Trying Again - Even if it's too late
After seeing Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb I recommended it to other people. I thought the film was fantastic. Without this class I may never have seen or even heard of this movie. But to the point…
Two aspects of the story line stuck out for me. The first was the ridiculous characters (and their names) we got to learn about. It was impossible to not laugh at these authority figures that often had the quote “Peace is our Profession” as a background. From General Jack Ripper’s obsession with bodily fluids to the obscene amounts of gum chewed by General “Buck” Turgidson and the comical conversations, in particular between President Merkin Muffley and Soviet Permier Dmitri Kissoff, the character development never ceased to amaze me! I agreed with Burgess completely when he wrote that “the ones who effectively blow up the world are shown not as incompetents or villains but as lovable lunatics, and when the fireballs unfold in the final frames and the girl begins to sing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ the picture has allied itself with their lunacy, leaving the viewer all by himself with no place to stand.” When the movie ended I was at a loss for words. There was no resolution after these men had tried to overcome their technological “boo-boo.”
This leads into the second aspect of the movie that really got my attention… The role of technology. Although these men were supposed to be our brilliant leaders, even they couldn’t figure out a way to outsmart the very machines and procedures they had created. As Dr. Strangelove put it, they had figured out ways to “rule out human meddling.” In a less amusing way of viewing this aspect of the film, it depicts that our society doesn’t have a firm understanding over the very technologies that we depend on for safety.
Monica Weir