   
Question for Discussion: Who are the most
insane characters in Dr. Strangelove? Is this film so funny precisely because it is so real?
Reading: Mintz and Roberts, pp. 243-254;
Boyer, Dr. Strangelove and History ;
Ebert, "1994 Review of Dr. Strangelove";
Ebert, "2000 Discussion of Dr. Strangelove";
Dirks, "Review of Dr. Strangelove" ;
Boyer, "Dr. Strangelove at 40";
Video: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991);
The Daisy Political Ad video
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
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Stanley Kubrick: "It occurred to me that I was approaching the project in the wrong way. The only way to tell the story was as a black comedy, or better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at most are really the heart of the paradoxical postures that make a nuclear war possible."
Charles Maland: But Kubrick, after studying the arms race, the Cold War, and the idea of deterrence carefully, "realized the insanity of the situtation and found that the only way he could possibly approach the material was through the statirical thrust of nightmare comedy."
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- Belletto, "The Game Theory Narrative and the Myth
of the National Security State" (2010)
- Joseph Heller, Catch 22 (1961):
Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
- What is Catch 22 -- Wikipedia:
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
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1964 Political Campaign Slogans
In Your Heart, You Know He's Right.
— 1964 U.S. presidential campaign slogan of Barry Goldwater 14
In Your Guts, You Know He's Nuts.
— An unofficial anti-Barry Goldwater slogan, parodying "In Your Heart, You know He's Right", 1964.
- Psychiatrists on Goldwater's Sanity
The diagnoses offered for Senator Goldwater in the Fact poll reflected this issue as well: there were widely varying assessments.
Regarding Senator Goldwater, some saw him as normal: One concluded, "He is a sane man." Some psychiatrists ascribed only problematic disorders to him that were mild-to-moderate in severity: "...an anal character", or "...has a severe obsessive-compulsive neurosis...", or was "...a narcissistic character disorder with not too latent paranoid elements...".
A number of the psychiatrists were concerned about more serious issues such as paranoia; one remarked: "he is paranoid..."; others labeled Goldwater "...a paranoid personality..., compensated at present...", and "...a paranoid personality or a schizophrenic, paranoic type."
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Memorable Quotes from Dr. Strangelove
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Dr. Strangelove Quote Gallery
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Bush's Bomb Ride
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- YouTube: We begin bombing Russia in five minutes anniversary of Cold War era joke
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General "Buck" Turgidson : Ahem... The Duty Officer asked General Ripper to confirm the fact that he *had* issued the go code, and he said, uh, "Yes gentlemen, they are on their way in, and nobody can bring them back. For the sake of our country, and our way of life, I suggest you get the rest of SAC in after them. Otherwise, we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation. Uh, my boys will give you the best kind of start, 1400 megatons worth, and you sure as hell won't stop them now, uhuh. Uh, so let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all" and he hung up.
General "Buck" Turgidson : Uh, we're, still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
President Merkin Muffley : There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
General Jack D. Ripper : Your Commie has no regard for human life. Not even his own.
General Jack Ripper : I can longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist perversion and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
General "Buck" Turgidson : I don't think it's quite fair to condemn the whole program because of a single slip up.
General "Buck" Turgidson : I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
General "Buck" Turgidson : Gee, I wish we had one of them doomsday machines.
The President : That's mass murder, not war!
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.
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.
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