Over the past few years I’ve been developing an interest in cold-war era films and television, in particular with how so often you can feel the fear of nuclear annihilation that permeated through society at the time. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction may have served its purpose of a deterrent but it then makes you fear that a mistake at the wrong place and the wrong time, or an escalation of some unforeseen conflict that you may not even be aware of (the Cuban Missile being a very public example, on the other hand), could trigger the end of all things.
Films like By Dawn’s Early Light, which I encountered in college by chance, and novels such as Red Alert (what the Dr. Strangelove film is based on) are very serious studies of this, and I am fascinated by these not necessarily because of the political “cold-war” element but more because such situations force people to reveal their true personalities in the face of not just their own death but that of the entire world, a magnitude of responsibility that has no other parallel in our history.
Dr. Strangelove brings to light a different human element to this equation - not so much a realistic depiction of “how individuals would react in such a doomsday scenario” but on the constructs that we created ourselves that put the world in a Mutually Assured Destruction policy position, the use of terms like the “missile gap” that, when considered from a distance (even better now, years removed from the cold-war) seems in many ways absurd. The exaggerated responses and actions of the characters are funny, but they also showed to me how dangerously close our current “theories”, “ideas” and “rhetoric” can quickly deteriorate and devolve into the justifications for war as utilized in the film. The fluoride rant felt oddly real, and I feel if pushed and presented well enough, it could become something that can convince a public.
What I think is masterful about this film is that not only was it, simply, an enjoyable comedy, but it was able to make one seriously think about how we found ourselves in such a state of fear and what the actual building blocks were that got us there.
My notes don’t even address all the sexual connotations and messaging throughout this film, which I think were hilariously placed but also intriguing in their own right. While no I do not think that there was any sexual influence in the actual design of military hardware or mechanisms, but I do think sexual drive plays a larger role in our everyday lives beyond the “personal” that most of us are let up to believe.
