I Love The Internet
Posted by
tgirsch
Over at Obsidian Wings, I made the following two statements:
- We should change the constitution so that all federal judges require a 2/3 majority in the Senate for confirmation.
- I have never seen Dr. Strangelove
Guess which statement caused a ruckus!
You’ve never seen Dr. Strangelove? By God, man, that just unacceptable. You might as well admit that you don’t know who William Shakespeare was or admit you’ve never heard a piece by Mozart!
Comment 3/28/2008
I have also never seen Dr. Strangelove.
Comment 3/28/2008
1. I agree.
2. I saw it a few months ago, and I found it overrated. If you’ve seen the clip of the guy riding the missile down on Youtube, you pretty much know all you need to know about it.
Comment 3/28/2008
I’m actually a little afraid to see it. I’m afraid I’ll have Ron’s reaction. Having heard so much about it, it’s set the expectations so high that it will be hard for the actual movie to live up.
That’s what happened with the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. By the time I got around to reading it, I’d heard so many rave reviews that my expectations were unrealistically high. I thought it was at best okay.
Comment 3/28/2008
P.S. Shakespeare is overrated.
Comment 3/28/2008
I’m assuming it’s my role to make a Dick Stuart joke.
In 1963, he made 29 errors playing 1B, I’m not even sure how that is possible! Dr. Stangeglove indeed!
Comment 3/28/2008
“the guy” riding the missile? Jeez. And it’s not a missile, it’s a bomb.
I think satire probably ages less well than any other genre, with the possible exception of comedy. And since this film is a mixture of the two, it probably will seem overrated to a younger audience.
Comment 3/28/2008
Ted -
Jumping in here so we can agree on something, I think the point that satire does not age well is a good one.
Effective satire requires context and shared knowledge between author and reader/viewer.Those who did not live through (in the sense of being old enough to understand) the times that produced Dr. Strangelove, who never heard of Herman Kahn and don’t grok the implications of “duck and cover,” will likely see the movie as just an odd comedy.
Comment 3/28/2008
“duck and cover,”
I lived within four miles of a major SAC base in Warner Robins, Georgia, during the 50s and 60s. We didn’t practice duck and cover because it was useless to think it would matter. No time to duck, much less cover.
Comment 3/28/2008
Yeah, there was an entire lexicon back then that most younger folks are unfamiliar with. SAC, DEW, ICBM, SLBM, MIRV, ASW, SALT, nuclear deterence, mutually assured destruction, kilo and megatons, nuclear winter, first and second strike capability, NATO and Warsaw Pact, overkill, arms race, “we will bury you”… oh they were joyous times.
Comment 3/28/2008
“oh they were joyous times.”
Yes, they were.
Comment 3/28/2008
Ted, I guess it’s generational to an extent, but ask people your own age to give you a sentence or two describing the Warsaw Pact, the Disarmament Movement, or even to specify the meanings of acronyms like SNIC, or SDS (that one is just an abbreviation, right); I predict a lot of blank stares.
For anybody of my generation (or others) who may be tabula rasa regarding the nature of the duck and cover propaganda, and how ridiculous it was, I’d certainly recommend throwing “Atomic Cafe” atop your Netflix queue.
Comment 3/31/2008
Heck, I have no idea what SNIC is.
I’m not sure too many folks who experienced the Cold War at its height will forget it, or the language of the day. I mean, when you have drills in elementary school about what to do if a nuclear attack occurs, it tends to stick with you, regardless of how silly you realize it to be when you get a bit older.
Comment 3/31/2008
SNCC, rather. I’m just saying there were so many overlapping movements, so many acronyms, so much history, so much suppressed history too. SDS, SNCC, CORE, ELF, Earth First, Weather Underground, Disarmament, Civil Rights Movement, Gay Liberation Movement. I’m certainly digressing, but I’m simply saying that there’s a lot of ignorance to those whole eras, and not just by my generation and those even younger.
True story, maybe four or five years ago. I took a summer class about neighborhood dynamics with an adjunct professor. He was in his late 40’s, early 50’s and openly gay. The class consisted of tours of various neighborhoods in the city. Dude walked by the Stonewall Inn and didn’t say a fucking word!
Comment 3/31/2008
digg -
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but I don’t think anyone was criticizing the idea that folks younger than those of us who remember what I’ll call the Dr. Strangelove era don’t understand a lot of terms and concepts that became second nature to us.
Rather, it was that because they don’t (because the times have changed), they will see the movie differently than we will, more as odd comedy and less as satire.
Comment 4/1/2008