John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is set against the backdrop of the Cold War. The enemy, while feminized and complicit in media manipulation as Wildermuth asserts, also represents the threat of Communism. What stands in for the Red menace in Jonathan Demme’s 2004 remake of the film?
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Like Frankenheimer’s original The Manchurian Candidate, Demme’s remake is also set against a backdrop of war, this one being the Gulf War. However, unlike in the 1962 film, in the remake the enemies of war do not stand in for the Red Menace. The equivalent in Demme’s film is portrayed by Manchurian Global, a multinational corporation seeking to gain political control. In both films the respective “Red Menace” demonstrate the corrupt political scene of America. By employing Manchurian Global as the “Red Menace” figure rather than the more obvious enemy of the time, the Iraqi army, Demme creates the same sense of paranoia that was apparent in Cold War America. Instead of using the more obvious Iraqi army as the enemy figure, Demme conveys the paranoid environment of the Cold War as the operatives of Manchurian Global are rarely seen throughout the movie, but they are hidden among the American population, just as communists were during the Cold War. Instead of using this “Red Menace” figure to demonstrate political corruption through communist infiltration, Demme uses Manchurian Global to comment on the wealthy’s influence on politicians, as in the film they quite literally control the candidate’s every action.