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. 252-264;
Boyer, "Dr. Strangelove and History;
Ebert, "1994 Review of Dr. Strangelove";
Ebert, "1999 Discussion of Dr. Strangelove";
Dirks, "Review of Dr. Strangelove" ;
Boyer, "Dr. Strangelove at 40";

Critical Reviews of Dr. Strangelove (1964)

• Dr. Strangelove: Internet Movie Database

  Memorable Quotes from Dr. Strangelove

  Dr. Strangelove Quote Gallery

  Bush's Bomb Ride

  War Games: Internent Movie Database (1983)

  The Terminator (1984)

  Crimson Tide: Internet Movie Database (1995)

  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
  
  Students Fear Nuclear War (1962)

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

• Nuclear War Survival Skills
  

American Prepares for Nuclear War

• Conelrad.com: Nuclear War Nostalgia

  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

  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

  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
  
  CIA Study: A Cold War Conundrum--
  The 1983 Soviet War Scare

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

  President Reagan on bombing Russia

  The Sixteen Known Nuclear Crises of the
  Cold War, 1946-1985

  The U.S. Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project-
  50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons

  Civil Defense Archive- Government prepares
  Americans for Nuclear War

  Survey of Texas Women about
  Preparedness for Nuclear War

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

  Indecent Explosives: Countries with
   Nuclear Weapons today

• Survival in the Nuclear Age

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)

  War Games (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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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."

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.

---

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.