   
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" "; Randy Newman, "Political Science"
Video: Dr. Strangelove (1964), VHS: Atomic Cafe (1982):
WarGames (1983);
Critical Reviews of Dr. Strangelove (1964)
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Table I. Sixteen Nuclear Crises of the
Cold War- Dates and Weapons
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Figure of US and USSR-Russian Total
Strategic Warheads (Force Loadings),
1945-1996
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Atomic Audit: Cost of Building Nuclear
Weapons 1946-1998
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Global Nuclear Stockpiles- 1945-1997
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Documentation and Diagrams of the
Atomic Bomb
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Doomsday Clock
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The History of the "Doomsday Clock"
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Duck and Cover with Bert the Turtle
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Civil Defense Archive: Government
Prepares Americans for Nuclear War
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Survey of Texas Women about
Preparedness for Nuclear War
Fighting Nuclear Wars, 1970 to the present
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- 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)
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The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Real War
The 1950s 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
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.
Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing
"We are psychically split. We act as if life will go on for many generations to come, ignoring the ever-growing danger of nuclear war. We live AS IF life were the same as it was 100 years ago. Nuclear war is a taboo subject, not fit for polite company. Essentially, we are all living a lie, ignoring the overwhelming threat to continuation of life on earth."
When I thought about that, I began to wonder not just about those who were exposed to the atomic bomb, [but] what about those who make, not just atomic but nuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs? And I thought about the psychic numbing involved in strategic projections of using hydrogen bombs or nuclear weapons of any kind. And I also thought about ways in which all of us undergo what could be called the numbing of everyday life. That is, we are bombarded by all kinds of images and influences and we have to fend some of them off if we're to take in any of them, or to carry through just our ordinary day's work, or really deepen whatever we have to do or say. And yet, it isn't all negative. For instance, I realize that if you take the example of a surgeon who is performing a delicate operation, you don't want him or her to have the same emotions as a family member of that person being operated on. There has to be some level of detachment where you bring your technical skill to bear on it. And from that I formulated a model for professional work that I saw myself working at, and others too, of a combination of advocacy and detachment. And the detachment could involve selective professional numbing of that kind, but one's advocacy was right out there as well, as was mine in studying as accurately and as rigorously as I could the effects of the atomic bombings, but at the same time coming to that study as a person very worried and critical about nuclear weapons.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
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)
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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)
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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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- War Games: Internent Movie Database (1983)
- Nuclear Recollections: Nuclear War Drills in Missile Silos
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