Social Isues of the 1960's: Dr. Stranglove and Fail-Safe

Stop, relax and pay attention. Let your mind wander; but stay focused. The year is 1962; you just returned home from another day at school, and let us say that you’re at the ripe, tender age of eleven, twelve even. As you burst in through the front door the enveloping arms of you mother is all you know, it’s all you need, and as she spins you round and round in that tight embrace until your other senses kick in. The thick, wafting aroma of hot apple pie! You struggle from her and make the dash to the kitchen. Gosh-darned! She beat you to it again, and you watch as she laughingly moves both pies over to the windowsill, the one place that she knows you couldn’t reach without attracting too much attention. Suddenly, the screen door creaks, the soft clatter of rubber soles on the linoleum floor can be heard; you guessed it Daddy’s home! Mommy’s eyes light up, the only one that beats you to him in the mad dash is Patches, the Boston Terrier Daddy brought home on your fifth birthday. “Sit, stay…GOODBOY!” Hugs and Kisses ensue, nothing could get better, you’re exactly where you want to be, where you need to be, and where by the grace of God and the United States Government in all of their infinite and worldly wisdom wants you to be. As you hunker down on a fresh, steaming slice of meat loaf; you watch as your Father leafs through the paper, as your Mother scopes out the kitchen table, make slight adjustments between Fathers watchful gazes; the spoon for the mashed potatoes need not be anything but a half an arm’s length away for him, and those napkin rings sure look spiffy tilled at forty five degree angles from the bottom left side of each plate. Suddenly the station that plays the national anthem on a twenty-four hour loop cuts out in a harsh crackle of static and feedback. “WE INTERUPT THIS PROGRAM WITH AN EMERGENCY NEWS ALERT….” , your mother drops a fork, covering her mouth in horror, your heart races, your father whips his newspaper to the ground, your hearing leaves you, Patches is jumping and barking at your leg but you cannot comprehend even his simple desire for attention. The watchful gaze of your father snaps from the radio, to your Mother and back to you; that gaze, those eyes, something is wrong. There is confusion, they are rushing you through the basement door, you can’t understand why, but Patches can’t come, something about lacking the necessary provisions? No time for tears, time to be a man like you father taught you. As you and your family, your world, cower in the deepest darkest part of the cellar that you will ever remember, something happens. You blink once, twice, and the eternal silence awakens you like a stern slap across you tear and sweat laden face. You look up; you see your mother fighting back her sobs, your father’s broad shoulder wraps over your head as he clutches her in a reassuring embrace. As you look higher you see the bottom of the train board that you and your Father built last Christmas, a thought thinks itself in your young little head; How is this one and a half inch thick piece of plywood going to come between your world, all that you know and love and forty megatons of nuclear death?

This of course is not a personal account of my own nor is it a story that was relayed to me by another. It is a fictional telling of what could be a not so enjoyable childhood memory. The important thing to realize here are the details, wholesome, functional family, typical mother baking typical meals, child returning home from typical day at school soon followed by typical father returning from typical day at work. 1962 was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest anybody has ever come to an all out nuclear world war. Point being that this could actually be an accurate telling of what some families may have gone through some odd fifty years ago. Now the questions should be flooding through your mind, why? How? The answer lays in the knowledge that the early 1960’s was a time in our history, American history that the wholesome lives of the white middle class suburbanite family, their innocence along with the innocence of the entire country came to a screeching halt. The question poised then became a debate of whether or not it was the innocence that was lost, or the ignorance of people who followed their government blindly, of people who trusted the men leading the U.S.A. to make the political decisions they did unbeknownst to the public eye.

The first three or four years of the 1960’s in this light, is viewed as the time in which, as I have said already, the innocence and/or ignorance of the people, the crafted ideology of the American way of life, came crashing down on those who created and sustained is farcical existence. The next question you might be asking then is still how? The answer is not that things just got really bad really quick; this like any other situation of its magnitude took awhile to accumulate; meaning that its roots extend into the 1950’s, the time in which the “crafted ideology” that I have just mention was in its fullest stride. Suburbanite living was on the rise, the middle class white family had to flee the cities, flee the communist threat, preserve their small towns, the nuclear family, father had to commute to work, mother must be at home tending to her cooking and cleaning, and most of all, Capitalism was king! Brown vs. The Board of education overturned the longstanding separation between whites and blacks, further instilling the fear of “the other”, Communism loomed around every corner, even in outer space, and something that was called Civil Rights was really starting to make people nervous. Equal pay rights, women in the workplace, things were changing, and the WASPS on Capitol Hill were starting to get worried. War in Vietnam assured the public, at first at least that other countries would be safe from the evil Red threat as well, but events took place that made to youth generation think long and hard. The Bay of Pigs? What’s that all about? And how come none of their friends were coming back from this alleged fight against Communism?

Such questions and conflicts, as with every instance in history affect society on all levels and for the purposes of this assignment the media and entertainment is especially key. So at this point I would like to narrow down these ramblings of mine and focus in on two products of the visual media that surfaced during this extremely confusing and controversial time in history. The exact year is 1964 and the film first would be the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film by Stanly Kubrick; the second is a film titled Fail-Safe, direct by a man named Sidney Lumet. On the surface the important aspect regarding each of these films is the shockingly similar plot structure which mirrored more or less exactly what was on the minds of nearly everyone in the nation, probably even the world in those times. That of course is the threat and fear of an all out nuclear world war. But it does not stop there; the basic plot line is not the only thing that makes these two movies worth taking a look and a second look at. One must then acknowledge the spheres of influence from which each of these movies were sending their messages to the public.

In one hand we have Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, the blistering satire, the black comedy. This is a film that takes all of the events leading up to it, the strife accumulated over the last decade or so, and spews it out at the audience in a way that would have made one laugh at first then double check to make sure it was ok later, have been given a glimpse of a grim reality, and the ludicrous fashion of its handling that might have just as well been an accurate depiction given the times. Fail-Safe on the other hand, approaches this fear of nuclear world war from the opposite end of the spectrum. The audience should not be laughing while sitting through the duration of this thriller. The audience should have been terrified that such an outcome for the world and its populace was at the truly at the brink of coming to fruition, and the ones to suffer the consequences would be the public themselves.

Getting down to the point, this assignments purpose is to take into consideration that these movies are a product of their time, that as already explain was extremely confusing and controversial, and explore the exact or at the very least implied reasoning that went behind the messages of such movies. The questions being then, which is the accurate depiction? Which film stood as a cornerstone for the majority of the American populace? Was there an agreement on a majority within the American populace? Further questioning into the makeup of these films would provide that these movies are not just addressing that fear of total nuclear annihilation, but further, a good portion of the issues that had started to surface that made the early 1960’s such confusing and controversial times as I have already explained them to be. To go about understanding and explaining this, we first have to take a close, dismantling look at what the issues that each of movies address are, how that are addressed, and why they are addressed in the fashion that they are.

What we already know, as I have previously mentioned is that the basic plot of these two films is more or less identical; each a story about the occurrence of nuclear world war. Going through it step by step, this is the basic chain of events, including the slight differences as well. Each begins with and American bomber armed with two 20 or 30 megaton nuclear bombs go out on regular patrol. Each of these planes is given to go signal to attack primary targets within the Russian border. In Dr. Strangelove, the go signal comes from a crazed general who apparently snaps at some point and decides to exceed his authority in giving this go signal. In Fail-Safe, the go signal is given due to a simple technological mishap. Following these events, meetings with the respective presidents and other government officials are undertaken in order to think of a solution to the problem, neither planes can be called back, so the decision is made to alert the Soviet enemy that the mistake has happened, in hopes to prevent further escalation. The respective Soviet enemy’s fail at preventing the nuclear bombing and therefore sustain damage and losses. In Dr. Strangelove, the attack initiates a Soviet built doomsday device set to go off in the event of an enemy attack, which in turn condemns the entire world to nuclear fallout. In Fail-Safe, the President out of reparation for taking sole responsibility for the damage induced on the Soviet city of Moscow, follows the attack by dropping two equally sized bombs on New York City. What is key here however, as already mentioned before, is not only this obvious similarity, but the way in which the social issues of the times were addressed by each of these films amidst these similar plots. So the question now would of course have to be, what are these social issues?

So, after a careful breakdown and analysis of each film, I have narrowed the issues down to this list; the Civil Rights Movement, which was gaining stride in the years prior to these films, involving bitterness of the male established gender roles that women were forced into, as well as building racial tensions between the blacks and the white’s who for so long had held onto segregation in all facets of society, suburbanization as a generalization for things such as the ideology of the nuclear family and the patriarchal run culture, Capitalism in regards to the rise of big business, and finally the Arms race and its coinciding with the fear of foreign totalitarianism.

Before starting, it is interesting to realize that as both of these movies came out in 1964, it was Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove that hit the scene first, seeing as, at as far as today’s standards go, the satirical version of a story usually comes around second. Furthermore, as Kubrick collaborated with Peter George and his fiction Two Hours of Doom in order to create the world of Dr. Strangelove, it is exceedingly interesting to note that Lumet who was the director of Fail-Safe, was taken to court by George over such similarities on claims of plagiarism, this ordeal was settled out of court. Moving to the more pertinent topic though, we will begin the breakdown of Dr. Strangelove as per the social issues just mentioned, the first on the list being the Civil Rights Movement. (Boyer, 266, 269)
What is important to realize is that the issues regarding Civil Rights, I feel is only directly addressed once the beginning of the film, during a preparatory speech made by the pilot of the plane that will eventually succeed in its attack on Soviet soil. Other instances regarding racial and gender implications are basically just that, implications, some heavy, some less then so. As Slim Pickens character, Major ‘King’ Kong relates to his men:

Now look boys, I ain't much of a hand at makin' speeches. But I got a pretty fair idea that something doggoned important's going on back there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fella's may be thinking. Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be human beings if you didn't have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly we ain't about to let 'em down. Tell you somethin' else. This thing turns out to be half as important is I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for every last one of you, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. Now, let's get this thing on the hump. We got some flying to do. (Kubrick, 10:35-11:37)

Obviously enough, the most important aspect of this mini speech consists of the line “regardless of your race, color or your creed”; such a line is doubled in effect with the presence of the only African American character in the entire film, James Earl Jones’ character, Lieutenant Lothar Zogg. So not only is the audience struck at this sight of this African American, to be further equated on the same level as the rest of the crew would have really gotten the conservative panties into a bunch.

In regards to the gender implications, I make reference to this same opening scene, prior to the speech. The first images that we get of the opposite sex, is the Play Boy magazines that the soldiers on this plane are leafing through. This does two things, first it establishes the image of woman that will be perpetuated throughout the film, and second it establishes the dominance of men over that image of women as nothing more than sexual icons. This in itself could be a message or a shout out to the apparent rising of mainstream pornography that had swept the nation in the couple years prior, but for the purposes of this assignment, I will refer to it as a purposeful subjugation of the female image in a dominantly male environment, seeing as there are further implications of this image later on. The next scene in which we come across female is the scene in which we the audience meet General Turgidson. The scene opens with his “secretary” Miss Scott tanning herself on a hotel bed under and electric lamp, scantily clad in a two piece bathing suit. She answers the phone, and relays information over to Turgidson while he finishes his business in the toilet room. When the time comes for Turgidson to take his leave from her, she longingly pleads with him after he tells her that the Air Force never sleeps, “Buck honey, I’m not sleepy either”, poised on the bed again, slowly taking drags from her cigarette (an image of sexual encounters in itself). This scene, short as it is, tells much, mostly of an oversexed and under-respected image of women, continuing the one established by the Play Boy magazines. This “secretary” claims to be finishing up paper work over the phone while we watch her prancing around half naked. What does that paint women as? Nothing but sexual objects, and to make matters worse, it is clearly obvious that Miss Scott herself holds no issue with this situation that she has occupied. After this, we then go back to the crew on Major Kong’s plane, and while he and the men are listing off the contents of their survival package, they come across objects such as condoms, stockings and lipstick, things useful for a soldier’s expected one night stand, again reifying this subjugated image of the woman.

Following this scenes the audience is presented with what can be interpreted as “phallic” images, the first example of this would have to be the big cigar that the character General Ripper waves around and rolls between his teeth during conversations with the character Mandrake, and once he drops the smoking during the ensuing attack of the base he commands, it is replace with what else, but a huge gun. The most notable aspect of these scenes being, that while he discusses fluoridation, this apparent Communist plot to poison the “precious bodily fluids” of Americans, Ripper makes these comments after Mandrake inquires on the subject, all the while Ripper clutches onto the huge gun, powerfully, dominantly:

Well, I ah, I first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love…Yes a profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I was able to interpret these feelings correctly: loss of essence…I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women...women sense my power, and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence. (Kubrick, 56:42-57:24)

The sexual referencing here is quite obvious, and taking into consideration the idea that the cigar, and now the gun act as these phallic images for Ripper, it only further reassures the image of the subjugated woman, whose only use to these characters thus far was sexual, has now been even further degraded, seeing as Ripper denies them of his “essence”, which is to say that the sexual role is not even good enough anymore. Moving on to the second and much simpler phallic image would have to be the ending scene, when Major Kong rides the nuclear missile down to the target. Naturally as the cowboy he is portrayed as being, he mounts the missile like a bull, except, he has his back facing the ground, the twenty some foot long missile protrudes upwards. The implication being that this nuke, this destructive force is nothing but an extension of this man’s “personage”. Giving way to the type of thinking that what better place for a nuclear missile to be than in place of a man’s genitalia?

The final scene of the movie is perhaps, aside from the speech made by Major Kong at the beginning, the next most direct address of gender roles in society. It is after the American bomber successfully completes the attack on the Soviets, while President Muffley, Turgidson and Dr. Strangelove himself are discussing plans to ensure the survival of the American race through a 93 year nuclear fallout. In this, Dr Strangelove says:

A computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included to foster and impart the required principles of leadership and tradition…Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years? (Kubrick, 1:29:31-1:30:30)

This, again, as with all the other scenes mentioned continues this trend of viewing the female as a purely sexual object, having to “breed prodigiously”. The point being, in addressing all of these scenes as implications to the Civil Rights movement, we should be asking ourselves, ok now, what is this implying as far as the times and the opinions of the people were? The answer in Kubrick’s slant is that basically, as far as other racial groups went, their involvement was more or less non-existent, and woman, were not good for anything outside of sexual relations, particularly male-dominated sexual relations, but keep in mind, this is a satire.

The second social issue that was mentioned was Suburbanization, as a generalization for things such as the ideology of the nuclear family and the patriarchal run culture. Though not directly addressed at any point during this film, what we do get is the sense of a purposeful lacking of the nuclear family. We get the sexual promiscuity of Miss Scott, and Turgidson who promises to marry her “someday”. The point here being that such a relationship in these times, as it is flounced around in a carefree manor, would be considered scandalous, especially considering the already mentioned carelessness of Miss Scott concerning the situation. Also, part of the ideology of the nuclear family being that the “Father” was to commute to work from his home outside of the city, we do not see any of the government official’s homes, nor any mention of their wives, the things we do see these men as they are at work, and as they are taking part of this clear subjugation of women while not at home, in doing so, they completely undermines the entire ideology itself.

The third social issue that I have mentioned is Capitalism, in regards to the rise of big business. As far as Capitalistic images are concerned, we basically get three. The first would have to be General Turgidson’s constant, almost annoying slobbering on Wrigley’s chewing gum. Assuming that this was not meant to indicate a nervous, chewing tendency of the Generals, What I felt in seeing these parts was just like the feeling I get from watching the typical spearmint flavored gum commercial, I almost could imagine the voice over while watching him chomp away, “Stressed out? Need to cool down? Rough day? Need a Pick-me-up? Try Wrigley’s spearmint flavored blah blah blah”. After this the scene to I call to mind would have to be when Mandrake is pleading with his captor to shoot the soda machine in order to get change to make the call to President Muffley. The soldier after much bolstering makes this statement, “Ok. I'm gonna get your money for you. But if you don't get the President of the Unites States on that phone, you know what's going to happen to you...You're going to have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company”. The point behind my mention of this particular line being the ridiculousness of such a threat given the current situations, as if the Coca-Cola Company equates more power politically than Mandrake could afford to deal with. The last scene that I have chosen that I feel resonates this issue would have to be the previously mentioned scene in which Major Kong reads off the contents of the flight crew’s survival package:

Survival Kit contents check. In them you will find: one 45 caliber automatic, two boxes of ammunition, four days concentrated emergency rations, one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills, one miniature combination Rooshan phrase book and Bible, one hundred dollars in rubles, one hundred dollars in gold, nine packs of chewing gum, one issue of prophylactics, three lipsticks, three pair of nylon stockings -- shoot, a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. (Kubrick, 35:40-36:30)

The reason as to why I choose to mention this article is basically because of the absurdity of the thought that these men believe that they are actually going to need these things. In the event of a nuclear bomb being dropped, and the fallout that would follow after, who in their right mind would be seeking commodities such as these? This scene is actually specifically mentioned as well in the article Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus, by Charles Maland. Here, he makes the statement that “Kubrick, perhaps responding to the media articles which made light of the nuclear threat, attacks the shortsightedness of those who think that nuclear war might not actually be that bad”, (Maland, 12) the key word here of course being “shortsightedness” because I find that it seems very obvious that it is the “shortsightedness” of these men that is being taken advantage of when they are given such a range of useless commodities. Furthermore, taking all three of these scenes combined, the larger message would have to involve something along the lines of a clearly sarcastic, maybe even bitter take on such an idea as the consumer culture, because after all, what Kubrick is giving his viewers are images of things that they saw every day, images that they were pounded into the ground with, Wrigley’s gum? Coca-Cola? Then the long list of useless items? If my interpretation is correct, then what we should be see here is that while the end of the world is at hand, these corporations still have the audacity to try and sell you their product.

That then leaves the final and most obvious social issue in my opinion; this of course being the Arms Race and its coinciding with the fear of foreign totalitarianism. This is the issue that I feel made the movie possible. Every scene on the plane, every time the word nuclear is uttered, every time General Turgidson and Major Kong say “Rusksies”, the Arms Race and furthermore, the fear of the “communist threat” is being referred too. The whole situation regarding the doomsday devices and especially the notion that the Russians could not shoot down one single plane should be included here as well. Even the scenes depicting President Muffley conversing with the apparently childish Premier Kissov over the phone could be lumped into this, seeing as it paints a not so flattering personality picture for either of world leaders. However the most pertinent out of all of these would have to be the inability to recall the bomber once it is sent on its mission, because what is really going on here is that a general overstepped the chain of command at took the Cold War to the next level, an image of a man of power abusing that power the worst extent, which was exactly what many of the public were likely in fear of during these times.

So it is at this point, having hopefully done a successful breakdown of the social issues brought to attention in regards to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, that I shift the attention to our second film, Lumet’s Fail-Safe. Again I remind you that in this movie we will encounter the same basic plot, and more importantly, the same four social issues that have been explored in Dr. Strangelove. So to start, I again bring up the Civil Rights Movement. Like Dr. Strangelove, the instances in which the Civil Rights Movement or at least the criteria that provides the make up for it is not directly addressed. Instead, what the audience watching Fail-Safe gets is a series of implications. As far as the racial tensions that the United States people were increasingly becoming aware of, there is only one single image of an African American child in this movie, and it comes with a series of flashing images of the people of New York City the seconds before the nuclear bomb hits. The image itself comprises, as I said of an African American child facing the camera, staring down at a smaller, apparently younger white child, with a fixed stare in his eyes. The only way I could interpret this image would that this African American child is staring down the white child in an aggressive manor, jealousy, possible hatred. Either way it is of no consequence, seeing as a hot second afterwards, they both get nuked. The anger of the African American child thus reduced to nothingness, but at the same time the white child being reduced to nothingness as well. This image I feel has further interpretations that can be made, but for the sake of the other social issues still to be discussed, I will keep moving.

Still under the umbrella of Civil Rights, I now turn to the imagery that this film offers its viewers in regards to the status of women. When it comes down to it, there are three instances in which the viewer see’s women. The first is the opening scene, when General Black awakens from a nightmare, covered in sweat. After checking on his sleeping wife, and both of his sons, Mrs. Black awakens to offer him comfort, being at his side, and then regardless of it being five o’clock in the morning, she offers to get out of bed and make him breakfast. What the viewer is being offered here appears to be that highly idealized image of the “wife” that we saw at the beginning of this paper, she is playing into the exactly role that society would have her play into, the provider and perpetuator of the home as well as the submissive counter-part to General Black. Later we see this same idealized image of the wife when the wife of the pilot who is in the process of completing the accidental mission of bombing Moscow is brought in to the war room to plead with him to stop the attack. She is more or less proven to be useless, blubbering in tears, hysterical, but for the purposes of the idealized wife, perfect. She holds no sway what-so-ever in the pilot’s decision to complete the mission and during her brief over-the-radio address to her husband on manages to, as I have just said, blubber out pleas and whimpers. This in a sense completes the ideological image that I have been hampering on, because it shows exactly what the wife is good for, and exactly what she is of no use for. While she excels in home and husband care, she crumbles outside in the real world. Sad as it is, I feel as though this was the positive intention of these images, and yes I mean to say positive. Moving on to the third and final Image offer to the viewers would be the scene following the opening scene in which the viewer meets Professor Groeteschele. In this scene, the Professor is leaving a dinner party in the early hours of the morning, and upon arriving to his car, finds an apparently single woman waiting in the passenger seat of his car. Conversation ensues regarding nuclear war, and it becomes quite apparent that this woman and I stretch to say “liberated” woman has “intensions” with the Professor. As the conversation heats up, she reaches over to touch his hand, then his face, and then as her hand drops while her eyes follow with it, he replies to this by slapping her clean across the face and making the statement, “I’m not your kind”. Point being that what has been offered the viewers thus far in this film is an extremely polarized image of women. On one side there is the socially accepted wife, and on the other there is the risqué, sexually deviant. In applying these two images to the Civil Rights movement, this polarized image does nothing short of brushing it off as if it has no place in such a country such as this. If you are a female under these conditions, you are either the ideal wife, or you’re getting slapped in the face because you’re ten times out of ten nothing more than a slut.

Moving on to the second social issue, which is Suburbanization, I feel that the best relatable scene would have to be the same, already mentioned opening scene. General Black wakes, he checks on his wife, then his two sons, she offers his breakfast, they discuss the children, and he goes off to work. This is nothing short of what was the status quo, the nuclear family at its best, a shining example for families everywhere. This then leads me to move on to the next social issue; Capitalism in regards to the rise of big business. Like Suburbanization, outside of the obvious threat by communism, Capitalism as a social issue, is briefly referred to in a line towards the end of the film. New York City has just been nuked and the Professor’s first words are as follows:

Our immediate problem would be the joint one of fire control and excavation, excavation not of the dead. The effort would be wasted there. Even though there are no irreplaceable government documents in the city, many of our largest corporations keep their record there. It will be necessary to recue as many of those record as we can, our economy depends on this. (Lumet, 1:42:59-1:43:32)

The obvious and likely only thing to take away from this line then being the disregard of the human casualties that the nuclear bomb would cause, though the professor does put an estimated number to those effected, he deems it as a wasted of time to search for survivors, opting more concern for the survival of the economy. This taken into account with the first scene in which we see the Professor really only convinces me of the fear of political extremes. After seeing the professor in these ways I tend to assume that he is meant to portray a position of the extreme right, radically conservative as it may be put. A situation such as this only makes me wonder about the extent to which corporations actually had influence over such officials as the professor we have here, a strong one unfortunately.

This then leaves the final social issue to which this film addresses, and as I said with Dr. Strangelove, I find that it is the most obvious one out of the four, it of course being the Arms Race and its coinciding with the fear of foreign totalitarianism. As I said with Dr. Strangelove, I felt as though it is this social issue that made this film possible, the difference with Fail-Safe being of course the seriousness in which it was approached. Technology in this film is introduced as a rapidly growing machine, a machine that the human being is slowly but surely losing control of. At the same time however, it is also presented as a sort “burden to bear” and who better than the American government. So in this film, we have the growing machine, the growing burden of harboring powerful weapons, and then we have the unfortunate Soviets who cannot seem to keep up with our advanced technology and successfully defend their own country from what comes down to a single plane. The message to be taken here is that this movie depicts the clear and utter technological defeat of the Soviets at even the accidental hand of the United States Government. As far as fears of foreign totalitarianism goes, a statement made by the professor, further instigating my thoughts on his extreme right wing views, declares his basic opinion of the Soviet peoples, “These are Marxist fanatics, not normal people, they do not reason the way you reason…They’re not motivated by human emotion such as rage and pity, they are calculating machines. They will look at the balance sheet and see that they cannot win… (Lumet, 54:50-55:03) The thing to notice here then is the association of the Soviets to machines, calculating machines, which lack human attributes. This is an interesting association, especially considering that the American government thus far in the film has already made sure to establish its dominance over such things as machines.

So now having established a firm breakdown and understanding as to the social issues that these movies address, what are the answers to the questions mentioned previously? Considering the spheres of influence that each of these films resonate, which of the two stand for the majority? For what reason? So it is at this point that I to the best of my knowledge answer those questions. Considering that these films both address the fears that surrounded the possibility of accidental nuclear world war, many of the messages that they send to the viewers seem very similar. The first obviously being the issue addresses as concerns surround the Arms Race, and with it the fear of technology leaving the hands of human control. The other issues mentioned, fall respectively in line. So at times, it may seem like while Dr. Strangelove is a satire, and Fail-Safe is a thriller, both messages seem the same, they are telling the people to be careful, and not to be ignorant to things such as corporate sway in politics or a country having the ability to wield such a strength that it runs the risk of losing control of it. However, while these messages are similar, it is the way that they come through in each instance that sets them apart. Kubrick at no point allows for the government leaders in his movie to be seen in an untainted light. On the other side, Lumet, though addressing the same issues as Kubrick sure makes it obvious that his president is “suffering”. Meaning that Fail-Safe really has two readings to behold the viewer; In a sense it can confuse the viewer into thinking that its sending the same message as Dr. Strangelove, but all the while evoking emotional exceptions towards the American government officials, kind of like say, “It’s ok that they let this power get of control, because they care, see? Henry Fonda (the president) is really upset about it, so it’s ok, the government isn’t that bad, it is?”. Now think about the way the Civil Rights were portrayed, women, oversexed as they were in Kubrick’s film at least had some sort of voice, maybe not a very desirable one, but it’s better than getting slapped around like in Lumet’s film. That then leaves suburbanization, which at the point of nuclear war, is undermined in both films. Kubrick render’s it useless, and Lumet has a President and a General who are willing to knock off their own families, (they were staying in New York) so who would in their right mind would listen to a government willing to kill of their own flesh and blood? Not any I can think of. So looking at all of this, where does it leave us? Personally, I feel as though Kubrick hit the nail right on the head as far as each and every one of these issues goes, making his film the obvious choice. Times were changing and the people with them,

So it is at this point towards the end of this discussion that I would like to take a moment to offer possible validation to everything that has been said. For this I relate to two interviews that I personally conducted, the first being with my Father, Alfred P. Nicosia, who was born in 1949, grew up in Buffalo and holds an Education Degree, and a Minor in English. The second interview was with my aunt, on Mothers side, Val Heary. My aunt was born in 1946 in Germany, moved to California, and then to Buffalo at the age of 7. She has her masters in Elementary Education. The basis of each of these interviews was to gain an understanding to some the discussed social issues that I had picked out in order to relate Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe to one another in order to get a first hand take on them. In that light, what I did was set the time period, state the topic and ask them to extrapolate respectively.

Alfred Nicosia:

Civil Rights – “Yeah I remember the bra burnings and all that, but you see your Grandmother always worked, so I guess looking back at it now, women seeking to be liberated, or whatever wasn’t such a shocking thing to me. I was used to being told that it was weird, that my Mother wasn’t supposed to be at work, but hey, she worked at Sears, that’s how it was”. “Growing up we had a friend named Elmo, he was the only black kid in our school (laughs) and it got to the point where we’d be drinking booze out of the same bottle and smoking the same…cigarette, and you’d realize that he’s just a person, that they’re just people. But all you heard on the radios and the T.V.’s told you different. I remember when I drove down to Alabama for my first semester I saw a sign and I’ll never forget it, it said something to the effect of “The town officials and authorities will not be held responsible for any injuries incurred on persons of color after sun down”, and I knew I was in a another world.

Capitalism – “Over all else the government wanted to please the corporations. The corporations made billions off of Vietnam, the Arms buildup, and nobody cared what the people had to say. Dow Chemical, DuPont, even Buffalo Steel had a piece, I could go on forever”.

Fear of Foreign Totalitarianism – “Pounded into your head daily, hourly, in the 50’s, but education was on the rise so by the time the 60’s rolled around, we started to realize that it was all bull shit propaganda, just because the commies were in Vietnam didn’t mean that they’d start coming out of Lake Erie”. “The government needed a scapegoat, so like Hitler picked the Jews, we picked the Reds, plain and simple.”

Val Heary:
Civil Rights – “Woman had it rough, you had all those political macho men doing whatever they wanted, and the wives were expected to be ok with it? If a man would have had an affair, no big deal, but for a woman? No way, absolutely unacceptable. Not to say that they just wanted to have affairs too and be on their way, the point was than men basically had free reign, it was a man’s world, how was that ok?

Suburbanization - “I remember when the other white families started to leave the city, and other black families moved in. I mean up until then it was an even split and we got along, but once the newer families came in, things changed, they became very, very hostile. Things like going to school was tough, you got beat up. The problem was that while both the whites and blacks in the area were on the bottom of the social scale, most of the whites still thought they were better”

Vietnam – “Johnson was an idiot. Anytime the United States has tried to move in and change a country it was, and still is a huge mistake. The public was clueless as to why, as to actually why, and the average person couldn’t do a thing. I had three friends who I went to UB with, they got drafted, and I never saw them again, they didn’t come back.

So after looking at these in retrospect to what has been said about the two films in question, I still maintain that Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove is the obvious choice. As one can tell from these firsthand accounts alone, this time in history as it was stated before, confusing and controversial. People were asking questions, they wanted straight and honest answers, and the pillars of hypocrisy that held up the United States government could only take so much of these questionings before they came crashing down.


Works Cited
Carnes, Mark C. "Dr. Strangelove." Past Imperfect: History According to Movies. By Paul Boyer. New York: Henry Holt and, 1995. 266-69. Print.
Heary, Val. "Social Issues of the Early 1960's Part 2." Telephone Interview. 12 Dec. 2010.
Maland, Charles. "Dr. Strangelove (1964): Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus." American Quarterly 31.5 (1979): 697-717. JSTOR. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Web.
McRae, Shannon. "Cold War Timeline." 12 Dec. 2010. Hand-out.
Nicosia, Alfred P. "Social Issues of the Early 1960's Part 1." Telephone Interview. 11 Dec. 2010.


Totally unrelated to this assignment, if one should find themselves interested, follow this link to a song that was taken from the creators of South Park's movie, Team America that came out a couple years back. It is explicit, but funny as hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M