Colin McGuire: Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Strangelove or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was a highly entertaining piece of media. It was a perfect mixture of a serious matter that needed to be addressed to the public and comedy. The most enjoyable parts of the film for me was the conversation between The Presidents about being sorry and when the pilot “rode” the atomic bomb to its destination. The use of black or “nightmare” comedy in the movie was a great way to address the very real possibility of a nuclear war between the super powers without scaring the audience. The quote, “black humor is pitched at the breaking point where moral anguish explodes into a mixture of comedy and terror, where things are so bad you might as well laugh” by Charles Maland in “Dr. Strangelove (1964): Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus” sums it all up for this movie. The audience is able to come to a realization of how possible and horrific a nuclear war could be, but is able to take it on easily through the use of the black comedy. Dr. Strangelove worked in the manner of effectively getting its point across, but with a few knee slaps of laughter. On the same note, this film would not have worked as a serious drama. If the film had strictly been on the nuclear war subject, its high possibilities, and devastating effects, it would have merely frightened the public into a panic. The nightmare comedy was effective and the audience was still able to understand the seriousness of the nuclear situation.