Abstract

CRASSH Conspiracies and Conspiracy Film Season

This celebrated Cold War tale of brainwashing, assassination, demagoguery and political conspiracy was based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon, a long-time critic of the abuse of power in American politics. The original film version came out in October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis and just a year before the assassination of JFK , which made many of its themes seem frighteningly real. The Manchurian Candidate can be viewed both as a paranoid attack on Communism and a satirical warning about the dangers of hysterical anti-Communism. The film will be introduced by Peter Knight, author of Conspiracy Culture: American Paranoia from the Kennedy Assassination to the X-Files.