Lo declares, “their brains are not merely washed; they have been dry cleaned.” All that was needed was a way to remove guilt and fear. The film examines the crisis for Sergeant Shaw who experiences the divided identity and fails to reinstate his independence. The Manchurian Candidate accurately portrays what Americans believed was going on in the POW camps during the Korean conflict. Sergeant Shaw was turned into an unwitting agent for the Communists. He was ‘built to do’ murder. If asked, Shaw would kill anyone including his father-in-law whom Shaw had the upmost respect for. Shaw could also effortlessly kill his wife who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Communist doctor even had the power to make Marco and the other soldiers from the platoon forget what happened. An arrangement of drugs and other diabolic methods by the Communist could even make American soldiers so docile that they would sit by and allow one American to kill another American. To prove the point, Sergeant Shaw was directed to strangle one of the members of the platoon and shoot the platoon’s favorite ‘mascot’ and no one in the patrol attempts to stop him. Furthermore, when the victim tries to object to this action, all the doctor had to do was merely requests that he comply which the victim does happily.
Many people think that McCarthyism was just about mass panic and an extensive witch hunt, but though the film, The Manchurian Candidate, a different view was pointed out.

Senator McCarthy was shown in two different lights. “Although McCarthy was an ideologue buffoon, he was not although wrong about the conspiratorial immensity of communism and the peril it represented.” The film showed that a communistic plot may not be our only threatening conspiracy. There are people who are not Communist who threaten our way of life. Even though Mrs. Iselin was Communist, her husband, Senator Iselin, was not. He was only interested in power. The producer conveyed this point by borrowing and modifying real life events from Senator McCarthy’s assault on the top levels of the State Department, Defense Department, and the US Army. Many of Senator McCarthy’s supporters also used the situation to further their own

aspirations.
The Manchurian Candidate emphasized the silly way Senator McCarthy kept changing the number of Communists he knew about in the State Department.

Just like Senator McCarthy, Senator Iselin does the same thing in the film instead he said they were in the Department of Defense. Senator Iselin went on to claim that he had ‘the names of 205 Communists working in the Defense Department.’ Senator Iselin kept changing the number of ‘Communist’s until finally stopping at 57. The fact that the number was strictly arbitrary, since it was conceived by Mrs. Iselin based on the Heinz 57 bottle that Senator Iselin was using on his steak, “provided the only comic relief in this tense thriller.” The Manchurian Candidate showed that Senator Iselin preferred to infringe upon the freedoms of Americans if that meant a single Communist would remain alive and free.

The greatest irony of all was Senator Iselin was actually being duped. His wife, using the cover of patriotism, had been scheming to seize political control for a while. In Mrs. Iselin’s final scene with Shaw, she tells him that for the last eight years, this operation has been in the works. At the time this film was depicted it was 1954, which meant that the Communists were plotting to take down the United States just as the United States was helping the Soviet Union defeat the German

threat.
The film showed an example of the confrontations that Senator McCarthy tended to have at his hearings. In the film, the Secretary of Defense exploded when Senator Iselin made the outlandish charge that Communists existed in his department. The Secretary of Defense became so hostile and offensive that Major Marco had to intervene. In actual history, instead of the Secretary of Defense blowing up, it was the Secretary of State Dean Acheson; likewise, instead of Senator McCarthy, it was the Republican Senator Kenneth Wherry from Nebraska. Secretary of State Dean Acheson exploded so badly at Senator Wherry, his aide had to calm the Secretary of State down in the same way Major Marco did in the film. These parts are all noticeable in The Manchurian Candidate.
Communists during this period of time were viewed as harsh and heartless because capitalism in America appeared to be preferred. Communists attempted to hide this fact through dishonest means, something Senator McCarthy brought out in his hearings. Communist claimed that our system did not offering a ‘high standard’ of living. The film pointed out the irony in this belief. Doctor Yen Lo, the doctor who brainwashed Shaw, told the Soviet operative during Shaw’s checkup that he would look in on Shaw after he goes to Macy’s to shop for his wife. When the Soviet operative told Doctor Yen Lo that they were the only profitable operation, Doctor Yen Lo teased the Soviet operative that it might not be a good idea to be profitable. Communist leaders did not really believe in communism, they just desired power. Mrs. Iselin pretended to be a right wing, anti-communist, Republican, who in reality supported communism as a pretense to grab power.
The Manchurian Candidate seems accurate because it plays upon the public’s fears so perfectly. When this film came out the audience had just lived through the McCarthy era. People like Senator McCarthy persuaded the public that Communists had achieved a method of taking away a person’s ‘mind and soul.’ The Communists could force anyone do anything against their will and without their knowledge because no one in their right mind would support the Soviet cause. The film is very prolific. The film came out before the Kennedy assassination. Many people at the time of the assassination believed Oswald was a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ programmed by the Soviets to shoot the president.
As the film came to a close, Marco read a document for two Medal of Honor recipients, but with everything that happened Marco then created his own document for Shaw due to the actions which he was commanded to do. Marco explains that things passed on Shaw were forced and that these deeds were ‘unspeakable.’ The Manchurian Candidate throughout the film presents many different ways, McCarthyism could have help and hindered this era. This film, potentially gave the idea that anyone could be controlled or manipulated by the enemy, a potential “Manchurian Candidate.”