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Just had the pleasure of watching @Phil_Tinline's stupendous little documentary on the Korean War POW "brainwashing" scare of the 1950s, "Every Man Has its Breaking Point." Quality quarantine viewing! http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/documentaries/every-man-breaking-point-reagan-brainwashing-movies/?fbclid=IwAR2O0Xrtz3ylKMbOfe2EjyKKad-PgoWWYse4d73vhPEI9Dnhl7c-Lcp0GRo
The subject's a skeleton key to unlocking huge chunks of American cultural history: of how 1950s Americans negotiated a systematic denial of America's flaws; of the rise of the early 1960s far-right; of the uses and abuses of Vietnam War POWs by Richard Nixon to sell his war...
of America's "war on terror" torture (based in techniques learned in "SERE" training to resist torture)); and the horror of America's present-day long-term commitment to mass torture when it comes to solitary confinement in incarceration.
The doc is artfully constructed around Ronald Reagan's 1954 film "Prisoner of War," explaining, in a twist, why what was supposed to be a blockbuster became a flop--which if it had turned out only a little differently, might have ended up with Reagan staying in Hollywood.
