Cloak and dagger stories became part of the popular culture of the Cold War in both East and West, with innumerable novels and movies that showed how polarized and dangerous the world was.

After 1963, Hollywood increasingly depicted the CIA as clowns (as in the comedy TV series Get Smart) or villains (as in Oliver Stone's 1992 film JFK).

[2] Ian Fleming's infamous spy novels about the MI6 agent James Bond also referenced elements of the Cold War when being adapted into films.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union each invested heavily in propaganda designed to sway both domestic and foreign opinion in the respective country's favor, especially using motion pictures.

Americans hoped that achievements in cinema would compensate for America's failure to keep up with Soviet development of nuclear weapons and advancements in space technology.

Despite the audiences' lack of zeal for Anti-Communist/Cold War related cinema, the films produced evidently did serve as successful propaganda in both the United States and the Soviet Union.

[15] After Stalin's death, a Main Administration of Cinema Affairs replaced the Ministry, allowing the filmmakers more freedom due to the lack of direct government control.

Russian science fiction emerged from a prolonged period of censorship in 1957, opened up by de-Stalinization and real Soviet achievements in the space race, typified by Ivan Efremov's galactic epic, Andromeda (1957).

Official Communist science fiction transposed the laws of historical materialism to the future, scorning Western nihilistic writings and predicting a peaceful transition to universal communism.

Dissident science fiction writers emerged, such as the Strugatski brothers, Boris and Arkadi, with their "social fantasies," problematizing the role of intervention in the historical process, or Stanislaw Lem's tongue-in-cheek exposures of man's cognitive limitations.

Apple Computer's "1984" ad, despite paying homage to George Orwell's novel of the same name, follows a more serious yet ambitious take on the freedom vs. totalitarianism theme evident between the US and Soviet societies at the time.

The commercial opens with a very young girl standing in a meadow with chirping birds, slowly counting the petals of a daisy as she picks them one by one.

As the fireball ascends, an edit cut is made, this time to a close-up section of incandescence in the mushroom cloud, over which a voiceover from Johnson is played, which states emphatically, "These are the stakes!

It was a personal microphone gaffe joke between Ronald Reagan, his White House staff and radio technicians that was accidentally leaked to the US populace.

[31] As a result, live radio broadcasts to South America by such musicians as Alfredo Antonini, Néstor Mesta Cháyres and John Serry Sr. on CBS's Viva América show continued into the first years of the cold war era.

[32][33][34] As the decade came to a close, however, the focal point for American foreign policy shifted toward the superpower rivalry in Europe and such cultural broadcasting to South America was gradually eliminated.

Probably the most famous, passionate and influential of all was Bob Dylan, notably in his songs "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" (written just before the Cuban Missile Crisis).

[36][37] In addition to jazz, the US State Department also supported the performance of classical music by noteworthy American orchestras and soloists as part of its cultural diplomacy initiatives during the cold war.

During the 1950s, the bass-baritone William Warfield was recruited by the Department of State to perform in six separate European tours which featured productions of the opera Porgy and Bess .

[41] The United States Seventh Army also played an integral role in supporting cultural diplomacy and strengthening international ties with Europe during the cold war.

Listed among the ensemble's earliest "musical ambassadors" were several young conductors including: John Ferritto, James Dixon, Kenneth Schermerhorn and Henry Lewis.

This song's MTV music video featured caricatures of United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko in a wrestling match.

A number of punk rock bands from the 1980s attacked Cold War era politics, such as Reagan's and Thatcher's nuclear deterrence brinkmanship.

A small sampling includes The Clash, Dead Kennedys, Government Issue, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies, Toxic Reasons, Reagan Youth, etc.

Probably the most famous of the 1980s songs against increased confrontation between the Soviets and the Americans was Nena's "99 Luftballons", which described the events – ostensibly starting with the innocent release of 99 (red) toy balloons – that could lead to a nuclear war.

The Swedish band Imperiet's "Coca Cola Cowboys" is rock song about how the world is divided by two super powers that both claim to represent justice.

Public and Private Prosperity in Postwar West Germany and the United States (2012) by Jan L. Logemann: In arguing that West Germany was not "Americanized" after the war, Logemann joins a long debate about American consumer capitalism's power, sweep, and depth of influence in the developed world through the second half of the twentieth century.

In pointed contrast to Reinhold Wagnleitner's Coca-colonization and the Cold War (1994) and Victoria de Grazia's Irresistible Empire (2005), Logemann argues that, for all the noisy commentary, pro and con, about postwar Americanization, West Germans shaped their version of the affluent society according to deeply held and distinctly un-American values.

[50] Cold war tensions between the US and the USSR were the backdrop of sports competitions, especially in ice hockey, basketball, chess and the Olympic Games.