Dr. Strangelove Movie Analysis

📌Category: Entertainment, Movies
📌Words: 1035
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 04 April 2022

The 1960s were a time for revolution and war in the United States. In the midst of the Civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the red scare and many other socio-political movements, Stanley Kubrick released what some called controversial, and others preached to be an eye-opening film about the dangerous state of accessibility to nuclear weapons. In Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the use of satire and dark comedy are used to expose his point of view which shocked many Americans and left audiences with very mixed feelings. There were two main responses to the film, the first was that the film was making America’s leaders look incompetent in the eyes of the world and that they would be made a mockery when the film played in other countries; the second was that this was an hour and a half of pure comical satire. This essay will explore those responses, as well as a third interpretation of the film content relating to the sexual connotations within it. Through these three very different critiques of Kubrick’s film, I will explore how the film reflects the society it was made for, and how it impacted the point of view of the population about the paranoia, warfare, liberalism and patriotism of the United States in the 1960s.

For many the concern at the time was the imminent fear of deployment of a nuclear weapon, not to mention, the possibility of communism within the country. Many critics found Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb I  “‘Defeatist, destructive of morale, malignant, evil, snide’ [which were] some of the words being used to describe the film” writes Loudon Wainwright on his review in LIFE magazine. Stanley Kubrick, making fun of the fear of the nuclear weapon and the incapability of any of the high placed authority figures to do anything to stop the bomb in a very satirical manner got lost in translation for some viewers. Feelings of anger, as well as believing that this was an anti-American film were aroused. “I am troubled by the feeling, which runs through the film, of discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment, up to and even including the hypothetical Commander-in-Chief,” (Crowther) or “... the trouble with it as a thesis for mordant satire in a film is that it is based more on wild imagination than on basically rational truths” (Crowther). All of this said, while America was in the midst of many of its biggest revolutions. Kubrick’s point was to shock and to twist a ghoulish story into a funny, multilayered critique of an extreme situation; and as Wainwright put it in his review, “In their anger these men have failed to realize that Kubrick had no interest in making a picture based in the “publicly available facts,” and that he isn’t asking people to believe that everybody in command is as foolish in life as in the movie.” 

Mentioned over and over again, there seems like there was nothing else to do but laugh hysterically at the sheer ridiculousness that Kubrick was showing on screen. Bringing ambivalence to what people felt watching the film. Bowsley Crowther, even throughout his questioning of how this film represents the higher power of Americans, and what seems to be a mockery of their competence says that “[his] reaction to it is quite divided, because there is so much about it that is grand, so much that is brilliant and amusing, and much that is grave and dangerous.” Though he continues to say that this film satisfies the cynical and brings “satanic satisfaction”, there is no doubt that Kubrick’s goal of “revealing [the] human folly through burlesque” was achieved. Wainwright in his own review begins by saying that he “found himself on the edge of tears as I watched a series of nuclear explosions fill the screen…” talking of the last minutes of the film (1:33:00- 1:35:00). This film, as Tony Macklin covers in his own review, suggests to be a “beautiful black comedy”, a “barrage of satire” but overall that Dr. Strangelove is for humanity.

Out of all the different ways that the film was received, the overt provocativeness in its themes was thoroughly explored in Tony Macklin’s study “Sex and Dr. Strangelove”. The film, released in the midst of the 1960’s sexual revolution in the United States, was not unusual subject matter. Kubrick tilted his focus to the outrageous, which surprisingly went over the head of many critics. The comedy of the film comes partly from the characters’ names, which represent various aspects of sex. General Jack D. Ripper “… a sex fiend in his own way, is obsessed by the idea of bodily fluids”, he also possessed a cigar and a pistol, “two objects that are obvious sex symbols”. Macklin mentions that “Ripper's description of the act of love has been described by one woman I know as the sexiest moment in any movie she has seen.” General Buck Turgidson, like he mentions, “buck, means male with various connotations, and turgid means swollen.” Captain Mandrake, another significant name, because as the essay iterates “the mandrake root resembles the male shape.” President Merkin Muffley, whose name means “female pudendum” highlights the femininity of the president who lacks action and power to shut down the plane that goes rogue. Though the names are a significant part, the sexual aspects do not lack in the visuals of the film; only the innocent viewer, or the one who chooses to focus on something else, will not understand how this highly complements the social critique Kubrick is making. From the beginning of the film, when the airplanes are refilling each other’s fuel up, being parallel to copulating, to Dr. Strangelove’s uncontrollable arm making obscene gestures and up until the end, when Major King Kong mounts the missile, with its phallic shape, down to its orgasmic explosion, the exploration of sex is constant. In the end, “Impotence is is no more. Warped sex has been eased. Civilization can go back to its beginnings.”

In the 60s, society’s fear of the nuclear weapon, the growing sexual liberation, the beginning of a mass questioning of political leaders, and many other movements imbued the arts. As the critics made clear, this film is no different and reflects the American people’s convictions. Just as some of them believed it was tainting the credibility of the country, “...will they [viewers from other countries] see it as a shocking exposure of the sort of people Americans are? I doubt if they will be able to see humor in juggling the bomb.” Others, “... Dr. Strangelove is a brilliant and edifying, even a moral, movie” (Wainwright).

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