Dr. Strangelove and the Insanity of Nuclear War

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: Schell,"The Fate of the Earth
"Civil Defense in the 1960s; 16 Known
Nuclear Crises" ; 50 Facts about Nuclear
Weapons"; Paul Boyer, "Dr. Strangelove"

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), Atomic Cafe (1982)

Critical Reviews of Dr. Strangelove (1964)

American Prepares for Nuclear War

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Real War

Classic Nuclear War Movies during the
Cold 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.

Adjusted for Inflation: The United States will spend
4.5 billion a year on its nuclear-arms program
through the year 2008. The U.S. spent on average
about 3.7 billion a year on its nuclear-arms
program during the Cold War.

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

1. Do you agree with Film Reviewer Robert Ruplenas that "the movie's underlying theme...[is] how each of us views the sum of our lives as our mortal end approaches. Are we alone? Have we connected with anyone? Have we failed? Have we loved? Have we been loved?"

2. Do you find it odd that On the Beach is really a love story that just happens to be set at the end of the world? Or is On the Beach more than a traditional love story?

3. Do you find it odd, even unbelievable, that the military men in On the Beach would stick to their posts and continue to do their assigned jobs even though they knew that they had only five months to live?

4. Why do Dwight Tower's men want to go home to America rather than stay and die in Australia? Is it implied that they will probably die at sea because of advancing radiation sickness?

5. How does Moira Davidson adapt to the knowledge that they only have months to live because of the global nuclear war? Is Moira's reaction to their impending doom more believable than some of the other characters?

6. How does submarine commander Dwight Towers live with the knowledge that is wife and children, his home, and his country has been destroyed in a nuclear war?

7. Does Julian Osborne, the nuclear scientist, carry an extra burden of responsibility for the impending doom that the people in Australia face?

8. Do you agree with Julian's argument that the nuclear war wasn't the scientists' fault but the fault of all those who accepted living with the game of threatening to use nuclear weapons for our protection knowing that such weapons could never be used?

9. One critic argued that the love story between Dwight Towers and Moira Davidson weakened On the Beach and that the real strength of the movie is in its short little vignettes about ordinary people struggling to adjust to the certainty of their impending doom. Why does the director keep shifting back and forth between Dwight and Moira and the rest of the characters in On the Beach?

10. Why can't Dwight Towers accept the reality that his wife and children are dead? Why does he confuse Moira with his dead wife, Sharon?

11. Is Moira right when she argues that "There isn't time. No time to love...nothing to remember...nothing worth remembering"?

12. In the end, does Dwight Towers really love Moira or is he still confusing her with his dead wife Sharon? If Dwight really loved Moira, why didn't he stay and die with her in Australia?

13. What do you make of On the Beach presenting the audience with two choices--taking suicide pills (cyanide pills) or going to a Christian Religious Revival and praying for God's forgiveness--in the face of impending doom?

13. What is the significance of Peter and Mary Holmes confessing their love for each other before they die? Are their deaths easier than Julian Osborne's, Moira Davidson's, and Dwight Tower's?

14. Why was the film titled On the Beach? What is the significance of the beach in this movie? After all, it could be titled Dying in Australia or Five Months to Live?

15. Do you agree that On the Beach is purposefully understated and low-key in tone? Do you think movie audiences in the late 1950s and early 1960s would have been able to sit through an hysterical, frantic, wild depiction of ordinary people trying to live their lives knowing that they had only five months to live?

16. According to On the Beach why didn't people throughout the world try to stop the slow drift towards war that led to this final global nuclear war?