Is Dr. Strangelove truly an anti-war movie? Sure, it’s one of the famous comedies created since, well, the beginning of movies, but it is unique enough from its contemporaries that I believe this classification invites challenge.

Dr. Strangelove is, at its core, a comedy, meaning that every element is designed to be ridiculous. The characters, from the president to the general, to the pilot in control of the world’s deadliest payload are shockingly incompetent. The higher a person is on the chain of command, the more self-centered and self-serving they are. This approach is veiled by a pseudo-patriotism veiled by a guise of patriotism. Nationalist fervor is used as justification for sacrificing the lives of millions of innocents by the War Council in a move which would save their own lives rather than the country they regularly proclaim allegiance to.

I think the absurdist approach that Dr. Strangelove takes towards war works because, while it lampoons international conflict, it doesn’t completely dismiss the possibility of ingenuine motivations for starting war. I read the warning at the film’s beginning that claimed the events in the movie were impossible as more of an expectation of caricature than the assurance in the stability of the world’s armed forces it was intended to invoke. The disturbing truth is that the decision to start the next world war is completely out of our hands.

How do we trust one another as nations? Essentially we hold each other at gunpoint with a bunch of nukes and hope the other doesn’t pull the trigger first. Dr. Strangelove’s satirical presentation of how our nation operated during the Cold War similarly reflects the tensions in the current political world. With world leaders dropping bombs and declaring attacks on other countries, we have to ask ourselves at what point is it too much.

We are already at the point where we could easily bring about mutual destruction, so why tempt fate and continue feeding the aggression between nations. I have expressed in the past my own fault for not taking enough time to read up on current events, but I hear enough to know that we need to find a more peaceful solution rather than rely on our nation’s arsenal to protect us from other nuclear powers. I hope that the time never comes that we need to use this power, and as seen by the movie Dr. Strangelove, it would not end well for any party. It really makes you wonder how far our trust would go with other countries if we weren’t worried about their hands being on the trigger.

A perfectly executed satire, “Dr. Strangelove” offers an all too necessary reflection in political modes and thoughts of countries and generations. By following three separate stories before the mutual destruction of the world’s greatest superpowers, and as a consequence the destruction of the world, we see how political correctness of the president coupled with the war-crazed nature of the generals allow the world to come to an end. Every party seems so determined to fulfilling their role, even down to the Russian who continues spying as bombs are dropping, that we begin to see how nonsensical the nature of our actions in real life can be when we too adhere more to a role than common sense.

It might be overdone and a little too easy a target to relate Kubrick’s political satire to current events, but I believe it is necessary for change even if futile. From the Red Scare of the 50’s to today’s fear of Russian electoral sabotage, it seems people crave conflict despite the consequences. “Dr. Strangelove” showed a more extreme consequence of distrust, but a very possible reality for that time. In our times, the fear of destruction has subsided, but still existent is an opposition to working with possible allies. It seems both political parties are too busy again filling their roles instead of objectively looking at facts and acting on them. When it comes to cyber infiltration, Democrats may be correct and if they are then Republicans and any supporters of democratic systems should oppose Russian meddling. Similarly, a large body of proof is needed to support their claims before we begin blaming a possible ally and again putting ourselves in a position of political distrust just so one can appease their constituents. For the most parts these fears are nonsensical, no crazier than the idea that people are trying to steal “our precious bodily fluids.”

Our world is so filled with violent interactions between people and countries, that it becomes hard to imagine what we could achieve if we all worked towards common goals we can agree upon. Certain universal goals that all people could strive for like a cleaner planet or pushing space exploration. Instead we’re stuck dumping money into defense in fear that people with different ideas are trying to kill us when at the base level people just want to live and let live.

Dr. Strangelove is a 1964 film that takes a satirical stance on a then stressful and serious situation: the Cold War. In the post World War Two Landscape, the United States and the Soviet Union fought to become the premier world power. In that power struggle, both sides worked hard to create an arsenal of Nuclear Weapons in an effort to hold the other in check. Both the United States and the Soviet Union worked under the concept of mutually assured destruction: If one side used their nuclear weapons, which had and incredible amount of destructive power, the other side could retaliate with their own nuclear arsenal, which would ensure the destruction of both sides. In Dr. Strangelove, a United States general orders a strike on the Soviet Union. When the other heads of the military and the President become aware of this, they scramble to undo the damage caused by this general, and prevent the apocalypse. Despite some amusing banter in the War Room, and between the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, the bomb reaches an altered destination and detonates. As the President and is leaders attempt to make a plan for saving some of the population in mine shafts, with a “breeding program” (10:1 ratio of females to males) the Soviets’ own weapon detonates, destroying life on earth. Dr. Strangelove presented an alternate, rather morbid view on the arms race: destruction is unavoidable, so stop worrying about it.

Dr. Strangelove depicts the ominous and everpresent worry about an unstable person with power who has the ability to cause damage to a lot of people. The world of nuclear strategy is endlessly complicated with many levels of secrecy. I often fear for the safety of the country because of irrational foreign leaders, and the world-wide system of nuclear deterrent by armament.

Ultimately, I imagine that under sane control, the world is likely to not come to an end with a nuclear holocaust because few would really want that to happen. However, if there were a person in control who was delusional or homicidal, the delicate balance of nuclear prevention could fall. This is why it is imperative that the people in charge of the nuclear codes for any country be completely and utterly reliable. They must be regularly screened for mental illness and there must be many failsafes in the event that someone tries to take matters into their own hands.

I think one of the biggest threats to the world is nuclear sabotage. If some terrorist organization were able to hack into nuclear codes of any country and launch them at another country, the attacked country would respond with and equal and opposite force of nuclear weapons resulting in massive destruction. I think it is important that nations across the globe reduce their numbers of nuclear weapons so that if there was an accident or sabotage, there would still be a small faction of a change that the world was not entirely destroyed.

I am a fan of The Offspring, a punk rock band. I had always known their song “Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell” (quite the name!) was based on the film, Dr. Strangelove. The music video features a highly stylized animation filled to the brim with scenes of war, explosions, and of Death himself, personified as Dr. Strangelove.

Peculiarly, Dr. Strangelove is regarded as a comedy film. Yet, any individual component of the film cannot be considered amusing. The deranged general’s rambling monologues hints at rampant paranoia and megalomania. The at-times inefficient war council is a snide remark at the governmental bureaucracy. And, of course, the issue of nuclear bombs and the apocalypse are anything but jokes. The way that the characters make light of the “end of the world” may seem as concerning as it is amusing to some.

However, having done some research on nuclear weapons, I have realized that, even if every nuclear weapon were fired and detonated, a nuclear apocalypse would not occur. Massive swathes of land would be rendered unlivable, and perhaps a majority of the human race would be killed, but civilization would not end, and the world would not be immersed into nuclear winter for hundreds of years.

Many experts were convinced that the Kuwaiti Oil Fires would blot out the skies in ash and smoke, plunging Europe into an artificial winter. The amount of oil burned, and the amount of energy expended, would have been close, if not equal to, the detonation of nuclear devices. The result of the Kuwaiti Oil Fires was a temperature drop of around five degrees Celsius over the Persian Gulf– not quite the apocalypse that experts had prophesied.

What was the purpose of that tangent? It meant, to me, the movie was a comedy. The possibility of the doomsday device which Dr. Strangelove described seems ludicrous to me.

The nature of public fear has changed as the years go by. Once, exposed angles and scandal were the foremost phobias; then, it was fear of the military draft, then, mutually assured destruction. Today, one of the foremost fears of society is the loss of privacy– from hackers and from the government.

The moral of my seemingly aimless ramble is that the movie would not have been as funny had it been translated to a more pertinent modern issue. Given time, someone may make a parody of today’s greatest phobias, just as The Offspring have parodied nuclear annihilation with a punk rock song.

The feeling I got from “Dr. Strangelove” was similar to the one i got the first time I saw the episode of Spongebob Squarepants where Spongebob tries to explain to Plankton what fun is.  He creates a song based on the following acronym: F is friends who do stuff together, U is for you and me, N is for anywhere and anytime at all down here in the deep blue sea.  Plankton, feeling like he grasped the concept,  then tries to come up with his own version: F is for fire that burns down the whole town, U is for uranium bombs,
N is for no survivors when you… at which point Spongebob abruptly cuts him off.

Dr. Strangelove, from its first scene of two bombers harmoniously transferring gas, to its ending of peaceful music playing over a symphony of nuclear bomb explosions, is kind of like Plankton’s verse.  What I found particularly cool about Dr. Strangelove is its subject matter given when it was made.  There would have been much more tension related to nuclear bombs in the 1960’s than now.  Making a movie parodying a huge component of that tension, mutually assured destruction, seemed like a pretty gutsy thing to do.  I liked the different types of humor involved.  A lot of it seemed more on the subtle side, rooted in conversations that I would have found boring as a kid, but can appreciate a little better now.  There were many scenes that involved little more than conversation, usually between two people at a time.  However, there is still the iconic scene of  Major T. J. “King” Kong riding his bomb into the earth like a bull in a rodeo.  Of course there is the more serious issue of what to do regarding the building of nuclear weapons and I am no expert, but after watching a montage of what a chain of nuclear explosions would be like, it’s safe too say there are probably already too many nuclear bombs today.

This was an interesting experience. I thought the initial discussion before the movie was played was insightful, and enabled me to think more deeply about the movie while I was watching. The prior discussion focused on methods of destruction and compared some of the methods that previous leaders of the United States thought about and executed.

The movie is set in the time of the Cold War, and the USSR has created a “doomsday device” that could destroy the world upon detonation. This got me thinking about the size of the United States’ and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, which include thousands of nuclear weapons, which could easily destroy large portions of the Earth. The size of the stockpiles have been reduced dramatically since the Cold War ended, but do we really need the threat of nuclear weapons to protect ourselves?

When the doomsday device was detonated, Dr. Strangelove wants to put people underground in mine shafts in order to rebuild the population, in a ratio of females:males – 10:1. This is just one example of the satirical comedy employed during the movie in order to put a lighter spin on the events.

All in all, the movie prompted some insightful thinking.

Dr. Strangelove is known for its satirical take on Cold War age fears of nuclear warfare, and is consistently ranked on lists of top comedies. However, beyond its comedic and historical value, Dr. Strangelove speaks to human error in negotiation and how multiple parties use unreasonable tactics to achieve their goals.

The Soviet Union’s doomsday device is a classic example of bringing forward an undesirable end. Instead of focusing on the Soviet Union’s own interests, the initiative behind the doomsday device focuses on retaliation. Instead of peace, the U.S and the Soviet Union are shown to focus on increasing levels of aggression, undermining each party’s wishes and exacerbating the issue. Sometimes, seeking to avoid an undesirable outcome brings about that very outcome.

Warfare causes groups of people to view each other as separate and non-human, leading them to discard any possibility of similarity, understanding, and reconciliation. Ripper embodies this notion through his belief that the Soviets are polluting the precious bodily fluids of Americans. This kind of dehumanization and separation of the self and other has been witnessed across the pages of history in genocide, imperialism, and racial tension. It is only by working together and understanding each other that numerous goals can be achieved together.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb poses an interesting situation where the USSR creates a “doomsday device” that will wipe out live on earth if it is attacked. Theoretically, such a device should discourage any nuclear warfare, since any attack would be followed by destruction of all belligerents. However, an idea that was proposed was moving thousands of survivors into mineshafts to outlast the nuclear radiation caused by the doomsday device and reproduce in order to restart the war all over again once the fallout subsided. It reflects a darker supposition about the persisting tribal nature of humanity, an enduring part of us that wants to wipe out the other side.

I admired Stanley Kubrick’s ability to weave comedy around nuclear apocalypse, a traditionally darker topic. It reminds me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut’s style. In fact, the ending of Dr. Strangelove is very similar to the ending in Cat’s Cradle, where essentially all life is extinguished without either work really focusing on the appalling nature of the outcome. There was no gore in the movie, and the series of unfortunate events leading to the nuclear holocaust were quite humorous. Additionally, the Vera Lynn song at the end maintained levity.

Immediately after the movie ended, I realized that the title was odd, since Dr. Strangelove seemingly played a very minor role in the film. After thinking about it for a while, I think that perhaps the title is a reference to the suggestion that Dr. Strangelove made about how there would be ten women for every man in the mine shaft shelters, in order to rebuild the population.

I honestly didn’t know how I would approach writing about this movie because I didn’t enjoy it very much. The movie was funny and the jokes were enjoyable sometimes but, the political situation of the movie kind of hit home. In addition, I was not really able to follow plot and although some of the jokes were funny, it wasn’t something I would choose to watch. However, it was still a learning experience. I liked Ty’s powerpoint in the beginning and the little discussion that we had about President Eisenhower and President Kennedy. I was never a person who liked learning about war and battle tactics only because I really do not support most of the time. Regardless, it was interesting learning about the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and how the Cold War was a perfect example of it. Originally, I thought that MAD was probably coined during the Cold War because of the idea that there were finally weapons that could potentially wipe out an entire region and effect the surrounding areas of contact. When I thought about war later on, I found that notion to be completely silly because the idea has been in effect for centuries, if not millennia. The idea that it is better to leave another alone because you are aware that they are just as dangerous as you are has been around since the beginning. The term may not have been coined but, the idea has been in effect. It’s interesting how the best example of mutually assured destruction was the Cold War where there were probably many, many more battles that were just as striking. As I said, I usually don’t like these kinds of movies and the idea that an insane general was able to wipe out an entire region in Soviet Russia was unsettling. It’s easy to do such actions when you don’t think of people as people and, instead, refer to them as a statistic. I understand that this is a satire yet, it still gets me slightly upset and frustrated.

Before watching the comedy movie Dr. Strangelove, we had a small discussion about the foreign policy in the United States during the cold war. GRF Tyler was comparing Eisenhower and Kennedy Era which were two different approaches of handling the battle between the United States and Soviet Union during the cold war.

President Eisenhower was the president of the U.S from 1953-1961. He was considered as a progressive conservative. He was very much focused on foreign and military policy. His presidency was also dominated by the cold war and the confrontation with Russia. The U.S also developed a global nuclear power which is the main theme that is shown in Dr. Strangelove as there was a big tension between the U.S and Soviet Union. He supported mutually assured destruction (MAD) which he called “massive retaliation”, which supported equal or greater attack against Soviet Union. He was also supporting countries in Middle East and Latin America that stood against communism.

The successor of Eisenhower was Kennedy (1961-1963) who is known for establishing peach corps, Nuclear Test Ban treaty and the space race. During his time there was also tension with communist states. He tried to combat communism from being accepted in third world countries through peaceful ways. Unlike Eisenhower, he was more flexible with his foreign policy and used informal negotiations and bureaucracy to stop communism.

When I watched Dr. Strangelove, it kind of reminded me of our current situation in the US. We are almost at the verge of having a war with either Syria or North Korea. This movie seemed relevant in these times. Dr. Strangelove made me think how an incorrect interpretation of a military order could create irreversible consequences. At the meeting with the US president and military generals, there were different opinions and some arguments, particularly of what is legal and what is not. One general tried to justify his actions by claiming that in certain circumstances, there are exceptions to seeking permission from the commander-in-chief. That can be very dangerous. Countries have to be diplomatic to maintain peace in the world. If an irrational and impulsive decision is being made, it can affect the whole world and destroy many lives. Innocent civilians are killed as a result of choices made by a few. This movie reminds us to be rational about our decisions, especially those considering national security.

Stanley Kubrik’s Dr. Strangelove was a weird movie. It was supposed to be a dark comedy about Cold War fears. The plot revolves around the circular threat of a Russian doomsday device that could be triggered by a U.S. bombing. The real danger in the movie is not the existence of bombs or nuclear weapons, but the incompetence of the decision-makers and idiocracy in power that may trigger them. In today’s world, every time we pick up a newspaper we are reminded of the random unpredictable human element that may result in the end of the world as we know it. Whether it is a threat of another World War or climate change, it is the decisions of the people in power as carried out by their bureaucracies that ultimately will determine the outcome. This fear is presented in the movie and it is what makes the movie relevant to today’s world. However, for me, this hits too close to reality and for this reason I found the film to be a scary exaggeration and not funny at all. I do not like to think about what could happen if those in charge are even more incompetent and in the dark than we may believe they are. Also, the whole production seemed dated, including the jokes. It was OK for a few hours, but I would never consider it a classic or one of my favorites. Some of it for me was boring, and the ending was unclear and dumb.

Dear Julia,

In my opinion Dr. Strangelove is 10/10 great movie. It’s the best kind of satire. The whole film is completely ludicrous while remaining somehow painfully believable. It perfectly captures the absurdity of Cold War paranoia and jingoism. Everything I’ve ever read about the Cold War just reinforces how dangerous unstable that time was for both Americans and Soviets. One thing I thought about as we watched this movie during the event was how many classic movies have taken America to task for its role in the Cold War, like. There’s especially a lot of movies that focus on the Vietnam War like Forrest Gump, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket. (On the other hand there’s movies like Rocky IV where Sylvester Stalone pretty much defeats Communism through boxing) I bet there’s a lot written somewhere about how film was and is a tool for society to come to terms with American history with. If that was a class at Cornell I’d definitely take it.

Love,

Robert

I often heard Stanley Kubrick’s name when I spoke with friends who are film buffs. I had read ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in high school, and then learned that there was an acclaimed film adaptation directed by Kubrick, although I never got to watch it. Then, during my Freshman year at Cornell, I watched ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ at the Cornell Cinema, which I again learned was directed by Kubrick. After finishing the film, I was curious how he went from directing that to directing something like ‘A Clockwork Orange’. In my mind, they must be immensely different styles (again, I haven’t watched the latter, but I can imagine what it must be like from the book). This was just a thought, and I didn’t think to really research (Google) any further about Kubrick. And then this past Friday, lo and behold, I learned of another stylistically distinct film by Kubrick, ‘Dr. Strangelove’. If I had looked into this Kubrick at all, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised, but I think it was an interesting experience to one-by-one discover these films. I like to imagine that I am reliving what people might’ve experienced back when these movies were being released (although, maybe not in chronological order).

Anyhow, the movie is great.

If the United States accidentally launched nuclear strikes against the Russians, what would happen? That’s the question that Dr. Strangelove tries to answer, in the most dark-humorous way possible. As with all movies, I try to find a meaning or message behind what I am watching. While it seems silly and comical, Dr. Strangelove satirically depicts sentiments felt in the United States during the 20th century.

How did I feel about it? It was certainly funny, from the British fellow to the president to Dr. Strangelove (all played by the same actor by the way!). The crazy airbase general and the Texan air captain were equally as superb. I believe you can classify this movie as comically absurdist, a satire about fears of nuclear disruption.

Personally, I found it pretty cathartic. It’s as if all of humanity’s mistakes had culminated into this one point in time where the entire world is decimated. All of the doomsday fiction had come true and everyone went back to the stone age. Take a look at the abnormally long title of the movie itself: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. What does it mean to love the bomb? At some point, if the world comes to an end, perhaps we’d also end up thinking of the optimal male-to-female ratio in underground colonies during a nuclear winter.

I was fully prepared not like Dr. Strangelove. I am not usually a fan of movies which are, for lack of a better term, weird. Last semester, one my classes showed us the clip of Dr. Strangelove’s alien hand choking him. I don’t recall how this tied in to what we were learning, but I do remember thinking to myself that this was not a movie I needed to see more of. I should not have judged a book by its cover, so to speak.

Dr. Strangelove is an undeniably funny movie. But, some of the films funniest moments are also some of the most unsettling. The film works so well because it gets us, as viewers, to feel both amused and disturbed simultaneously.

My favorite scenes were those involving the B52 bomber crew. If you had to choose who in Dr. Strangelove is the “protagonist”-the one whose story we as the audience are following, the one who strives-I would say it is the bomber crew, more so than the cast in the war room or at the base. To me, the protagonist is the character with whom the audience is asked to identify. The President and his generals are played as jerks and fools-you wouldn’t see yourself as one of them. I suppose Lionel Mandrake’s actions are the most hero-like, but he spends most of the story locked up with a crazy general, and bogged down in a lot of awkward references to said general’s “essence”. He’s played more as pitiable. In any other film, the B52 bomber crew would be the ones you root for, hands down. Their story line-scrappy American underdogs defeat long odds-is a mainstay of American cinema. We come into the film hardwired, so to speak, to like these characters. We feel sympathy for them-when a missile almost destroyed the plane, I, at least, crossed my fingers for it to miss-even though we know the success of their mission will bring about the end of the world.

Kubrick is making a point about the stupidity of American nationalism, and he does it very well. Perhaps the most effective moment in the whole film comes when general Turgidson explains to the President that, even with the entire Russian air force looking for them, there is still a chance the bomber will slip through.  He’s holding his arms out like a plane, proudly bragging about the superiority of the American bomber crew. Then, his face falls, when he realizes that if the plane does get through, the result will be the end of the world.

In the doctrine of MAD, Americans essentially believed that the way to keep ourselves safe was to keep building deadlier and deadlier weapons, to believe in and to maintain our military superiority to Russia. Kubrick suggests that what we were really doing was rushing headlong into oblivion, with Russia right behind us.

Ultimately, the mark of a good film is whether you find something new every time you see it. The Dr. Strangelove Wikipedia page says that the last scenes from the film are the explosions from the Russian doomsday device. I guess I must have misinterpreted the last few lines of dialogue-I thought it was America bombing Russia, trying to avoid the “mineshaft gap” by obliterating Russia, so that we could inherit the world, once the radiation subsided and humanity could emerge again. Which would have been perfect, considering America spends the rest of the film trying desperately to not bomb Russia. But, knowing that’s not how it really ends, I guess it will feel like a whole new film the next time I watch it.

I went to the showing of Dr. Strangelove completely unaware of the movie’s plot or style. All I knew was that it was widely regarded as one of the best comedies/ general movies of all time. Maybe these characterizations raised my expectations too high, but even had I gone into the movie expecting nothing, I think I still would have been disappointed.

I found the actual viewing experience tiresome and any comedic relief meager at best. While I really enjoyed the message of the film, I just couldn’t stand the way in which it was presented. It’s possible that I just didn’t prepare myself properly for a “comedy” from the 1960’s, or maybe I just don’t find the idea of nuclear war funny. But I do think that at the time the movie was made, it would have provided some much-needed levity to the incredibly tense atmosphere surrounding the Cold War.

Putting aside the actual movie,  I found the idea that one mad general could destroy the world intriguing, if not a bit scary. In the movie, the different bureaucratic levels of the military caused myriad problems, and I don’t think that things have become much simpler now. Our entire system falls apart when someone just decides not to follow orders, and it’s frightening to think that so much trust is placed in faulty human beings who could decide to rebel at any time. All in all, I’m glad I went to the movie because it presented interesting topics, even if I disliked the way in which they were presented.

Walking out of the viewing of Dr. Stangelove last week, the crowd was stunned. The film is incredibly unique, it’s dark, funny, and surreal. I had never seen it before, but this entire week my suitemates and I have been quoting it non-stop. In fact, I think it’s one of my favorite movies. It’s very rare that a movie sticks with you or affects you in the same way Dr. Strangelove has done for me. The beauty of the movie is that its seemingly absurdist story of the world being destroyed is actually not absurdist at all. In fact, nuclear nuclear weapons have been prepped to launch on account of misunderstandings more than once. That is absolutely insane to me, and Dr. Stangelove does a wonderful job of showing how something so normal to us (nuclear weapon stockpiles) is absolutely ludicrous.

After seeing this movie, I’ve spent much of this past week thinking about nuclear weapons, and about the end of humanity in general. I listened to a podcast on how a member of the air force was fired simply because he asked if there was a check and balance on the president, who would order a nuclear strike. I also read about how a member of the Manhattan Project had designed a nuclear weapon with the strength to spew enough dirt into the atmosphere to cause an ice age, similar to the level of power of the Doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove. He proposed this weapon to the military in the 1950’s but it was rejected because the military saw no use in a literal apocalyptic tool. It’s difficult to put into words how this makes me feel, it’s a mixture of amusement, incredulity, and melancholy. Dr. Stangelove is great because it portrays all these feelings in a way that I fail to do. It shows how silly and scary humanity can be.

This past Friday, I attended Rose’s screening of the dark political satire, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Although labeled as one of the best comedies of all time, the film actually did more to scare me than it did to make me laugh. I think this was the movie’s underlying purpose, honestly. It was released in 1964, right in the midst of the Cold War, during which the strategy of MAD (mutual assured destruction) was in full thrust. If you don’t know what MAD is, it is a military theory supposing that the threat of nuclear attack against the enemy deters the enemy from using nuclear weapons. Critics have labeled the film as a satirization of MAD, persuading us of the shortcomings of the strategy. In the movie (spoiler alert!), the USSR has built a doomsday device, which threatens to destroy all human and animal life if activated by a detonation on USSR soil. The US, not having been alerted of this device’s existence, drops a bomb on the USSR, and the movie ends with explosions all across the globe, signaling the apocalypse and showing us the worst outcome of MAD.

Although I do generally agree that the presence of nuclear arsenals globally is terrifying, undesirable, and not ideal, I don’t think that the movie provides a fair and accurate representation of MAD. First of all, in reality, the former USSR would have announced the existence of their doomsday device to the world immediately. They would have wanted the US to know of this device so that the country would be deterred from attacking and ending mankind. The fact that the USSR delayed in doing so was unrealistic and did not represent proper MAD strategizing. Additionally, in the movie, the US has a network of underground shelters to protect against nuclear attack. In reality, these means of protection against nuclear attack do not follow MAD strategizing, as they make nuclear retaliation by the enemy less of a deterrent for nuclear aggression. Therefore, although this movie may seek to show why the Cold War policy of MAD is ineffective, it does not accurately represent how MAD works. Therefore, its hypothesized outcomes of such a theory are null. Nonetheless, the movie fairly encapsulates the worst fears of citizens living through the Cold War. Maybe it’s satirization of nuclear warfare allowed citizens to quell their anxieties and laugh a little. Comedy is the best cure, in the end.

This week’s Flora’s film was the 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove. Before watching it, I read some of the reviews and learned that it had nearly universal critical acclaim. Some even describe it as one of the best comedies of all time. I had really high expectations going into it, and I have to say that I really enjoyed the movie. It was simultaneously absurd and tragic, satirical and concerning. The basic premise is that a mentally deranged general oversteps his authority and orders the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Russia. The president and top politicians and generals try desperately to stop it and save humanity but of course nuclear warfare ends with only one outcome and that is complete destruction. Even though this movie was made in 1964, it seems like the world today is once again on the brink of nuclear war, between North Korea, Russia, China, and the United States.
It is really interesting to note how comedy and satire often make a distressing situation somehow seem more bearable. I personally don’t think I would have mentally survived the last election season if it weren’t for late night TV and internet memes. Even though comedy is silly and light-hearted, I think it’s a truly necessary part of society.