Semantics Soviet
Style
The declared purpose of the 1947 HUAC hearings was to investigate
whether Communist agents had succeeded in implanting Communist messages and
values in Hollywood films. However, aside from a few nearly meaningless
messages, no significant evidence
appeared to support the suspicion.
The ever arrogant Ring Lardner, Jr., one of Hollywood Ten and a proud
Communist Party member, insisted that the Party did not attempt to insert overt
messages into films. But the New York
Times claimed that party theorist and fellow Hollywood Ten member John Henry
Lawson "used to give his colleagues tips on how to get the Party viewpoint
across in his dialogue"
Lardner answered that by writing that Lawson "regarded anything of
that sort as a puerile approach to the politicization of screenwriting" and that Lawson believed a “more effective
and more meaningful way to make revolutionary films required both the interdependence of form and content and the deeper exploration of human
character, especially within groups of people whose characters typically were
not well developed in the movies.”
In other words, Communist agents had succeeded in implanting Communist
messages and values in Hollywood films.
