nuclear-news

“Dr Strangelove” – the film nuclear story that still matters today

‘Dr. Strangelove’ at 50: Why Stanley Kubrick’s Nuclear Satire Still Matters moviefone, January 29th, 2014  by Gary Susman  The ultimate punchline to the nuclear satire of “Dr. Strangelove”? As absurd as Stanley Kubrick’s imaginative black comedy about World War III seemed when it opened 50 years ago this week (on January 29, 1964), it all turned out to be true.

Everything in the movie that the Pentagon said couldn’t happen in real life — from Air Force officers launching nuclear strikes without Presidential approval, to the USSR being ready to respond with an automated doomsday system of its own — actually could have happened. The safeguards really were as flimsy as Kubrick and his screenwriters imagined them to be. (Which begs the question: How safe are we now from a nuclear apocalypse?)…….
scenes like the opening shot of a bomber refueling that looks like two planes copulating in mid-air – played up the Freudian nature of nuclear defense policy. Behind every missile standoff is a contest of manliness between East and West — and maybe some sexual performance anxiety, too, as Gen. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) suggests in his famous speech about “precious bodily fluids.” When Major Kong (Slim Pickens) rides that missile between his legs to glory at the film’s climax, the metaphor becomes impossible t omiss……….
the character was based on a number of people behind the Cold War nuclear strategy of mutually assured destruction: rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (who had worked for the Nazis before coming to America), strategist Herman Kahn, Manhattan Project mathematician John von Neumann, and hydrogen bomb designer Edward Teller. But when Kissinger gained prominence a few years later as President Nixon’s Secretary of State, “Dr. Strangelove” had provided us with the language necessary to describe and understand him…….The movie continued to reverberate through the culture in ways both obvious (the catchphrase “precious bodily fluids,” the joke, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”) and obscure……..http://news.moviefone.com/2014/01/29/dr-strangelove-50-stanley-kubrick/

January 30, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized