Brainwashing In The Manchurian Candidate

The Cold War was a time of heightened fear in the United States because there was the looming threat of a Communist takeover. People lived in a constant state of paranoia because anyone could have been a Communist, from their neighbor to their doctor, no one knew. One of the ways Americans believed Communism made its way into the United States was through brainwashing. The concept of brainwashing threatened the idea that each individual American has agency and is making decisions under his own control. At its root, brainwashing took away a right that Americans prided themselves on, liberty. The Manchurian Candidate is a political thriller released during the height of the Cold War. The film follows Korean War veteran who returns to the United
Melvin’s dream sequence picks up where Marco’s left off with the murder of Mavole. In contrast to Marco’s scene, all the women in the garden club are elderly black women, but in both cases the cuts are made to shift between the garden club and the Communist meeting. Yen Lo continues his demonstration on the effectiveness of his brainwashing techniques by asking Marco to hand his pistol over to Raymond, which he does so without objection. The lack of dialogue between Raymond and Marco speaks volumes to how effective Yen Lo’s brainwashing methods are. In a normal situation, there would be no chance that Marco would give his gun to Raymond after what he had just witnessed. This is not a normal situation for the reason that Marco has been brainwashed and the brainwashing has taken away his agency to think logically and to simply do what he is told to do. Yen Lo then instructs Raymond to shoot Bobby, the youngest member of the platoon, through the forehead. Once Yen Lo gives the instruction, a medium close-up reaction shot of Raymond is shown and he has a blank look on his face. The brainwashing has removed any emotional attachment that Raymond had with Bobby and because of it, he feels no guilt in murdering an innocent looking kid. The camera then turns into a point of view angle of Raymond pointing the pistol at Bobby. It is interesting to note
In the scene, Marco goes to confront Raymond and asks him to play solitaire with a deck full of red queens, knowing that the red queen is the trigger for brainwashing. Using the red queen Marco brainwashes Raymond about what happened when they were captured and everything he had done since returning to America. Throughout the interrogation process, close up shots of Raymond are shown to convey the effect of brainwashing. At the beginning of the interrogation Raymond, when he was still brainwashed, he has a blank look on his face, but by the end of the process Raymond is “deprogrammed” and he has a shocked expression on his face. Raymond had lost his emotional agency for so long that once Marco deprogrammed him, he suddenly realized everything he had done while being brainwashed. Raymond sums up his experience while being brainwashed when he says, “They can make me do anything, Ben, can’t they? Anything.” Due to his brainwashing by Communists, Raymond had lost all agency. He had no control over what he was thinking or what he was doing, and thus he could not resist the brainwashing. The idea of not being able to resist against the Communist influence was a very relevant idea during early 1950s. In 1952 and 1953, twenty-one Americans refused repatriation to the United States after being prisoners of war. It seemed unusual that these soldiers decided to live in a “dreadfully impoverished country,