The Splitting of America's Golden Age: The Atomic Era and the Gnostic Structure of Popular Culture
Abstract
This article develops the concept of “American Gnosticism” to explain a recurring structure in contemporary popular culture whereby the idyllic world of postwar suburbia is revealed to conceal scientific experimentation, institutional conspiracy, nuclear catastrophe, or some other hidden horror. Grounding this narrative form in the political economy of America's postwar “Golden Age” and its subsequent dissolution through social upheaval, stagflation, deindustrialization, and neoliberal restructuring, the authors examine works including The Stepford Wives, Fallout, Stranger Things, and the cultural phenomenon of “Barbenheimer.” They argue that the persistent symbolic association between the destruction of America's postwar innocence and the splitting of the atom registers a broader rupture in classical modernity produced by atomic physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, and the unprecedented development of the productive forces. Although American Gnosticism recognizes the falsity of appearances and the instability of inherited institutions, its postmodern logic remains confined to demystification, cynicism, and retreat into private authenticity, offering no constructive political alternative. The article therefore proposes dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism as philosophical and political frameworks capable of comprehending the contradictions of the Atomic Age and moving beyond the postmodern negation of collective ideals toward a renewed project of historical transformation.
Keywords
American Gnosticism, Atomic Age, Postwar Capitalism, Popular Culture, Dialectical Materialism
