Question for Discussion:  How does the dark
comedy of Dr Strangelove help us
understand American fears about nuclear 
war in the 1950s and early 1960s?

Reading: Levine and Papasotiriou, pp. 95-103;
Quart and Auster, pp. 67-79;
Kingsbury, Just a Misstep Away from Doomsday;
Schell,"The Fate of the Earth ;
Greenberg, Fallout can be Fun ;
50 Facts about Nuclear Weapons

Music: Tom Lehrer, "So Long Mom, I Am 
Off to Drop the Bomb"; "We Will All Go
Together When We Go" ";

Video: Dr. Strangelove (1964), VHS: Atomic Cafe (1982)

Critical Reviews of Dr. Strangelove (1964)

• Dr. Strangelove: Internet Movie Database

• Memorable Quotes from Dr. Strangelove

• Roger Ebert's review of "Dr. Strangelove"

• Roger Ebert on "Dr. Strangelove" (1999)"

• James Berardinelli's review of "Dr. Strangelove"

• Tim Dirks' review of "Dr. Strangelove"

• Dr. Strangelove Webpage

• Press Release, Office of Civil Defense (1961):
  Housewives Prepare for Nuclear War

• Nuclear War Survival Skills

  ---

  America Prepares for Nuclear War

• Table I. Sixteen Nuclear Crises of the 
  Cold War- Dates and Weapons

• Figure of US and USSR-Russian Total
  Strategic Warheads (Force Loadings),
   1945-1996

• Atomic Audit: Cost of Building Nuclear
  Weapons 1946-1998

• Global Nuclear Stockpiles- 1945-1997

• Documentation and Diagrams of the
   Atomic Bomb

• Doomsday Clock

• The History of the "Doomsday Clock"

• Duck and Cover with Bert the Turtle

• Civil Defense Archive: Government
  Prepares Americans for Nuclear War

• Survey of Texas Women about
  Preparedness for Nuclear War

  ---

  
  Fighting Nuclear Wars, 1970 to the present
  
  
• Selected Nuclear Quotations- Imagining
   Global Nuclear War

• The U.S. Threatens Nuclear war in 1973

• President Reagan's Campaign for
  Winning a Nuclear War

• The Soviets Prepare for the threat of a U.S.
  Nuclear Attack

• President Reagan on bombing Russia

• U.S. should seem like kooks with nukes,
  report says

• HELEN CALDICOTT- THE URGENCY OF 
  THE NUCLEAR THREAT (1984)

• Indecent Explosives: Countries with
   Nuclear Weapons today
  
  
• Kingsbury, Just a Misstep Away from Doomsday
  

  ---

The Cuban Missile Crisis and
the Real War

• Eisenhower and Massive Retaliation

• Eisenhower describes U.S. nuclear strategy

• Figure of US and USSR-Russian Total
  Strategic Warheads (Force Loadings),
  1945-1996

• U.S. Nuclear Superiority during the Missile
  Crisis

• Table I. Sixteen Nuclear Crises of the 
  Cold War- Dates and Weapons

• World Map (1997)

  ---

  Classic Nuclear War Movies
  during the Cold War

• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

• The Day the World Ended (1956)

• On the Beach (1959)

• The Mouse that Roared (1959)

• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to
  stop Worrying and Love the bomb

• Fail Safe (1964)

• Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969)

• A Boy and His Dog, (1975)

• Mad Max: The Road Warrior (1979)

• The Day After (1983) (TV)

• Wargames (1983)

• Testament (1983)

• The Terminator (1984)

• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

• Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines(2003)

  ---

The 1950s Liberal Consensus

• Fred Freed's description of the liberal 
  consensus
  
• The values of the liberal consensus

"In the days after it first opened in early 1964, Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" took on the enchanted aura of a film that had gotten away with something. Johnson was in the White House, the Republicans were grooming Goldwater, both sides took the Cold War with grim solemnity, and the world was learning to be comfortable with the term "nuclear deterrent," which meant that if you blow me up, I'm gonna blow you up, and then we'll all be dead. "Better dead than Red," some said. Others said the opposite. The choice was not appealing."
                       Roger Ebert's review of Dr. Strangelove

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THE PORT HURON STATEMENT OF THE STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY (1962)

As we grew, however, our comfort was
penetrated by events too troubling to
dismiss. First, the permeating and
victimizing fact of human degradation,
symbolized by the Southern struggle
against racial bigotry, compelled most
of us from silence to activism. Second,
the enclosing fact of the Cold War,
symbolized by the presence of the
Bomb, brought awareness that we
ourselves, and our friends, and
millions of abstract "others" we
knew more directly because of our
common peril, might die at any time.
We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or
fail to feel all other human problems, but not these
two, for these were too immediate and crushing in
their impact, too challenging in the demand that we
as individuals take the responsibility for encounter
and resolution....

Our work is guided by the sense
that we may be the last generation
in the experiment with living. But
we are a minority -- the vast majority
of our people regard the temporary
equilibriums of our society and world
as eternally-functional parts. In this is
perhaps the outstanding paradox: we
ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet
the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common
opinion that America will "muddle
through", beneath the stagnation of
those who have closed their minds to
the future, is the pervading feeling
that there simply are no alternatives,
that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not
only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well.
Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness
of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any
moment things might thrust out of control. They fear
change itself, since change might smash whatever
invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for
them now. For most Americans, all crusades are
suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual
sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common
reluctance to organize for change. The dominant
institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of
their potential critics, and entrenched enough to
swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of
protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies.
Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and
by our own improvements we seem to have weakened
the case for further change.

---

John Connor : We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.
The Terminator : It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.
John Connor : Yeah. Major drag, huh?


Sarah Connor : There is no fate but we make it.

Sarah Connor : [ narrating ] The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that. My name is John Connor, they tried to murder me before I was born, when I was 13 they tried again. Machines from the future. Terminators. All my life my mother told me the storm was coming, Judgment Day, the beginning of the war between man and machines. Three billion lives vanished in an instant, and I would lead what was left of the human race to ultimate victory. It hasn't happened, no bombs fell, computers didn't take control, we stopped Judgment Day. I should feel safe, but I don't, ...

John Connor, The Rise of the Machines (2003)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

John Connor : By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shutdown. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human race was almost destroyed by the weapons they'd built to protect themselves. I should have realized it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day, it was merely to survive it, together. The Terminator knew; he tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know; all I know is what the Terminator taught me; never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun.

John Connor : No, you shouldn't exist. We took out Cyberdyne over ten years ago. We stopped Judgment Day.

Terminator : You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable.

John Connor : I feel the weight of the world bearing down on me. A future I don't want. So I keep running as fast as I can... anywhere... nowhere.

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1. Classic Nuclear War Movies during the Cold War
   
   
2. 50 Facts about Nuclear Weapons
   
   
3. Countries with Nuclear Weapons
   
   
4. America Prepares for Nuclear War
   
   
5. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Real War
   
   
6. Fighting Nuclear Wars: 1970 to the Present
   
   
7. Schell and the Fate of the Earth (1982)
   
   
8. Kingsbury, Just a Misstep Away from Doomsday
   
   
9. Lyrics to "So Long Mom, I Am Off to Drop the Bomb"
   
   
10. Lyrics to "We Will All Go Together When We Go"