America(n) abroad: The Third Man, international audiences and the Cold War

This article offers a cultural historical interpretation of The Third Man: The Lives of Harry Lime (195152), an internationally syndicated radio series based on the film The Third Man (Reed 1949). It argues that the series' cultural meanings can only be fully assessed through accounting for the programme's international framing or encoding, which critics have heretofore overlooked. As an internationally encoded series, The Third Man has a high degree of interpretive openness in order to appeal to and resonate with heterogeneous audiences. The article examines the ways in which the series creates interpretive openness through its ambiguous characterization of the protagonist Harry Lime, use of Lime's American nationality, international settings and through drawing upon the Cold War for dramatic material. The series' international encoding, interpretive openness and period of broadcast during the Cold War ground interpretations of its cultural meanings. The article claims that the series offers critical perspectives on the Cold War through Lime's presentation as a metonym for the United States, and through plots that allegorically and satirically dramatize the Cold War milieu.