Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opens in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward atomic weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence.
Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – “Dr. Strangelove” premieres – 1964”
Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opens in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward atomic weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence.
Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Dr. Strangelove premieres – 1964”
Guest Post by Ben Hunt
There’s a wonderful scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, where the assorted generals and politicians in the War Room are wrestling with the reality their policies have created – mutually assured destruction gone awry, where now everyone will be assuredly destroyed.
Dr. Strangelove pipes up to describe a theory of survival in the face of such a depressing reality, where the most genetically fit humans (along with their political and military leaders, of course) go underground into a giant mine shaft to wait out the apocalypse and then repopulate the Earth.
General “Buck” Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
Society should not do the wrong thing for the right reason, even though it frequently does the right thing for the wrong reason.
History has shown us what happens when you try to make society too civilized, or do too good a job of eliminating undesirable elements. It also shows the tragic fallacy in the belief that the destruction of democratic institutions will cause better ones to arise in their place.
– Stanley Kubrick on “A Clockwork Orange”, an interview with film critic Michel Ciment
An obscure Texas political consultant named Bill Miller once said “politics is show business for ugly people”. It’s true for the most part, aside from the consequences. This is because the theatrics of politicians result in policies that affect the lives of others; often against the will of the governed. In books and movies, however, the characters are much ado about nothing. Until, that is, life imitates art.
So it is with the futuristic dystopian story of “A Clockwork Orange”. Both the book, by the author Anthony Burgess, and the film by director Stanley Kubrick, serve as moral dilemmas and cautionary tales plumbing such considerations as free will, the duality of mankind, societal anarchy, and the ascendancy of an all-powerful state.
Stanley Kubrick’s black comic masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb opens in theaters to both critical and popular acclaim. The movie’s popularity was evidence of changing attitudes toward atomic weapons and the concept of nuclear deterrence.
Continue reading “THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Dr. Strangelove premieres – 1964”
