|
Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
Digital Media Tree this blog's archive OVVLvverk Lorna Mills: Artworks / Persona Volare / contact Sally McKay: GIFS / cv and contact |
View current page
...more recent posts
In a current spate of A-bomb research, I watched both Dr. Strangelove and a documentary called Atomic Filmmakers, Behind the Scenes.
Dr. Strangelove is an irksome film. When I first saw it I was too young and too scared of the bomb to get the humour. This time I did not find myself laughing either, but at least I saw it as subversive rather than oppressive. When I was a child I wondered, "How could this be?" and I guess I still kind of wonder the same thing. I like the chilling P.O.V. shots on the ground when General Jack T. Ripper's stockaded base is invaded (on orders from the president) by a neighbouring military unit. Americans, shot by Americans, lie dying on the dusty ground. The footage reminds me of Kent State, and also the part in Catch-22 when Milo Minderbinder strafes his own base as part of some black market deal he made for 'the syndicate" (because what's good for the syndicate is good for us all). There are similarities to Catch-22 but the humour here is much colder and less humanistic. It's a different kind of war, I guess. Still, it's interesting that the technology (big knobs and switches on the airplane consoles, survival kits and bomber jackets, etc.) of Dr. Strangelove looks much more like WW II than like our present day remote control death networks. I am pretty sure that the overabundance of chewing gum in the film was hyper-ironic reference to a nostalgia for a more individualistic, Johnny-get-your-gun, kind of war.
The Atomic Filmmakers doc (1997) was about a bunch of guys who documented the A-bomb tests in Nevada and at Bikini Atoll. The film was highly unsubversive, the interviews were conducted passively, and the tone was true to the ethos of the era: there's a decent, American job to be done here: heck, them-there A-bombs ain't gonna document themselves!
One good anecdote was from a guy who sat with his cameras in the nose (gunner-bay, I guess) of a plane that followed the plane that dropped a bomb, so he was right above the blast when it went off. He had goggles to shield his eyes but they broke as he was pulling them on. He (in a state of panic, sure he'd go blind) put his hands across his tightly closed eyes. He didn't go blind, but he did see the bones of his fingers in the flash.
There was a whole secret film lab called Lookout Mountain. These guys documented everything: they made 6500 films! One them had an aunt and uncle killed at Nagasaki. He said they lived in the country and made the "unfortunate" decision to go into the city to market that day. He said that in one of the Nevada tests he filmed, pigs and monkeys were tied up in the bomb area with their eyes propped (what-the? Like in Clockwork Orange? whY? ) open. He said that made him think "This is how it would be for people who had a bomb dropped on them."
The film ended with a montage of incredibly magnificent footage of big blasts and mushroom clouds. I stared at the TV screen trying to understand what I was seeing, but it just kept looking like really nice pictures.