Cold War Containment Ideology & Film Genre

I would like to use my blog post this week to discuss one of the issues related to Christina Klein’s book Cold War Orientalism that we did not discuss in class. Klein argues throughout her book that the primary narrative mode associated with “the global imaginary of integration” is the sentimental; which makes me wonder, what is the parallel genre associated with “the global imaginary of containment”? The only genre Klein discusses, in relation to “containment culture” is the Western: “Westerns with their emphasis on the frontier as a border between civilization and savagery and their resolution of conflict through violence, fit comfortably within the category of containment culture” (Klein 193). Klein’s brief discussion of the Western is worth considering within the context of Flower Drum Song because the film includes two intertextual references to westerns. Furthermore, in spite of the existence of Asian immigrants/laborers in the American West, most Westerns produced during the Cold War erase the historical presence of Asians in the West. Although I think that a more in depth analysis of Westerns using Klein’s framework would be valuable, the genre that I am really interested in relation to Cold War containment ideology is the film noir. I propose that we consider film noir as both an expression and a critique of the culture of containment.

Film noir is a notoriously difficult genre to define; unlike sentimental narratives or Westerns (which can be defined through shared, broad narrative trajectories), the definitive feature of noir is generally considered stylistic (i.e., consisting of a specific tone and mood). The distinctive lighting and cinematography that give noir its name work to create an atmosphere of tension, paranoia, claustrophobia, conspiracy, and fear. In this way, the visual elements of noir express one of the defining features of “containment ideology” according to Klein: fear (Klein 36). However, the cynicism and pessimism associated with the genre undercuts the conformity that true narratives of containment sought to promote. And so, I believe that the genre of film noir can be successfully read as a vexed expression of “the global imaginary of containment.” Because of the complex relationship between film noir and “containment culture” I am especially interested in analyzing the brand of orientalism peculiar to film noir. In her book “Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier (2010) Homay King coins the term “shanghai gesture” to describe just this phenomenon: “This cinematic trope [the shanghai gesture] involves a movement whereby seemingly marginal Asian set dressing in Hollywood film ends up functioning as a load-bearing narrative element” (Homay King 48-9). For my paper, I hope to apply Klein’s historicist framework to some of King’s theories about orientalism in the film noir and provide a more sustained analysis of The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and other film noirs.