One of the first major documents of the anti-Communist movement of the 1950s was Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, a pamphlet issued by the right-wing journal Counterattack in 1950.
This
pamphlet listed those who worked in radio and television who had
apparent links with the radical left. A 5-minute NPR story about Red Channels can be found here. The assumption on which Red Channels operated--that
affiliation with organizations that had expressed radically left-wing
political perspectives purports to a commitment to communism, and
potentially to the Communist Party--was one that underpinned the
activities of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which
McCarthy chaired.
Another
useful primary source which will inform your readings is the transcript
of Aaron Copland's McCarthy hearing, which you can read here.
As
you examine the Second Red Scare and its impact on American music this
week, please contribute a paragraph or two to this blog which answers
the following questions:
Why
was McCarthy concerned about left-leaning musicians and composers? In
what way did he perceive music and its creators and performers to be a
threat to the United States? What might his attitudes tell us about
commonly held understandings about music's political reach?
Many artists seemed to attempt to stay out of politics, and by their association with organizations like he Peace Conference which housed speakers from different cultures and sides of the Cold War, began to share qualities with communist-sympathizers, threatening the United States’ anti-communist lean. As Aaron Copland indicated in his McCarthy hearing, musicians channel their emotional arousal from various events, and convey these emotions in some form through their music. Many of the most popular American musicians were those whose modern qualities were relatable for the average audience member-that is, promoted populist sentiments. This idea of community and collective sentiments, may have also been too close to the “common ownership” aspect of communism, and McCarthy seemed to worry that they would normalize similarities between Americans and non-Americans, and using music as a link, would lessen the difference and therefore the opposition between the U.S.S.R. and the United States. Composers like Copland, may have seemed especially dangerous to McCarthy because the more the audience could relate to music, the more their collective emotions may be aroused, threatening the individualism that conservatives valued (as opposed to the strict parameters of Soviet music). Valuing or implementing aspects of music that could be applied also to Soviet music, such as mass-appeal, was as dangerous in McCarthy's eyes as valuing Communism itself.
ReplyDeletePublic diplomacy was impacted largely by musical output, and therefore broadcast music became a powerful tool in shaping America’s identity. If any semblance of communist-sympathizing existed, McCarthy's blacklist ensured they would have difficulty having their work broadcast. The fact that the output of musicians and composers was so important to regulate indicates that people recognized the ties that music had to politics, namely, music’s ability to mirror commonly-held patriotic ideals that could either enhance or undermine the United States’ political image.
ReplyDeleteThe Red Scare represented the widespread concern Americans had developed over the fear of communism within their society. During the Cold War, many Americans believed that communism was attempting to infiltrate every aspect of their lives. McCarthy believed that numerous musicians and performers such as Leonard Bernstein, Hans Eisler, Aaron Copland, Lena Horne, and Pete Seeger were using communist messaging in their music to influence the American public. McCarthy’s interrogations generated a heightened political awareness among musicians. McCarthy’s attitudes highlight how music can be a powerful vehicle to spread specific political messages to the public. Music’s political reach was evident in other major world events such as Hitler’s use of Wagner’s operas to influence young people towards Nazism. Famous musicians and composers can rely on an already developed fan base and use their music as a political platform. Music is an easy vessel to relay political ideologies because composers can use simple lyrics and melodies to create catchy and memorable messages.
McCarthy was concerned about left-leaning musicians and artists because of the status that artists hold in society. Many people idolize popular musicians as well as well-known classical musicians. If music produced by high-profile American artists such as Copland and Bernstein was perceived to endorse Communistic ideals, it could in turn influence the views of the American people.
ReplyDeleteMcCarthy seems to have felt especially threatened by the Waldorff Peace Conference. This is explainable by virtue of the fact that this conference consisted both of left-leaning American citizens and Russian composers. This conference had to the potential for Americans and Russians to commune at a personal level (as demonstrated by the meeting of Copland and Shostakovich), thus humanizing the enemy instead of viewing them as purely evil. This co-mingling could directly or indirectly lead to American composers using what was viewed as Communistic music styles (e.g. neo-classicism) in their music as well as publicly or privately proselytizing for Communist beliefs.
McCarthy was concerned over left-leaning musicians and composers because of the power music possesses to convey a political agenda. Music is able to speak to and unite people which was the reason McCarthy was worried that certain music could promote communist ideas. McCarthy perceived left-leaning musicians and composers to be a threat to democracy. He scrutinized composers, such as Copland and Bernstein, to the point where composers felt they could not create freely. For example, in Copland’s speech at the Waldorf conference, he states the air of anxiety created by the cold war cannot coexist with the process of creating art. McCarthy’s attitudes tell us it was commonly understood that music has the power to influence people. This is evident in the fact that so many composers and musicians were targeted by McCarthy. Any resemblance of communist ideas or of communist sounding music was cause for a composer or musician to be questioned regarding his/her political beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThe American concern with musicians’ political affiliations in the early age of McCarthyism may have been amplified by the ‘front lines’, or the geography, of the Cold War. In wars that America was involved in since the Civil War, there was minimal, if any, combat on the American homeland (one obvious exception would be Pearl Harbor). At the onset of the Cold War however, there seems to have been an awareness that this war had traversed the oceanic separations and was taking place on American soil. This was natural as the ‘soft powers’ and ideologies that were central to the Cold War were more easily mobilized than the ‘hard powers’ that won previous wars. As communism gained presence in America, McCarthy and the anti-communist movement turned to the well known methods of McCarthyism, a form of containment tailored to the soft powers at the domestic level.
ReplyDeleteMusicians were members of the cultural sphere that had potential to have great influence on soft power, and thus were frequent targets of McCarthyism. Anti-communist efforts within America’s borders focused on suppressing the social power of communist-inclined individuals by identifying them in pamphlets like Red Channels and many musicians were named in these efforts. The result of this action was that the warfare on ideologies attacked less the ideologies themselves and more those who would perpetuate them, especially those with pre-established influence in American culture. For America, just as geography inhibited the medium for hard power to be effective, McCarthyism inhibited the medium for soft power to prevail. The Communist allegations towards musicians indicates that in the Cold War McCarthy and many other U.S. government personnel viewed music as a political threat that was initially suppressed, but was later utilized.
In Copland's McCarthy hearing, the Senator asks the composer, "Do you agree with [Hanns Eisler] that there is a political importance in music?" Copland responds, "I certainly would not. What the Soviet government has been trying to do in forcing their composers to write along lines favorable to themselves is absolutely wrong. It is one of the basic reasons why I could have no sympathy with such an attitude."
ReplyDeleteIn this exchange, both parties betray their own beliefs about music's power in shaping and embodying political beliefs. Copland's answer is consistent with previous answers, in which he argues for his music's independence from politics. Delapp-Birkett (2008: 60) explains: "From his first twelve-tone works to the end of his life, Copland stressed the “purely musical” aspects of his interest in dodecaphony; but
this must be expected. The Cold War stigmas were still in place." Even as he stresses that the primary aim of music is not to project political ideals, he must admit that this is might be an inevitable result.
McCarthy appears to believe in a political importance in music, since the claimed goal of Copland's hearing is to determine why the U.S. would employ such a seemingly "un-American" composer as a lecturer: "One of the reasons why we appropriate the money to pay lecturers is to enlighten people as to the American way of life and do something towards combatting Communism." The Senator views artists as beacons of cultural power who can generally be categorized according to the political slant they represent, while Copland sees them as having more complex motivations.
During the period of the second “Red Scare” Joe McCarthy became a proponent of the belief that communism was pervasively infiltrating the American government and society. He understood that musicians and composers are able to reach large amounts of people with their music. As a result, he, and many others, recognized that music could be used as a tool for the spread of communism in the country. He made this view apparent during the interrogation of Aaron Copland when he asked him if he believed that music has a political importance, and if musicians who were communists had the power to influence people towards their cause. An interesting point related to this that was raised in the Crist article is that even if these composers and performers did not wish to be associated with communist organizations, sometimes these organizations would use their name regardless. McCarthy and many other Americans during this period believed that it was necessary to expose communist sympathizers to protect democracy and capitalism. Regardless of whether a composer or performer held communist beliefs or if they were being used to appear so, it became the established norm to alienate them to hinder their ability to achieve this perceived goal. Many abused this power, McCarthy himself especially, and after a short period of time people began to view McCarthyism negatively due to its abuse of civil rights. The fears instilled during this period did not disappear with McCarthyism, and composers like Copland who were especially scrutinized for their connections with communism decided to turn to more abstract music in order to make it more difficult for their music to be interpreted and annexed for political and ideological purposes. It is interesting that American composers turned inward in this way toward musical ambiguity because Soviet composers, like Dmitri Shostakovich for example, took this same approach with their music after the 1936 and 1948 anti-formalist campaigns in the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteThe structure of feeling in America during the first decade of the Cold War was one of anxious anticipation, of unending expectation of a nuclear holocaust that never came to be. American politicians and statesman sought out scapegoats to compensate for their inability to relieve tensions with outright military engagement with the Soviet Union; in many cases, these scapegoats were members of the left-leaning intellectual class with ties, real or imagined, to communist activities in the USA. Writers, artists, musicians, and critics were questioned, harassed, humiliated, and blacklisted because of their ideologies and associates. The political movement behind abuse and suppression of cultural icons has become known as McCarthyism, named after Republican Joe McCarthy who was infamous for his anti-communist rhetoric and leadership of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. McCarthy and the Republican Party received popular support for their war on ideas, buoyed by growing public interest in psychoanalysis and increasingly divided ideas about America’s role in the world. The seemingly united nation that had defeated Germany a few years prior was no longer a community accepting of conflicting opinions. Government institutions such as the newly-formed CIA and the WWII relic House Un-American Activities Committee believed that American society as a whole needed to set itself apart from the ideology of the USSR, and took a hard stance against anything with the potential to incline American minds towards communist values.
ReplyDeleteEvents such as the Soviet-sponsored Waldorf Peace Conference placed liberal artists squarely in the crosshairs of the witch hunters. Hollywood’s writers and directors were accused of hiding communist themes in their pictures; composers such as Aaron Copland were accused of writing music evoking the populist, Socialist Realist style to which Russian music was forced to adhere. McCarthy took advantage of these accusations to bring many artists to the stand, ruining many careers before his own fall in the mid-50s. In retrospect, these hearings tell us much about the “complex of associations that… linked musical values to partisan politics” (DeLapp-Birkett 32). The belief that music and other artistic forms could be used as a weapon in intellectual warfare caused politicians to strike a preemptive blow against freedom of expression, with the end result being a suppression of some of the greatest American creatives of the post-WWII era. The transgression of limitations is what make art great; the artist unable to commit transgressions is rendered impotent, a shade of their creative potential. The politician capable of suppressing creative expression is the ideal leader to bring society into Utopia, or whatever else might label a barren society devoid of intellectual diversity.
McCarthy believed that politically, music was an effective means to infiltrate American broadcasting. Specifically it is society’s intellectual classes, the artists, academics and writers that posed the greatest risk of transmitting pro-Soviet and Communist ideologies through the media. Red Channels identifies the possibility of artists and celebrities sympathetic with the Communist cause as being able to broadcast subversive messages in any American household owing a radio or television set. The prestige and star power of these artists was seen as a threat.
ReplyDeleteThe Hanns Eisler quotation read to Copeland by McCarthy speaks to the potential harm to the American way of life by a leftist shift of elite American artists (Eisler specifically names Copeland) and the power that revolutionary music can play in that role. McCarty identifies Copeland’s activities as a composer and an international lecturer in addition to his affiliations, even those of a casual nature with suspected Communist persons or organizations named in the Red Channels document to be of great concern. Clearly McCarthy and his ilk understood the role that celebrity played in garnering the trust of an unsuspecting public through the use of so called legitimate causes and how even subtle manipulation of content can be very effective.
During the twentieth-century witch-hunt in the 1940’s known as the Second Red Scare, headed by Senator McCarthy in the United States of America, the American intelligentsia and artistic community came under close scrutiny from the government for perceived ties—either real or imagined—with Communism. The fear and suspicion that Soviet backed Communist spies were infiltrating all echelons of American society blanketed and smothered the minds of the American populace, thus engendering, to borrow the programmatic title of Leonard Bernstein’s second symphony, an “age of anxiety.”
ReplyDeleteNot only that, it was also an age of repression, one not all that dissimilar from the political repression of the arts (and particularly music) happening in Soviet Russia. Both the American government and the American musical community acknowledged music’s ability to serve political and ideological purposes. Indeed, Hans Eisler, a composer subjected to McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, lauded music’s burgeoning political import by exclaiming, “Revolutionary music is more powerful than ever. Its political and artistic importance is growing daily.” In this way, musicians, particularly those sympathetic to, or with ties to the left, were seen as inimical to the ethos of “democracy” and “freedom” that were supposedly inherent to American culture and society (I place those words in scare quotes because I believe their usage in the era of McCarthyism is entirely farcical). And because of the pervasiveness of music in American culture and media, it would be extremely dangerous if it were to be hijacked by Communists.