The General's plan was to coerce the American President to accept preventive war. In fact, in the novel, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urges the President to follow through the initial attack.
Accepting we cannot recall the bombers of the 843rd wing, there is an absolute military necessity to follow up their attack as hard and as fast as we can. Any other course of action will inevitably mean that we lose cities, and take casualties . Mr. President, the Joint Chiefs unanimously recommend that a full scale attack on Soviet Russia be launched immediately.
George's original scenario for unintended war was already obsolete. By 1962 it was difficult to believe that a rogue general could order a missile launch. Schelling recalled, There was no way that you could launch them and then call the President and tell him the strike is on the way, you'd better launch the whole outfit. The question was how could a Brigadier General somewhere get the war started? ëHe, Kubrick, and George spent most of the afternoon devising one scenario after another.We wanted to show thatgetting a war started was going to be very very hard, but not impossible.By the time we broke up, we decided that there wasn't a very plausible way to get this unintended war started. Schelling added, that it was only after his meeting with Kubrick and George that they decided to makeDr Strangelove a comedy in order to make it happen.
TheStrangelove scenario borrowed from the original plot ofRed Alert.In the film, a mad generalmakes use of an emergency war plan that authorizes a base commander to launchhis bomber force in the event that communications with his superiors weredisrupted due to enemy attack. The General telephones SAC and announces, Yesgentlemen, they are on their way in and no one can bring them back. For thesake of our country and our way of life I suggest you get the rest of SAC inafter them, otherwise we will be totally destroyed by Red retaliation.So let's get going, there's no other choice.
During the course of film-making, Kubrickconferred with Kahn several times. They were of the same mind when it came tothe value of grotesque humor as a means to loosen public inhibitions againstspeaking about nuclear war.Recall Kahn's remarks, One does not do research in a cathedral.Awe is fine for those who come to worship or admire, but for those who come to analyze, to tamper, to change, to criticize, a factual and dispassionate, and sometimes even colorful [i.e. humorous] approach is to be preferred. And One wishes to relieve the grimness of the subject matter. People in astate of horror are not good analysts or detached and objective listeners. In reply to the scandal of nuclear humor,Kubrick commented similarly, Why should the bomb be approached withreverence?Reverence can be a paralyzing state of mind. One can only wonder whether Kahn's tabletalkabout deterrence and war-fighting demonstrated the possibility of approachingnuclear war prankishly.We know they enjoyed their meetings immensely.It'shard to believe that in the course of his tutorial Kahn did not regale hisdinner companion with some of his best briefing jokes.Perhaps Kahn's glee indirectly inspired Kubrick's antic translation ofRed Alert into a screenplay. Kubrick told aNewsweek reporter that each time he tried to create a scene, it came upfunny.
On January 29, 1964, the film,Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to StopWorrying and Love the Bomb, debuted in New York. After the unauthorized launch of a bomber squadron to Soviet targets, the American President telephones the Soviet Premier to inform him of the accident. He successfully retrieves all but one of the bombers, and in the final scenes, SAC gives its Soviet counterparts detailed operational information including general patterns of evasive tactics the pilot of the sole remainingbomber was likely to employ in a last-ditch effort to shoot it down before itreleased its payload.The Soviet Premier sadly informs the President that should a single bomb detonate over Soviet territory, its Doomsday Machine would automatically and irrevocably retaliate against so many targets in the West as to end life on theplanet.The last moments of the film are agonizingly suspenseful, as the bomber evades area air defenses.The final scene shows the plane's captain, acheerful Texan, astride a bomb as though it were a bronco as it falls into thesky, waving his Ten-Gallon hat in hand, whooping and hollering.The credits roll as the screen fills with amushroom cloud to the accompaniment of a liltingly melancholy song, We'll MeetAgain Some Sunny Day.
While the ground had been prepared by thegradual acceptance of sick humor over the past six years, people hotlydisagreed on the merits of a satire in which senior political and militaryofficials were boobs or lunatics. People were genuinely shaken by Kubrick's unforgiving ending, and disturbed by the mockery of its accompanying song. A sample of the range of critical responses will mark off for us the high point of sick humor.Fromwhich summit in the next chapter we'll retreat by several years in order tolocate Kahn's briefing performance within the transitional years between theMcCarthyite monologue and the full flowering of the vulgar fashion for humorthat was bitter, perverse, sadistic and sick, black in its pessimism, itsrefusal to compromise and its mortal sting.
One of those who admired the film but werediscomfited by its finale was the reviewer for theNew York Times.BosleyCrowther began by placingDr. Strangelove squarely within the currents of recent popular entertainment.Stanley Kubrick's new film is beyond anyquestion the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across.And I say that with full recollection ofsome of the grim ones I've heard from Mort Sahl, some of the cartoons I've seenby Charles Addams and some of the stuff I've read inMadMagazine. While he applauded Kubrick's burlesque of strategic folly, it nonetheless offended him.I am troubled by thefeeling, which runs all through the film, of discredit and even contempt forour whole defense establishment, up to and even including the hypotheticalCommander in Chief.If every authority was a nincompoop or worse, then what could be the ultimate message ofDr Strangelove ?I want to know what this pictureproves.The denouement was heartbreakingly abysmal.Somehow, tome, Crowther mused, it isn't funny. It is malefic and sick.
The intensity that chilled Crowther pleasedthe film critic for theNew Republic as the very essence of satire.It isso truthful a film, so unsparing, so hopeless in the last pit-bottom depths ofthat word, that the very blackness has a kind of shine. The terms with which Stanley Kauffmannapplauded the film makes one wonder whetherDr.Strangelove stimulated a display of aggressive invulnerability in whichreviewers covertly boasted that while the film was strong stuff, they were theequal to the demand to tolerate it sportingly. (Philip Hartung said it point-blank, If you can stomach all this nuclear horror as subject matter for a satirical comedy, you may have a good time at Strangelove.')Thus Kauffmann's verdict, Dr. Strangelove is first and foremost absolutelyunflinching: relentlessly perceptive of human beings to the point ofinhumanity. [Kubrick's techniques] all galvanize the picture into macabre yetwitty reality. He offered (his version of) its enigmatic meaning for perplexed viewers.This film says, Ban the bomb and they'll find another way.The real Doomsday Machine is men.' It is surely a sign of the times that themen and women who implicitly congratulated themselves on their sophisticationcould praise Kubrick's film for its desolation.
Another example of self-regarding vampingunder the sign of sicknik hauteur wasLife magazine's review. Loudon Wainwright opened his piece by confiding, I found myselfat the edge of tears as I watched a series of nuclear explosions fill thescreen and heard a sweet female voice singing We'll meet again, don't knowwhere, won't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.' He wasdisquieted by the abrupt shift in tone. Up until the end, he had laughed uproariously throughout the film.He wondered, Was I sad that the movie'sworld was ending? Was I having an attack of hysterics brought on by the film'srepeated and stunning outrages? Or had I suddenly arrived after prolongedlaughter at a glimpse of some awful truth?Like Kauffmann, Wainwright felt moved to spell out the kernel of the film, Thistruth had something to do with the sheer ridiculousness of humanity's posturein its terribly complex, life-and-death affair with the bomb.Yet not everyone could discern this.He noted the bitterness with which somecritics had rebuked Kubrick for defeatism. Repelled by a comedy which drawsits boffs from top-echelon folly and outright doom, they miss the point of thesatire. Prigs who objected to the exaggerations or factual errors in the filmcould not hope to understand contemporary sensibilities.Wainwright closed his piece with the taunt,Their outrage underlines [the] truth that the half-life of Not Getting thePoint is forever.
Other reviewers were as mindful of itsscabrous qualities as Wainwright, but focused their attentions on Kubrick'saudacity rather than the dividing line between the sicknik ability to enjoy thefilm, and the yokels who could not control their nerves half so well.Dwight Macdonald, for example, wasastonished that Kubrick and Columbia Pictures could get away with it.: Everysacredidéereçue of the coldwar is methodically raked over with abarrage of satire.It is even moreamazing that Columbia Pictures Corp., a perfectly respectable American businessenterprise, is distributing this travesty of the American Way of Life (and,of course Death).TheNation's reviewer decided that Kubrick had crossed the line in posing hisanti-nuclear message so bleakly. Overall, it holds a cold blade of scorn against the spectator's throat. He [Kubrick] and [screenplay collaborator] Terry Southern take a pleasure inflaying their contemporaries that may be more effective as sadistic humor thanas adult education.
Other reviewers described their experienceof the film as a bracing but pleasant tonic.Newsweek's critic describeda robustly entertainingDr. Strangelove.With breezy admiration, he explained itsgist, human society [cannot] afford such dangerous toys as hydrogen bombs,cozily tucking it into place as a pill anyone could swallow, popular, edifying.That Stanley Kubrick has had the nerve to say so, and that he has said it in acomedy, which makes it all the sharper, all the clearer, and that much better afilm, is truly fine . It is also side-splittingly funny. He turned to Kubrick to confirm thedominant note ofDr. Strangelove's grotesque style, who said, The greatestmessage of the film is in the laughs. You know, it's true. The most realisticthings are the funniest.
Buttonholing the point,Newsweek added, In a weird way, he is perfectly right.
Time's critic also assumed an attitude of complacenturbanity. He assured readers that nuclear humor was indeed palatable. Kubrick views inadvertent nuclear war as the greatest danger of an anxious era, buthe says so with such dash, boldness and Swiftian spirit that the message neverquells the madness. His film defiantly thumbs its nose at the fate all menfear. The review opened with the moment when theAmerican President informs the Soviet Premier of an unauthorized bomberattack.Well now, what happened isthat one of our base commanders did a silly thing. He, uh, went a little funnyin the head. You know, funny. He ordered our planes to attack your country. Let mefinish, Dimitri.This was surely written as domesticfarce.The reviewer rightly noticed,In the manner of a man whose wife has backed the ranch wagon into a neighbor'sprize hydrangea, [this scene] thus sets the tone [of the film.] Kubrick'sinsouciance and deftness counterpoised the grimness of the subject matter.The critic repeatedly strained to make plainto his readers, the message never quells the madness, with the accent onpleasure:The film is an outrageouslybrilliant satire the most original American comedy in years and at the sametime a supersonic thriller that should have audiences chomping theirfingernails right down to the funny bone.
There was one unique reviewer who refrainedfrom passionate like or dislike, Moira Walsh of the Catholic weekly,
Like few other public actors of the period, Kahn's briefings dissolved the distinction between speech suited to popular entertainment and public policy. Certainly this must have occurred to some members of his audience as it did to Stephanie Gervis ofThe Village Voice. Listening to him, it was difficult to understand why Kahn has been wasting his time on realpolitikal [sic] research when he would make such a great stand-up comic.Who else can make people laugh about mass annihilation?
To argue thatOn Thermonuclear War and