historical and cultural background on thriller

Historical and Cultural information

1962

The airstrike that the president tries to call of will be a nuclear attack on Cuba. In 1962 there was a nuclear crisis in Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis brought the super powers to the brink of nuclear war. In 1959 Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba and ever since there had been tension between the two nations as Castro had communist views. America refused to buy sugar from Cuba. The Soviet Union saw this as an opportunity to gain influence in the Caribbean and began to buy Cuba’s sugar. Moreover at this time Khrushchev (the soviet leader) wanted to challenge the US. There was extreme tension built when a U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba and the pilot was only released from jail a few years ago. There was also an incident in the Bay of Pigs when America trained Cuban immigrants and sent them to attack Cuba. This operation failed and most of the soldiers were killed. JFK had to deny involvement otherwise it would have been seen as an act of war.

When filming our thriller we will need to make it appear as if it is in the 1960s. In this time women were subservient to men. They had lower ranked jobs and were very badly treated in a working environment. A very good example of this is a programme called mad men. In mad men we are shown that the women are there to please the men and to indirectly find a husband and be in kitchen. This was the typical view of women. Society believed that a women’s place is at home with the children and cooking. They should not be in an office.  Moreover in mad men the men use derogative terms towards women in their presence and the men are portrayed to have a higher rank by how big their offices were. Women were seen as incapable to work machinery and incapable of handling complex work.

This video out lines the historical background of the thirller dfuring the 60s and shows the audince the tyime frame and what they are about to see inlive and put into action.


the mad men video shows the stereo typical approach to women in the 60s.