Contextual Analysis Reflection: I probably had to do more research for this than the other projects for this class. I cast a pretty broad net when researching and dove into Life’s past as a pro-American propaganda apparatus and author of the article, John K Jessup’s history of anti Soviet Union bias.

Life magazine in the 1960s was deeply embedded in the geopolitical dichotomy of United States capitalism and Soviet Union communism. The photograph in question is the header to a three-part article on the communist ideology, which Life published in an October issue in 1961. While the content of the photo itself is not the main thrust of the rhetoric, as that is created upon the combination of the photograph and the article, the photo does create a clear tone in the rhetorical situation. The striking and almost grimy crimson red with the dour Hammer and Sickle looming in the center with a black background paints an intimidating picture for the readership of Life. The photograph serves to create a sort of pantheon of communist figures, with the words “Red Gods, Leaders, Puppets” plastered across the bottom. This ominous tone of the photograph, combined with the mantra at the bottom, sets a very clear and deliberate atmosphere for the corresponding article. It is a tone that is consistent with Life magazine’s political stance as staunchly and unquestioningly pro-American in foreign affairs.

Upon considering the expected target audience of Life magazine–that being the average American citizen in the 1960s–the article surrounding the photograph seems counterintuitive. It is heavily academic and dives relatively deep into the philosophical theory regarding Karl Marx and communism. It details Material and Hegelian dialectics, and Marx’s theory of a material analysis of history being more useful and closer to the truth than any analysis around ideology. For example, one paragraph of the article delves into how Marx’s philosophy was similar to that of Hegel, “[Marx] did accept another of Hegel’s ideas, which in fact, was even more mystical. This was a new kind of logic called ‘The Dialectic’” (Life). The article then goes on to expound upon Hegel’s theory of the Dialectic, with complicated language and reasoning, “The Dialectic claims to be dynamic instead of static, and thus to illuminate the long-term nature of history’s most obvious constant: change […] A thesis gives birth to its own antithesis; the struggle to resolve this contradiction produces a synthesis, which itself becomes a thesis, producing another antithesis; another struggle follows, and so on ad infinitum” (Life). The level of academia and amount of work required to fully grasp the concepts that Life is so casually putting out in this article sticks out like a sore thumb compared to what is expected of them, in the context of the mass readership it had accrued by this point in time, made up mostly of average Americas who would have little-to-no education on these topics. It seems clear then, that for a magazine as ubiquitous as Life, most of its readers would not follow or understand the meat of this article, and yet this three-part piece made the front cover, signaling that Life magazine felt it was important enough to advertise to all its readers. It follows then that this piece is not meant to inform, but rather scare away people from thinking too deeply about the ideology that Life and the United States had deemed incompatible with freedom and their way of life. They scare them away by overwhelming the audience with heady concepts and abstruse, esoteric language.

It is because of this suspiciously dense rhetoric that I chose to analyse this particular article and photograph. My analysis concerns the broad context surrounding both the photograph and the article. The author, John K. Jessup, as well as Life magazine as a whole, historically had political leanings that suggest a strong bias in favor of the United States. I first consider the writer of the article, John K. Jessup, and their political leanings, as well as their expertise, or lack thereof, on the subject of communist ideology and global politics, which one can reasonably assume would be required to write such an article on the subject . Then, I examine Life magazine as a whole, along with its owner at the time, Henry Luce, and how their political leanings can shed light on what is going on rhetorically. Finally, I examine the cultural and political atmosphere surrounding the Cold War era, and how the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union helped inform why this article was written, and how it was intended to be received.

To begin understanding the context of this photo along with the article, an understanding of the magazine itself is essential. The author of the three-part analysis was Life chief editorial writer John K. Jessup, former English professor who became a journalist before working his way up in Life magazine (Cook). While he had no formal education in the economics or global politics surrounding the Soviet Union, this was not his only piece written about Communism. In 1962 he published a book Communism: the Nature of your Enemy, which takes an intensely critical look at the ideology from someone with no professional expertise on the field. With this in mind about the author, already the article begins to seem less a professional or unbiased analysis and more an article with a distinct agenda designed to sour the view of the Soviet Union in the eyes of Life’s audience, while bolstering the view of America by contrast. 

It is reasonable to assume that there was a clear intentionality in choosing the chief editorial writer for Life to write this article, rather than hiring an expert in the field or someone with more experience in this particular issue. The reason was that authenticity or accurately portraying the issue was not the goal of Life magazine, but rather anti-Soviet rhetoric from someone with a status of authority.

When looking at the political tendencies of a magazine, it is important to start with the owner, as the opinions and views of the owner is likely to bleed into the publications themselves. Henry Luce acquired Life magazine in 1930, and acted as the editor-in-chief until 1964, having a large oversight over what was published within his magazine (Herzstein). He remade the magazine into America’s first all-photographic magazine, and after his acquisition it became a multi-million dollar corporation. Luce and Jessup got quite close as they worked together over the years, to the point where Jessup published a book The Ideas of Henry Luce, after Luce’s death. Luce’s political leanings were that of a staunch conservative and prominent member of the Republican party–to the point where he considered an attempt at Secretary of State under a republican administration (Time, vol. 8)–a position which requires a deep knowledge and interest of foreign affairs. It is this dual interest in foreign affairs and personal political gain that first raises suspicion as to the motives of this article, and further digging only cements that suspicion. 

Luce was also an open advocate of anti-Soviet views, making concerted efforts to wield his power as a magazine magnate to influence the United States government to take direct action against the Soviet Union. He went as far as to openly call on president John F. Kennedy to invade Cuba after the Cuban Missile Crisis, or else he would use his media influence to garner major support for an invasion (Time, vol. 8). 

It was not only the owner that this perspective came from, but also the publication as a whole. Life had always been a political magazine, with a strong American-bias, with pieces about the Soviet Union stretching back to the early 1940s, before the war had even ended. This suggests that the publication had a long, vested interest in casting a negative light on the Soviet Union and communism. This article’s specific theme of communism’s history, starting with Marx and moving forward into 1960s Soviet Union also suggests that Life had decisively chosen a side in the Cold War conflict. Taking Life’s history with both America and the Soviet Union into consideration, the meaning and intended reception of this article becomes clearer–the magazine wanted you to come away with a negative view of communism.

When discussing propaganda surrounding the geopolitical conflict regarding the Soviet Union and the United States, talking about the broader political and cultural events regarding the Cold War era is an inevitability. Emerging from WWII, the United States and the Soviet Union cemented themselves as the two global superpowers after defeating Nazi Germany and subsequently dividing the country and Berlin. After their cooperative effort to defeat Germany, instead of forming an alliance they instead formed a bitter rivalry, steeped in ideology and propaganda. The United States championed capitalism and the Soviet Union championed communism, and thus the dichotomy of the Western world versus the Eastern world was born, and the Cold War era commenced. 

Politically, the United States wanted to be the sole superpower in the Postwar age, and the Soviet Union’s existence itself was an obstacle to that goal. Most of the Cold War era was defined by a nuclear arms race, with each side attempting to build up more weaponry and military technology than the other. This hostility informed much of the discourse around the rivalry–much of the tension was not settled with negotiations or attempts at peaceful resolution, but rather accepted that aggression and militarism was the only real solution to the feud. Ultimately the political and cultural are deeply intertwined, but this political dimension is crucial to understanding the origin of the conflict, as the political tension between two burgeoning superpowers set the state for the other two.

Culturally, it can not be understated, the effect that things like the nuclear arms race had on the populace, an event which directly fed into the perception of the Soviet Union and of communism that is present in the title photograph. It was an era of deep fear and paranoia of an ambiguous “other” (Ojserkis). This “other” that was cemented and distilled into the cultural consciousness through propagandistic narratives like those told through Life. 

That type of fear comes from a unique period in American life; it was a time when America was beginning to build its cultural identity in a way that was completely relative to the rest of the world, and in a way that took into account its sheer monetary and military power that it had come to enjoy. After the end of WWII, America had to rise to the expectation it had set during the war: it was a country founded on freedom and democracy, and thus had a responsibility to preserve that freedom and democracy elsewhere in the world. Henry Luce himself said of the United States during the war, “[it is time] to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our responsibility as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means we see fit” (Zinn). This type of thinking, simultaneously being afraid of an amorphous concept of communism that exists on the other side of the world, while also holding the conviction that the United States is a powerful, moral state that has a responsibility to the world is what drives propaganda like this. 

The fear that the American public felt towards the Soviet Union due to the arms race, and the thought of an encroaching communist tyranny bleeds into this propaganda through the photograph. The design of the photo is clearly meant to instill a certain type of dread in the audience–dark crimson red contrasted with ominous black-and-white portraits of communist figures. And if the color scheme wasn’t enough to get the emotion across, plastered at the bottom are the words “Red Gods, Leaders, Puppets” in capitalized letters.

Looking back on this issue of Life from the 21st century, it fits in quite logically with the era and rhetoric surrounding discussions of the Cold War dichotomy. It was due to propaganda like this that tensions stayed so high. An article meant to confuse and a picture meant to intimidate were clearly a product of the times and helped play into the narrative that communism and the Soviet Union were a grave threat to the Western world, and that fearing them was the only logical response.

 

 Works Cited

 

Cook, Joan. “John K. Jessup, 72, Chief Editorial Writer for Life.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Oct. 1979, www.nytimes.com/1979/10/27/archives/john-k-jessup-72-chief-editorial-writer-for-life.html.

Herzstein, Robert Edwin. Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

“LIFE.” Google Books, Google, books.google.com/books?id=sVMEAAAAMBAJ.

Ojserkis, Raymond P. Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race: the Truman Administration and the U.S. Arms Build-Up. Praeger, 2003.

TIME Magazine — U.S. Edition — March 10, 1967 Vol. 89 No. 10. content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601670310,00.html.

Zinn, Howard. Postwar America: 1945-1971. Haymarket Books, 2013.