Review: The Atomic Cafe (1982)
Sep. 21st, 2010 06:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalSummary: Using un-narrated archival footage from the forties through the fifties, this 1982 film gives a look at the combination of terror and naivete that the United States approached the problem of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
Review: Oh god, we were such idiots back then.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, this movie doesn't play fair at all. It cherry picks the footage it and makes careful use of music and sound editing to give the maximum impression that the US government and Hollywood were run by a bunch of people who were either naïve morons or criminally hostile to the idea of giving America the straight truth about the chances of us surviving a nuclear war.
Still, even taking the footage at face value, it's hard to watch this and not feel a little sick to your stomach as the Navy shoves Pacific islanders off their homes for nuclear tests, or the Army gives a briefing to a bunch of enlisted men who may or may not have graduated from high school, telling them calmly that just because they were going to be at the edge of a nuclear bomb detonation and then be ordered to walk into the blast zone afterward, that they really had no reason to be concerned.
You have to wonder if anyone in the Reagan administration ever watched this, and whether they looked at the marvelous “Star Wars” defense system with less enthusiasm afterward.
Review: Oh god, we were such idiots back then.
Okay, to be perfectly honest, this movie doesn't play fair at all. It cherry picks the footage it and makes careful use of music and sound editing to give the maximum impression that the US government and Hollywood were run by a bunch of people who were either naïve morons or criminally hostile to the idea of giving America the straight truth about the chances of us surviving a nuclear war.
Still, even taking the footage at face value, it's hard to watch this and not feel a little sick to your stomach as the Navy shoves Pacific islanders off their homes for nuclear tests, or the Army gives a briefing to a bunch of enlisted men who may or may not have graduated from high school, telling them calmly that just because they were going to be at the edge of a nuclear bomb detonation and then be ordered to walk into the blast zone afterward, that they really had no reason to be concerned.
You have to wonder if anyone in the Reagan administration ever watched this, and whether they looked at the marvelous “Star Wars” defense system with less enthusiasm afterward.
