<story><title>The Grapes of Wrath’s Foreshadowing of the Cold War (2018)</title><url>https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of-wraths-foreshadowing-of-the-cold-war/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>boomboomsubban</author><text>I  tried to find the source for this claim, and all the internet posts point to one article written in 2008 that tells the story. That article sources it to two books, a New York Times article, and some email.&lt;p&gt;The first book, &amp;quot;The Origins of Totalitarianism&amp;quot; by Hannah Arendt is from 1958 and is on the Internet Archive, and searching it brought no mention of &amp;quot;grape&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Steinbeck.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Wrath&amp;quot; came up a few times in different context.&lt;p&gt;The second, &amp;quot;Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States&amp;quot; by Kenneth T. Jackson is from 1989 available on Google Books. It does tell the story, adding that every character having shoes was also part of the ban. It doesn&amp;#x27;t provide a source for the claim, but the footnote given says the film wasn&amp;#x27;t a hit in the US either. The film won several Oscars and is on numerous &amp;quot;best film ever&amp;quot; lists.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t check a personal email.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t subscribe to the NYT, so can&amp;#x27;t check the article. Maybe someone else can. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;1955&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;foreign-affairs-america-seen-through-a-glass-darkly.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;1955&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;13&amp;#x2F;archives&amp;#x2F;foreign-affairs-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So at best it looks like the source was some article in the NYT from the height of the Cold War about a somewhat related topic. Possibly happened, possibly made up.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Grapes of Wrath’s Foreshadowing of the Cold War (2018)</title><url>https://sites.psu.edu/comm150honors/2016/02/04/the-grapes-of-wraths-foreshadowing-of-the-cold-war/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yaakov34</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know the details about the showing of that movie, but America&amp;#x27;s mass car ownership certainly came up in the comparisons of life in the USSR and in America. In one discussion with my classmates (in Moscow, USSR, ca. mid-1980s) I mentioned that in the suburb of New York in which my relatives lived, most of the high school students in the upper grades drove their cars to school and parked near it. &amp;quot;Come on&amp;quot;, someone said, &amp;quot;I am with you when you tell us not to believe our propaganda, but you shouldn&amp;#x27;t believe theirs, either. Who is going to give a car to some kid, unless he is the son of a senator or something?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and some years later, a friend of mine in America was asked by a family in the USSR (which would not be the USSR much longer) to bring some package or item to their relatives, who lived in some other suburb of NYC. My friend asked for the address. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#x27;t remember right now, but you&amp;#x27;ll be able to find them: they have two cars!&amp;quot;</text></comment>