Film 101 HOME |
Video
Locator | Internet Movie
Database
Revised
10 August 2008
Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned
To Stop Worrying, and Love the Bomb
(UK, Stanley
Kubrick,1964)
Cinematic
Techniques
Historical Background:
Cold War and Nuclear Age - Then and Now
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it." -- Philosopher George Santayana
The Cold War
CNN Interactive--the Cold War Experience: A September 1998 series on culture, technology, espionage, the bomb. Interactive maps, rare archival footage online, information about the key players, recently declassified documents, Cold War capital tours through 3-D images.
The Harvard Project Cold War Studies
PBS Program on Cold War ("Seeing Red," 1997)
The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 18-29, 1962:
- The National Security Agency and the Cuban Missile Crisis. "The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was one of the turning points of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. At that time the two superpowers came close to war, possibly with nuclear weapons; after it, both countries began to seek ways to adjust to each other, in particular, to prevent the use of nuclear weapons." See also the National Security Archive section: Kennedy and Castro
- The National Security Archive, an independent, non-governmental research institute and library located at Georgetown University (in Washington, D.C.), includes an introduction, a chronology (1959 - 1992), a selected glossary (names, organizations, military and technical terms), and photographs from the John F. Kennedy Library. See the NSA's Cuban Missile Crisis site and its Cuba Documentation Project.
- Only history? As a reminder that manipulation of data about nuclear weapons continues today, see Agency Censors Document, which shows that the CIA under the current Bush Administration continues to conceal the controversial estimate on Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction, despite the fact that hearings have provided to the public much information on this subject.
- History Out Loud provides RealAudiofiles from a set of tape recordings released by the The John F. Kennedy Library in October 1996. These recordings, made in the Oval Office, document the crisis for the period October 18 to 29, 1963. They include President Kennedy's personal recollections of discussions, conversations with his advisors, meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of the president's executive committee.
- A 2001 film, Thirteen Days (with Kevin Costner), is based on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The National Security Archive provides a critique of this film, by Philip Brenner.
Fluoridation of Water Supply and the Red Scare. A number of anti-Communists during the Cold-War period were convinced that the proposals to reduce tooth decay by fluoridating the water supplies were actually a Communist plot to poison us, or as General Jack D. Ripper puts it in Dr. Strangelove, a "Commie" plot to "sap and impurify all our precious bodily fluids." For more information:
McCarthyism and the 1950s Anti-Communism
- "Blacklists and Other Economic Sanctions" from Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1994).
- "Have you no sense of decency?" (plus audio). Good Night, and Good Luck excerpt from McCarthy (also audio).
- Oral History Project (George Washington University School of Journalism).
The Nuclear Age
"Just What the Doctor Ordered: Cold War Purging, Political Dissent, and the Right Hand of Dr. Strangelove": a full length paper in the Critical Studies series at Queen's University Film Studies, by Jeremy Boxen, a film student in April 1995, in which he concludes "Just as the right hand of Dr. Strangelove had the capacity to salute a totalitarian regime or to bring sexual release to its owner, the United States of the mid-1960s was caught between right-wing militarism and the emerging generation of pacifists, whose slogan of "Make love, not war" would make the decade a turning point in American culture." Back from the Brink. Video described on the Center for Defense Information Site. "It's time for the U.S. and Russia to 'de-alert,' taking nuclear weapons off their hair trigger. . . . The cold war has been over for ten years. Yet the U.S. and Russia continue to have thousands of nuclear missiles on high alert. When detecting a possible attack, strategic plans call for assessing it and retaliating within 15 minutes." We keep learning more about the troubling relationship between nuclear proliferation and the U.S. government as documents are released from secrecy. For example, documents released in July 2004 on the US nuclear war plans show top commanders complaining about the destructive "hazard to ourselves as well as our enemy"--sound like a "Dr. Strangelovean" situation? Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of medical professionals dedicated to protecting human life from the greatest threats to health and survival, recently (April 2007) released a paper called "New Hydrogen Bomb Endangers Human Life and Health."
Other sources of information which provide insight not often shown by the mainstream press on the issue of the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons: Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (not available at August 2008 check) | Arms Control Association | Atom Bomb: The Decision | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace --> Nonproliferation | Center for Defense Information | Council for a Liveable World to eliminate weapons of mass destruction | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation | Nuclear Control Institute | Nuclear Files --> Basics History Issues | Nuclear Information and Resource Service | Nuclear Threat Initiative
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- Philosopher George Santayana
In Roger Ebert's Film Review at the end of October 1994, he writes:
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." Ebert continues, "The Bomb overshadowed global politics. It was a kind of ultimate hole card in a game where the stakes were life on earth. Then Kubrick's film opened with the force of a bucketful of cold water, right in the face. What Kubrick's Cold War satire showed was not men at the mercy of machines, but machines at the mercy of men - especially the loony Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden).
Allusions to Dr. Strangelove. References to this film can be found in many places. Here are some examples (in progress):
-
Robert Greenwald's Brave New World Films. A video juxtaposing clips of Presidential John McCain and Dr. Strangelove.
-
Brian Holmes' "Or :How the Cyberborgs Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance"
-
Richard Pelles' "Not with a Whimper: Visions of Mass Destruction in Fiction and Film"
Created 20 August 1999. Revised
10 August 2008.
Gloria Floren, Letters Department, MiraCosta College, One Barnard Drive,
Oceanside, California 92056.
Contents Copyright 1999-2008 Gloria L. Floren. All rights reserved. U.S.A.
e-mail film101@miracosta.edu
| MiraCosta College | CyberCosta Contact Page |
Letters Department |
Floren Home | Comments & Questions
|