| Submitted by: | russk |
| Date: | 11 / 18 / 2008 |
| Category: | Music and Film |
| Words | Pages: | 1133 | 5 |
| Views: | 183 |
ESSAY #2
Dr. Strangelove: The Orgasm America Needed
Dr. Strangelove: The Orgasm America Needed
Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is producer/director Stanley Kubrick’s satirical, black comedy about doomsday and Cold War politics. A crazed US officer, General Ripper, is convinced Russians are trying to poison Americans through fluoridation of the water supply and initiates a plan to start World War III. Meanwhile, an incompetent American president attempts to negotiate with the intoxicated Russian leader in an attempt to stop the pending doom. With destruction looming, the American leaders meet in the War Room to plan a resolution, where Dr. Strangelove reveals a plan to save top government officials and live underground for one hundred years. At the end of the film, “the bomb” is dropped and an automated Russian doomsday mechanism is triggered, causing a series of dramatic explosions and the end of the world as we know it.
The beginning of the 1960s was a tense time. America had “The Bomb” and so did the Soviet Union. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The Cold War escalated with the Bay of Pigs confrontation. Additionally, the sexual innocence of the 1950s was waning. The nation needed relief, or to purge itself of what seemed to be insurmountable anxiety.
At a time of so much strife, the last thing expected was a film that made fun of the very things that frightened most Americans, nuclear war and national insecurity, but Kubrick accomplished just that through sexual innuendo.
"Why should the bomb be approached with reverence? Reverence can be a paralyzing state of mind. For me the comic sense is the most eminently human reaction to the mysteries and the paradoxes of life. I just hope some of them are illuminated by the exaggerations and the style of the film. And I don't see why an artist has to do any more than produce an artistic experience that reflects his thinking."...
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