A Critical Examination of Dr. Strangelove

In current American society, motion pictures have a large impact on day to day life. Films can shape the way people view the world and create and enforce beliefs. Not only do films create ideologies those, but they can also show society what their beliefs are. The phenomenon can best be seen in Reagan era movies that glorify the military like Top Gun and Cold War era films that express a fear of nuclear war and communism through mutated creatures like Godzilla, or zombies in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Night of the Living Dead. Dr. Strangelove; or How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb (Dr. Strangelove) is director Stanley Kubrickís attempt to show that societyís opinions may be ill-founded or mistaken.

During the Cold War, Americans justified their possession of the atomic bomb by rationalizing that it was necessary to have the bomb in order to deter other nations from using their own weapons, that Americaís military leaders could be expected to behave responsibly with the destructive technology, and that Russia was to be feared because the communists were Godless people, who would do anything to undermine their democratic opposition. In Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick takes each of these myths and shows how truly absurd they are, in the hopes that the filmís audience will come to see that nuclear weapons have no place in a rational society.

One of the main arguments for the existence and maintenance of nuclear weapons in the United States is, and was that weapons of such mass destruction must be present in order to deter Russia, or some other enemy nation, from attacking the United States without fear of retaliation. The character of Dr. Strangelove, played by Peter Sellers, states, "Deterrence is the art of producing in the enemy the fear of attack". This idea of using nuclear weapons as a method of deterrence is shown to be flawed by Kubrick by taking the idea to its logical extreme in the form of the "Doomsday" device. The Doomsday device is a computer programmed retaliation system that automatically lauches Americaís own weapons in the event of any successful enemy military strike, effectively ending life on the face of the earth for hundred of years. The flawed make-up of the device comes with the knowledge that no one can shut it off under any circumstances once it has become operational, thus eliminating any human "meddling". The rationale for this comes with the flawed logic behind the idea that no one would attack a country knowing that it meant the end of the world would come. However, this ultimate system of deterrence is also quite flawed because it leaves itself open to the possibility that human or technical error in turning the doomsday device on, could result in a world wide nuclear holocaust and the end of life as we know it. These wouldnít be prominent worries though if we knew that there were responsible figures operating and maintaining these weapons. This is another myth that Kubrick destroys in Dr. Strangelove.

While it would seem logical that the elected government officials and political leaders in charge of the nuclear weaponry would be level-headed and rational, this is not true. Both the Soviet and American leaders are portrayed as juvenile and lacking in critical thought, evoking a sense of hyperbolic immaturity that leads the members of the War Room to an intense bout of shouting and name calling, effectively erasing the notion that we have responsible individuals handling the nuclear weapons. While it is obvious that Commander Ripper, the man who misguidedly launched the missles, was not thinking clearly, the response to his action was far from level-headed itself. General Buck Turgeson, the presidentís military advisor, takes the matter very lightly, constantly joking about the situation. His final advice to the president is simply to have an ëall-outí attack on Russia, thus winning the war and "only" losing 15-20 million American lives. While the president dismisses this advice, he too shows his childish side by arguing with the Russian leader, known to the viewers only as Dimitri, about who is more sorry.

This lack of responsibility in the military leaders can be attributed mainly to the fears that existed in America about Russia and communism during the Cold War. Kubrick attempts to show that these fears are quite irrational by making the people who put faith in them ridiculous. Commander Ripper exemplifies this line of thought with his belief that there is a communist conspiracy to "Sap and impurify all [Americans] precious bodily fluids." Ripper backs up this theory with the ëfactí that he has never seen a "commie" drink a glass of water, necessitating that Americaís drinking water has been tainted. And thus Ripperís totally unreasonable belief that fluoride has been inserted in the water supply makes sense to him because of his irrational fear of the Russians.

Ultimately, Kubrick makes his point that nuclear weapons do not belong in civilized society by showing the Americaís widely held, and popular, beliefs about their nuclear weapons are completely unfounded and misguided. As Dr. Strangelove shows, only without the false justifications surrounding the nuclear weapons can they be exposed as the highly dangerous, illogical, and irrational objects that they are.

Finally, Kubrick portrays the paranoia that exists about the Russians and the red conspiracies as irrational to the point of insanity. The only men who follow this foolish line of thought are mentally disturbed, or buffoon-like.