War and Violence in Twentieth Century Film

The depiction of violence in American cinema has shifted from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. War has been consistently viewed in a negative light, as it very well should be. However, depictions of violence remained inaccurate until the latter half of the century and now America appears to have a disgusting morbid fascination.

In the first half of the century, depictions of violence were laughable. Sometimes violence was literally funny, as was the case with slapstick humor. Scenes in Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid feature acts of violence which are intentionally humorous. In one scene, Chaplin and the kid fight a man and a boy on the street. He is shown prepping the kid as a manager would to a boxer before he is to beat up the other boy. Shortly after, the boy’s brother punches a cop in the face so hard that the officer passes out. The brother then punches through the bricks of a sturdy doorway and punches a lamppost so hard that it bends into a 45 degree angle. Chaplin proceeds to bash the other boy’s brother over the head with a brick numerous times. At the end of the fight, the brother appears mildly concussed at worst. Obviously, this is highly unrealistic. There is no blood. No one breaks any bones. There are no swollen or bruised faces. The violence in The Kid is pure comedy. In the case of The Kid, Chaplin was more than capable of making a serious film, but he had to conform to the studio’s wishes. Further, this film was made in 1921, which was an era of consumerism, among many other things. People consumed to demonstrate their class level. The studio, as well as corporations in this era, overproduced as much as they could in order to bank on this fact. Had Chaplin been given an opportunity to really work on a film extensively, rather than quickly manufacture as much as possible, he may have made something more serious.

In other instances, the dishonest depictions of violence were unintentional. In Birth of a Nation, both the Cameron’s and the Stoneman’s lose sons in the Civil War and Ben Cameron is wounded in his valiant efforts. Although the film correctly depicts the tragedy of war, its inaccurate portrayal of violence causes it to fail to show the horror of war. Most of the more graphic scenes in Birth of a Nation are similar to comedic violence in The Kid. Near the end of the film, most of the white characters are trapped in a small cabin where blackfaced men are trying to get at them. The men in the cabin are shown bashing in the heads of intruders using both arms, which just looks ridiculous. In one scene, one of the women in the cabin smashes a beer bottle over the head of one of the men in blackface and sheepishly backs away. Just like in The Kid, the violence fails to produce realistic results and ends up being funny. In the actual war scenes, the film shows “wounded” men, who have no visible wounds, rolling around on the ground and it just looks silly. The closest this film comes to showing blood is in its use of a red tint in some portions of the film. For its time, this was probably a good way to depict horror, but it is hardly realistic. Filmed in 1915, at the height of World War I, the depictions of war and violence really well within its historical context. Since the United States was in a war at that time, the fighting was not glamorized. However, depictions of brutal and realistic violence would have hit too close to home for some families and veterans.

This unrealistic depiction of violence continued into World War II but they were not as slapstick as earlier representations. In Back to Bataan, war seems very neat and orderly. When people are shot, they simply fall over. This is not gritty or messy. One of the striking oddities of the movie is the lack of noise in the battle scenes. Although intermittent gunshots can be heard, one will not hear any screams of anguish. Given the dozens of people that are shot in various scenes, some sort of disgusting noises should be heard if this were a realistic portrayal of war violence. Throughout the movie, the hero, played by John Wayne, is never shown with any dirt on him. Near the end of the film, he even tumbles into a large, muddy puddle but, moments later, he appears to have only the slightest bit of grime on his face and his uniform is entirely clean. He does not even look sweaty. Making this movie even more unbelievable, the ending features a group of tanks arriving to save the day at the last minute to save the day. Back to Bataan was filmed in 1945, at the end of World War II. This unrealistic depiction reflects the mythology of how America fights a war. We are orderly and punctual. Americans do not get their hands dirty while defending their country. The soldiers do not commit horrific acts of violence. This piece is more so an act of propaganda rather than a realistic portrayal of our country’s defense system in action.

By the 1960s, violence and war were beginning to gain a more realistic portrayal, but even these depictions were so overly dramatic that they were inaccurate as well. In Bonnie and Clyde, the final scene shows the title characters being brutally shot. The violence is definitely horrific, unlike in the previous films mentioned. When Bonnie and Clyde are killed, blood oozes out of their wounds and their bodies flail wildly. However, they are shot at consistently for about thirty seconds. The extent of the violence in this case was overdone. In true story of Bonnie and Clyde, they were likely only shot a handful of times, rather than the hundred or so rounds they appear to be shot with in the film. Another major difference between this movie and the other works mentioned is that the violent acts committed by the title characters is glamorized. By the end of the feature, the audience feels sympathetic for Bonnie and Clyde when they are disgustingly extinguished. In this manner, the director has tricked his viewers, since these heroes had been committing various murderous acts throughout the film. A lot of this inconsistently can make sense when viewed in a historical context. This film was made in 1967, the year associated with the Summer of Love for the counterculture. By this point, distrust had formed among the American youth. The younger culture viewed the effects of World War II as what the older generation had done to them, by changing their life through the development of atomic weapons, the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, the paranoia over Communists and the dishonesty of JFK. When Bonnie and Clyde committed violent acts, they were defending their freedom and their youth. However, their disturbing death scene was meant to depict how the older generation attempted to keep the young down.

Rather than having a sobering effect, people are now starting to view really disgusting and realistic violence as amusing. Personally, I remember seeing Saving Private Ryan with a group of friends when it came out. During the battle scene, when the soldier removes his helmet and gets shot in the head, everyone laughed. Truly, this was a disturbing and more realistic battle scene than pretty much anything up until that point. Rather than being horrified, people were laughing. Quentin Tarantino also used violence as a humorous tool in Pulp Fiction. Vincent shot Marvin in the face, causing his head to explode. This was an accurate and disgusting depiction but the audience found it hilarious. The twentieth century itself has been possibly the most disturbing century in human history. For the past fifty years, at least, every generation has witnessed some absolutely horrific event, whether this was the Holocaust, the violence involved in desegregation, the Vietnam War or the attacks on September 11th. At this point, American culture is desensitized to violence. Laughter may be the only way to deal with the horrors which we have served as witnesses.

“Sibannac Airplane” by Richard Barra

A whirl of bright colors appears as if an enormous autumnal version of a Starry Night comet. However, the similarities between these two paintings end there. Rather than Van Gogh’s thick impasto, the surface of Richard Barra’s Sibannac Airplane is flat watercolor. Giving him the title of “artist” is a questionable move, since he has no formal training and has no extensive history of creating art. His work is not located in the Louvre or any other magnificent museum. Instead, it is sitting on a shelf in his Huntsville, TX apartment, where he created the piece in 2011. This painting is also relatively small, at approximately 8 inches by 5 inches. The main feature of this artwork is a swirl stretching out across the borders and fading into a horizon line. He alternates a rainbow of teals, oranges, purples, greens, and reds to provide movement, which blurs into browns and other unidentifiable shades, like what is reflected in a pool of oil on pavement after a rainfall.
Classifying this piece within a movement provides difficulty, but a dissection of the title sheds some insight. When questioned about his work, the correlation between the name and his influences becomes incredibly clear. He has no qualms explaining that he created this work as an experiment regarding what would happen if he smoked marijuana and listened to Jefferson Airplane while painting. From this, the airplane is explained as is the psychedelic swirl. The suggestion of intoxication is found in the painting’s name. “Sibannac” is “cannabis” spelled backward. Considering this, Barra’s piece appears to fall into the abstract expressionist movement, since it is the product of subconscious creation. According to Leon Golub, abstract expressionist paintings must fulfill the following criteria:
“1. the elimination of specific subject matters and a preference for spontaneous, impulsive qualities of experience.
2. the unfettered brush- discursive, improvisatory techniques- motion, motion organization, and an activised surface.”
In this sense, Barra’s piece most certainly would be classified as abstract expressionism. He has no subject matter. To say that the subject is a swirl and a horizon line is the same as saying that Rothko’s subject was blocks or Pollock’s subject was messy lines. Further, Barra has openly admitted that the piece was done impromptu while smoking large amounts of marijuana, which satisfies Golub’s second principle.
Another interesting correlation between works created by abstract expressionists is that “the claims made for one painting could as easily typify works by other artists.” If one views Sibannac Airplane as a piece of abstract expressionism, correlations develop between Barra’s work and that of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. As far as painting style is concerned, he seems to draw heavily from Pollock’s career. His trademark splatter technique gives a similar effect as Barra’s lackadaisical brushstrokes. However, his use of shape is more reminiscent of Rothko. The bright colors used in Sibannac Airplane are also common in Rothko’s colorblock paintings, especially those of the 1950s. They give the same effect as one experiences upon opening their eyes from dreaming and looking into the sunset. Something is there, but, in coming out of one’s dream state, one cannot clearly identify what they are seeing. In this case, all of these painter’s works could be viewed in a sense which appeals to Dionysian ideals. Paintings like these are mostly meditative and convey feelings rather than objects. The viewer is enveloped in pure color and pure emotion. However, in the case of Barra’s painting, the Apollonian senses are also pleased as there is a horizon line and a culminating swirl.
Still, all of these definitions are from within the period of abstract expressionism’s boom. Care should be taken to see what has been said since the movement has, for the most part, passed. In the 1970s, Edward Levine reclassified abstract expressionism as a mystical experience. Previously, the movement was viewed from a personal angle. Action painting in particular was believed to clue the audience into the artist’s personality, as one could witness how they painted through their brushstrokes. Through this intimacy, the artist, in a way, surrenders themselves. However, in looking back on the movement, Levine found a correlation between the Abstract Expressionist works and the Romantic paintings of the late eighteenth century, which allowed him to view the results of this era in another manner. Through this comparison, he was able to examine the sublime aspect of abstract expressionism. Typically, one would not classify Sibannac Airplane as a sublime piece because it is very small. Sublime works are usually enormous or at least contain an awe-inspiring subject matter, such as God or nature versus man. Instead, Levine found that:
“Painting becomes sublime when the artist transcends his personal anguish, when he projects in the midst of a shrieking world an expression of living and its end that is silent and ordered. That is exposed to expressionism.”
Given this definition, Sibannac Airplane could also be viewed as sublime. Although some have said that abstract expressionism allows one to see into the personality of the artist, in reality, one leaves their paintings without really knowing anything about them since the artist “annihilates the personality.” If Barra’s painting had no name, one would have no idea about what kind of person created it. The artist could be a Martha Stewart disciple or a kindergartner. In this manner, Barra is simply expressing the moment and not really exposing any of himself. Another connection Levine found between the sublime and abstract expressionism is seen in the surrender of the self to the painting “as a metaphor for the obliteration of the ego and its release into the cosmic experience.” Through this process, Levine views abstract expressionism as a mystical experience, which Barra uses psychedelic drugs to reproduce in his own work.
An examination of Sibannac Airplane finds it to be a stereotype-breaking action painting. Typically, abstract-expressionists rely on heavy paint or sculpture in order to break out of the normality of two-dimensional painting. Instead, any intentional meaning found in Barra’s work lies in the process through which it was painted. He got high, put on some music, and expressed himself through painting. In this manner, Barra’s art can also be viewed as one-dimensional, using the passage of time to convey a message. Although the painting exists within the two-dimensional plane of a piece of Moleskine paper, it gains an extradimensionality since it is, in a sense, an action painting. Sibannac Airplane also breaks stereotypes through the results of the action painting process:
“In the classical process, the elements are relatively small and simple, for example, single strokes or lines. In the Pollock process, the selection is based not on individual strokes of paint or lines, but on whole complex surfaces, painterly masses and groups of lines- large blocks of painting.”
This description of Pollock’s work fits perfectly within a definition of Sibannac Airplane. Little attention is paid to line. In some regions, the lines are entirely blurred together, such as in an area on the right side of the painting where it appears that liquid has possibly been spilled on the watercolor. The lines in the painting are of little importance and the viewer essentially loses themselves within them. Instead, Barra clearly focuses on creating intense shapes and blocks in the form of “painterly masses.”
Some might argue that abstract expressionists are actually painting nothing at all. A definite subject is missing from most of their works. In the case of Sibannac Airplane, there are no identifiable forms. Despite the title’s suggestion, no airplanes are found in the piece. One can only imagine what he was trying to paint. Barra very well might have intentionally painted nothing. If that is so, this nothingness could have a deeper existential meaning. Barra’s painting actually could be depicting nothingness as defined by Jean-Paul Sartre or Martin Heidegger:
“For Sartre, nothingness is a nonbeing, a negation of all the entities in the world, which comes into ‘existence’ through human consciousness. Heidegger, however, assumes the existence of nothingness from the outset, arguing that although we cannot grasp or know nothingness, we nonetheless, when anxious, have an experience of it. He argues that because any being is finite, nothingness forms beings and as such is a prerequisite of everything that is.”
To Sartre, nothingness is an entity of nonbeing which comes into existence through human consciousness, which then makes it a something. He argued in Being and Nothingness that nothingness is the negation which exists within being. When one looks at Barra’s painting, he has depicted nothing, which is the origin of an expectation to find something in particular within it. However, the subject is elusive and haunting. It does not exist in any manner to which one can give a definitive answer. The issue with Sartre’s definition in regards to this painting is that one does not know what exactly it is that a viewer is expecting to find within this work. To this end, Heidegger’s definition is more useful, but also much more complicated:
“For Sartre, [nothingness] is merely a nonbeing, which stems from human consciousness, while, for Heidegger, nothingness is also an affirmation of beings as it is the limit imposed on all feelings.”
To these philosophers, there is not being without nothingness. In Heidegger’s definition, being is finite and, of all living forms, humans in particular exist within a state of anxiety over the aspect of nonbeing or death, which is “our own impending nothingness.” The somethings of the world, which engage human attention, are actually a device used to repress thoughts about death. One must also note the major difference between fear and anxiety. To Heidegger, fears are directed at something while anxiety has no cause. When one suffers from a bout of anxiety, all being slips away and one is forced to face their own mortality. Barra’s work, arguably, could be exploring mortality. Since there is really nothing in the painting, he is taking away the conscious constructs which humans use in order to repress thoughts about death.
If one can wade through Jacques Derrida’s babble about puns and how ridiculous he thinks everything is, one could find he has a lot of relevance to add to Barra’s work. His discussion of language is particularly interesting when applied to this painting. By dissecting his own name, which is similar to the word “derider” in French, which is a word associated with the smoothing of wrinkles by laughing. Derrida claims to provide this service through his critiques. Additionally, in an examination of the word “gel,” he finds relation to the word “glass” and the philosopher’s name, “Hegel.” A dissection of Barra’s work loses great meaning when one ignores his title, which essentially gives away the painting’s meaning. As previously mentioned, Sibannac Airplane is a reference to the marijuana Barra ingested while listening to Jefferson Airplane and playing with watercolors in order to produce this piece. Perhaps the artist is attempting to fill the viewer with the feeling of riding on a cannabis airplane of sorts. The color swirls together in a psychedelic manner and the horizon line might have been used by the artist to give the viewer the sense of riding into the sunset, which is represented as a vortex. However, from simply gazing upon the piece, one will never know the artist’s true intent. Derrida also states, “There is no text without silence.” This relates back to the definitions of nothingness provided by Sartre and Heidegger. Although the two have opposing viewpoints, they both can agree that there cannot be something without a nothing in our finite universe.
Additionally, Derrida discusses the importance of breaking down norms. Barra does this by openly admitting to purposefully making art under the influence of drugs, which is an illegal activity. Derrida also says that by stealing other people’s work, one is destroying the norms of property. In this manner, Barra is equally guilty of theft, as Jackson Pollock’s alcoholism was well-known and he was often high and drunk when he painted. Barra, a college student, is likely aware that he is not the first person to attempt this sort of artistic stunt. Also, Derrida discusses Foucault’s attempts to understand the madman. Since Barra was temporarily not in a sober state, one could call him a madman. Derrida says there is no point in attempting to understand the madman.22 This may be his most important idea in regards to this piece. Barra was intoxicated when he made Sibannac Airplane and does not take his work seriously, since he leaves it sitting on a shelf where no one can view it. Examination of the piece is mostly pointless since no one will be able to really comprehend what his intent was with the work. Even Barra might not know what he was attempting to make of it.
Sibannac Airplane is the subconscious result of the creative process under copious amounts of cannabis. Through Barra’s artistic experiment, he creates a dreamlike portrait of pure emotion. However, some existential philosophers might argue that his work is a painting of nothingness and the anxiety of life as a finite creature. Others might say that his piece falls more so into the category of the sublime. Further, some art critics could tear him to shreds and call him a hack. Regardless, in his piece, he does convey the criteria necessary to fall within the category of abstract expressionism, despite a questionable lack of artistic intent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Articles
Golub, Leon. “A Critique of Abstract Expressionism,” College Art Journal 14. [Winter 1955]: 142- 147.
Leon Golub was an American painter based out of Chicago with a career spanning the entire second half of the twentieth century. College Art Journal is an older name for Art Journal, which is a peer-reviewed scholarly publication formed in 1941. This article was written as abstract expressionism was on the rise among painters. Golub attempts to define this painting style and explain its purpose. He also examines new work by painters on both sides of the Atlantic. This article can assist with the research by citing definitions for abstract expressionism.

Kosoi, Natalie. “Nothingness Made Visible: The Case of Rothko’s Paintings,” Art Journal 64 [Summer 2005]: 20-31.
Natalie Kosoi is an aesthetics professor at the Open University in Israel. Her article is cited by many other newer works regarding Mark Rothko, abstract expressionism and existentialism. In this piece, she creates a definition for nothingness based on the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger. After forming a definition, she applies her findings to Rothko’s paintings to demonstrate how he paints nothingness. One could argue that “Sibannac Airplane” is a painting of nothing.

Levine, Edward M. “Abstract Expressionism: The Mystical Experience,” Art Journal 31. [Autumn 1971]: 22-25.
Edward M Levine is an art professor at MIT. This article examines the work of the abstract expressionists after their boom in the fifties and sixties. This piece is mostly concerned with action painting and the emotion behind those paintings. Of particular interest to this paper will be his correlations between romanticism and expressionism.

Tellez, Freddie, and Bruno Mazzoldi. “The Pocket-Size Interview with Jacques Derrida,” Critical Inquiry 33 [Winter 2007]: 362-368.
This interview took place over two sessions in 1978, was reviewed by Derrida two years later and first published in Spanish in 2005. In 2007, the interview was translated into English. Critical Inquiry is an academic publication from the University of Chicago which explores the literary arts. The appeal of this article lies in the fact that a lot of articles about abstract expressionism and existentialism cite Derrida’s “Cartouches” as a source and he did this interview after writing it. As a result, he talks extensively about existentialism and critiques the work of, essentially, every modern philosopher, from Nietzsche to Heidegger. If one can wade through Derrida’s babble about puns and how ridiculous he thinks everything is, there are some quality passages further into the interview. Particularly interesting is a section where he discusses language. He dissects his name, which is similar to the word “derider” in French. The word, “derider,” is associated with the smoothing of wrinkles, which Derrida claims to do through his critiques. Additionally, he examines the word “gel,” which he relates to the words “glass” and the philosopher’s name, “Hegel.” A dissection of Barra’s work loses great meaning when one ignores his title, which essentially gives away the painting’s meaning. “Sibannac Airplane” references the cannabis he smoked and the Jefferson Airplane he listened to while painting it. In a really great quote, Derrida also states, “There is no text without silence.” This relates back to Natalie Kosoi’s article which states that there cannot be something without a nothing in our finite universe, an idea borrowed from the philosophers she studies. Additionally, Derrida discusses the importance of breaking down norms. Barra does this by openly admitting to purposefully making art under the influence of drugs. Derrida says that by stealing other people’s work, one is destroying the norms of property. In this manner, Barra is equally guilty of theft, as Jackson Pollock’s alcoholism was well-known and he was often high and drunk when he painted. Also, Derrida discusses Foucault’s attempts to understand the madman. Since Barra was temporarily not in a sober state, one could call him a madman. Derrida says there is no point in attempting to understand the madman. He also says that those who interpret Foucault’s work as trying to understand the mind of the madman are misinterpreting his words.

Vinkovetsky, Yakov. “Painting as Process and Result,” Leonardo 18. [1985]: 165-169.
Yakov Vinkovetsky is a Russian expressionist painter and this article was published a few months after his death. Leonardo is a scholarly journal which allows art, science and technology to come together. In this piece, Vinkovetsky examines the work of previous action painters before looking at his own work. He is mostly concerned with the artistic process. Barra’s work is also mostly about the process, since he smokes marijuana and listens to Jefferson Airplane to create what he refers to as ‘art,’ scare quotes included.

Strange Love: Sex and the Atomic Age

In her book, Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age, Margot A. Henriksen argues that the atomic bomb changed American culture in ways which can be witnessed through the interwoven films, television programs and literature which was produced after its creation. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was a catharsis in the midst of these changes. Through its depiction of sexuality, Dr. Strangelove, as well as its contemporary, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, demonstrate the devaluation of human life in favor of a love for technology following the development of the atomic bomb. In this manner, one could view the sexual revolution as a response to this frustration.

Dr. Strangelove begins with a command by General Jack Ripper from Burleson Air Force Base instructing an aerial nuclear attack on the Soviet Union because he believes they have put into action a conspiracy to fluoridate the United States’ water system so they may contaminate the nation’s “precious bodily fluids.” Ripper seals himself inside the base and refuses to disclose the three-letter code which would terminate the attack. Meanwhile, in the War Room, General Buck Turgidson informs President Merkin Muffley of this slip up. Efforts to retrieve the code from Ripper fail and an attempt to alert the planes which are carrying out the attack would be fruitless. Muffley calls the Soviet Premier, Dimitri Kisov, in a weak attempt to smooth things over. However, while this call is placed, the Soviet ambassador, who is also in the War Room, informs everyone that his country has a Doomsday Device, which will automatically destroy all life on the planet if the Soviet Union is bombed with a nuclear weapon. Despite getting close to developing a plan, all of the officials run out of time. The H-bomb is successfully deployed in the Soviet Union and, minutes later, the Doomsday Device is activated, destroying all of Earth’s inhabitants.

In her book, Henriksen extensively outlines the process through which American culture was drastically changed as a result of the development of nuclear weapons. Even though the atomic bomb brought the United States security from the Japanese, the weapon itself proved to be more frightful. The ultimate tool of death was created. Immediately following the test deployment of the H-bomb in New Mexico, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer stated, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”(Henriksen 6). However, with the bomb came newfound power and prosperity for America, which allowed the fear to fade out of consciousness in the 1950s. Having the bomb was a form of security for the nation. No one wants to go to war against such a power as the atomic bomb. Further, Americans in the 1950s had spent the past twenty years attempting to get themselves through the Great Depression and then witnessing the horrors of World War II. Once the economy settled and the population became more prosperous, the nation was tired of focusing on such depressing topics. They became preoccupied with leisure activities and material consumption and learned to accept the existence of the atomic bomb. As a result, the United States was morally confused. The bomb is a symbol of power, but also of death. To embrace or “love” the bomb is to embrace a culture of death, resulting in an insane and ridiculous situation.

A later result of the nuclear detonations on Japanese soil came in the form of Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War from 1960. This rationalized perspective of nuclear war attempted to predict the recuperation time in the event of an attack. Kahn’s book quantified economic recovery times through the amount of people dead from a nuclear bomb in a given situation. He claimed this was in order to minimalize casualties. In an example, he says that, rather than 40 million people dead from a nuclear attack, if the dropping of an H-bomb were well-planned, casualties could be reduced to 20 million dead (Henriksen 218-219). Kahn then tried to address this further by saying, “The average citizen has a dour attitude toward planners who say that if we do thus and so it will not be 40 million dead- it will be 20 million dead. Somehow the impression is left that the planner said there will be only 20 million dead” (Henriksen 219). However, regardless of what his intent was in writing his book, Kahn quantified the casualties of war. In doing so, he took away an aspect of humanity. He attempted to put a cost on the loss of millions of human lives. Even though he claims not to, he nonchalantly throws around figures in the tens and thousands of millions regarding death tolls. Even twenty million deaths is an unimaginable horror which Kahn tries to quantify. The loss of twenty million citizens would be equivalent to killing everyone in the state of New York, and then some. By reducing warfare to numbers like these, Kahn is removing the human aspect. In the age of atomic bombs, human lives appear to lose value through Kahn’s book. They are merely numbers in the cost of war.

Shortly before Dr. Strangelove  was released, Kurt Vonnegut published Cat’s Cradle, which Henriksen views as the film’s companion in atomic age catharsis. In this novel, Vonnegut uses love, passion and sex to depict a loss of humanity. The book’s narrator follows the story of Felix Hoenniker, a scientist responsible for creating “ice-nine,” an isotope of water which is a solid at room temperature. According to the book, this is much more dangerous than an atomic bomb. Hoenikker’s son, Newt, finds very little humanity in his father. In his son’s description, Felix is clearly defined as a person more concerned with the ends than the means (Vonnegut 15-17). The cat’s cradle becomes a symbol of the absurdity in  the game of life. Felix Hoenikker is playing cat’s cradle when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan during World War II. Newt says, “Making the cat’s cradle was the closest I ever saw my father to playing what anyone else would call a game”(Vonnegut 15-17). When asked about what games he likes to play, Felix Hoenikker responds, “Why should I bother with made-up games when tehre are so many real ones going on?”(Vonnegut 15-17). Henriksen says that these “real games” he is playing refer to the “ice-nine.” By treating this as a game, Felix is devaluing human life, just like Kahn did (Henriksen 311). In order to reinforce this fact, in a later passage, a scientist says to him, “Science has now known sin.” Felix replies, “What is sin?”(Vonnegut 21). Additionally, Felix cannot even remember any details about his own wife because “he just wasn’t interested in people” (Vonnegut 18-19). In this manner, Hoenikker appears incapable of love. He seems robotic and entirely nonsexual. Henriksen finds “a lack of human and moral concerns in the scientific and technological worldview,” which is reflected through Felix Hoenikker’s treatment of others and his inability to love (312). Just like in Kubrick’s film, the book ends with a horrible disaster; all of the world’s water is turned into “ice-nine,” which comes as a result of scientific indifference toward human life. After the accident, Newt and the narrator discuss their lack of sexual urges as they reach hopelessness. Earlier in the novel, the two discuss an apocalyptic novel in which the end of the world creates a sex orgy. However, the opposite actually occurs. Through this, Henriksen argues that “Vonnegut proposed… that healthy or ‘normal’ sexual desire disappeared in the atmosphere of hopelessness that surrounded the end of the world” (320). Further, the indifference toward people through Felix Hoenikker demonstrates again a lack of passion or love.

Much like Vonnegut does in Cat’s Cradle, Kubrick’s use of sex in Dr. Strangelove also reveals this loss of humanity in the atomic age. Much like the name of the movie suggests, Kubrick only displays “’strange’ forms of love and sex”(Henriksen 319). Humans are not depicted loving each other. Instead, all love is saved for technology, such as the bomb, which is also a symbol of death. The whole mess of the plot begins by General Ripper, who is paranoid of tampering with his “precious bodily essences.” In reference to women, he says, “I do deny them  my essence.” His abstinence causes him to refrain from the act necessary for humans to continue to exist. Meanwhile, Buck Turgidson has no problem having lots of sex with his secretary.  However, his relationship with her seems to be more lust-based than one of love. Indeed, while in the War Room, he tells her on the phone that relationship is more than just physical and he also states, “I deeply respect you as a human being.” Based on his tone, one can tell that he means none of what he tells her. Further connecting all of these cultural concerns, when Turgidson is speaks about death tolls, he is made to sound exactly like Kahn, the great quantifier of human life. Major King Kong’s ride on the the deployed H-bomb is another sexually-charged scene which furthers this theme. By depicting the bomb as “an extention of his sexuality,” Kubrick connects “sex, death and the bomb” (Henriksen 320). Dr. Strangelove himself appears unconcerned about the impending doom to the human race and more in love with all of the technology surrounding the event. The mechanized manner of his alien hand demonstrates the current attitude. Those in charge are becoming less manlike and more robotic by lessening the value of human life in favor of technology. Sealing this idea, Kubrick’s only sex scene in the entire film occurs in the opening credits, when a bomber is being refueled in air. He machines are making love in the manner which was formerly reserved for life. Henriksen nicely summarizes:

“The supremacy of technology and the declining value of human life, intimately linked with America’s thermonuclear bravado and its threatened extinction of all human life, are illustrated in the sexual orientation of these characters (which are also illustrated in their names) and in the various sexual symbols that punctuate the film”(319).

From this position, where humans are devalued in favor of technology, is it any surprise that the sexual revolution soon developed? Clearly, as Rabbi Dresner put it, there was a need for a “change in man’s heart” (Henriksen 380). Through experimentation with sexual liberation, the youth culture of the 1960s and 1970s responded to dehumanization through “strange love.” Some of the most famous examples are the “Summer of Love” in 1967 and the “Woodstock Nation” of 1969, through which “renewed respect for human sexuality” were embodied (Henriksen 381). By breaking down sexual barriers, the counterculture was protesting the devaluing of humanity and “sexuality became a symbol for the renewed values of love and respect”(Henriksen 381). In this manner, Dr. Strangelove can be viewed as a film which depicts a transition in American culture. The use of sexuality in the film demonstrates the absurdity of a culture which values technology above people, a true “strange love.”