How Come The Left Never Updated Its Cuba Narrative?

I posted yesterday about how C Wright Mills was deeply involved in creating from the start a Castro "third way" narrative that belatedly tried to create a new revolutionary model that, while totalitarian by nature, wasn't directly tied to Stalinism. This lasted, if it was ever very effective, only until the fall of 1962, when Kennedy, always a hawk in any case, tied Castro directly to Moscow in the Cuban missile crisis. (Although the resolution of the crisis itself has subsequently been portrayed as only a partial win, if that, for Kennedy, it's generally acknowledged that the outcome resulted in Khrushchev's deposition in 1964, so winners and losers are hard to pick.)

The outcome of the missile crisis in popular culture is best illustrated in Hitchcock's 1969 film Topaz. I rewatch both Vertigo and Topaz almost compulsively, in part because I now think, although it's a close case, that Topaz is Hitchcock's greatest. (Both have a peculiar device of a double story arc: in Vertigo, the story seems to be over with the death of "Madeleine", while in Topaz, it seems to be over with the death of Juanita de Cordoba at the hands of the Castro surrogate Rico Parra. In both cases, those deaths only signal the start of a new plot.)

Hitchcock uses what by 1969 was the popular narrative, if not that of the elites, where Castro was always a sinister figure, by 1962 clearly backed by hard-line Stalinists, which Hitchcock underscores using the title sequence of a May Day parade at the Kremlin full of missiles passing in review. In one scene, Michael Nordstrom, the quietly competent CIA agent behind the whole action, is shown in his office with a portrait of Kennedy on the wall behind him.

Hitchcock, never a dummy, relies here on fully established stereotypes, accurate or not, to add depth and credibility to his narrative. Much of the imagery in Vertigo is precious and provincial -- you had to know San Francisco to understand it -- while the imagery in Topaz is visceral throughout.

In the matter of popular imagination, I've also seen the opinion that the stock Hollywood Latin lover, Ramon Novarro, Ricardo Montalban, Desi Arnaz, Anthony Quinn, Pedro Armandariz, faded from popularity with the rise of Castro. The photo at left is Desi Arnaz in 1950. It may as well have come from an ancient Egyptian tomb.

Is it a surprise that, according to Wikipedia, "The film was not particularly well-received or successful at the box-office"? The problem for establishment journalists who by and large write what they're told is that in the elite imagination, the Cuban missile crisis never happened.

There's also the basic incongruity of the left's narrative: it's never been fully able to distance itself from the martyred-Kennedy meme that flooded the media after 1963, with Johnson assuming the Kennedy mantle, not only for civil rights and the war on poverty, but for Viet Nam as well. If Kennedy was right in the missile crisis -- now certainly regarded as his iconic role -- how can anyone question his take on Cuba, its complicity with Stalinism, and its direct threat to our way of life? To change this is a revisionism too far, at least outside faculty lounges.

The answer seems to have been, now for 60 years, for the elites, whenever faced with new stories that don't fit the third way-olive green revolution version of Cuba, to cover their ears and go la-la-la. Thus we have the Babylon Bee: "BLM Changes Name To 'Black And Brown Lives Matter Unless They Are Being Oppressed By Communists'". AOC and Bernie Sanders are forced to contort themselves over the latest developments

For socialists and their fellow travelers everywhere, it’s turning out to be a bummer of a summer. It’s almost bad enough to make you feel sorry for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Almost.

Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and their anti-American ilk are stuck defending economic authoritarianism abroad while its victims are pleading for the United States to save them.

. . . It must break their tiny hearts to see Cuban protesters waving American flags and Haitian officials asking the White House for American troops to keep order. Don’t those people know America is a racist, colonial power that feasts on the poor?