|
 Sure,
it's the end of the world, but that doesn't mean we can't have a few
laughs.
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(1964) addressed what was probably our greatest fear about the Cold
War; not that the superpowers would deliberately hurl their arsenals
at one another (we always felt we'd get the heads up if that was on
the way), but that we'd back into Armageddon without realising it.
In Dr. Strangelove, USAF General Jack D. Ripper goes stark,
staring mad and orders the B-52s under his command to bomb the Soviet
Union in an attempt to preserve the purity of his precious bodily
fluids. The Americans make a frantic effort to recall the
planes, an RAF officer tries to reason with an increasingly deranged
General Ripper, an American bomber crew (their radio knocked out by a
failed Russian missile attack) is hell bent on reaching their target,
and the American president strives to calm down an ever more
hysterical Russian premier on the other end of the Hot Line. It
turns out that the Russian leader has every right to be losing it,
because his country has deployed a doomsday machine that will cover
the Earth with radioactive fallout if one of the American bombs hits
Soviet territory. The Russians haven't told anyone about this
weapon, however, because the premier "likes surprises."
Dr. Strangelove is satire, but what makes it works so well is
that it skirts just on this side of being possible. The Americans
are shown having all sorts of well thought out safeguards to prevent
accidental nuclear war, but they haven't counted on two factors:
First, that a madman might end up with his finger on the button and
second, that both sides are run by idiots. |
