Dazzling technology or special effects should be general, at least compared to ours today, but why do we still feel shocked and feel that it still has a awakening significance today, more than forty years later? I think it lies in Kubrick's thinking and in-depth observation of human society.
The world after the Second World War, the cold war is full of clouds, about the future of human development, where the US and Soviet hegemony will take us, people are still confused in the joy of recovery after the war, rich in material, and spiritual Relative narrowness restricts us, and human beings are still unable to enjoy everything they create. They will destroy their creations for the sake of power and reason.
General Lippi’s impulse, prejudice regarding communism penetration (this may be an allusion to the McCarthyism of the 1950s), the Secretary of Defense talked about the dancing, uncontrollable excitement during the war, the excitement and uncontrollability of Dr. Qi Ai’s speech All of the Nazi military salutes in the 1950s and 1960s showed the turmoil of American society in the 1950s and 1960s, the fierce arms race, the division of territories around the world, the circling of bombers, and the vigorous fighting for non-existent threats. The whole world was shrouded in the shadow of the US-Soviet nuclear war. Europe has become a battlefield for the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and nuclear weapons are undoubtedly the biggest difference from the past in this battle for hegemony. Having witnessed the devastating use of two atomic bombs in Japan in World War II, mankind is not reflecting on the skepticism brought to itself. Disaster is to scramble to study this deadly weapon, trying to add weight to one's own balance, so rationality has brought mankind to the threat of being able to invent weapons beyond their control. When nuclear weapons are produced, it also means Human beings have lost control of their own minds. Humans have been completely alienated into murder. Humans are no longer alive for humans, but to gain the right to decide on their lives and deaths. In this sense, nuclear weapons have allowed humans to give up themselves and be humans. Meaning.
But what about the politicians in the face of this crisis? We see that the dialogue between the president and the prime minister is lengthy nonsense. The intrigue of Mianli hides the needle. It seems close and friendly but slick, but when the interest disputes are sharp, they can’t even listen to the other party’s words; the role of the secretary of defense is black. A humorous stroke, first of all a sexual affair with the female secretary in the office, and then the conversation between the senior meeting and the secretary was mixed, the sexual impulse and the impulse of war aroused the man’s nerves, but at the end of flying down on a nuclear bomb One scene seems to better express this theme. The nuclear bomb symbolizes the erection of men. The moment it touches the earth also heralds the destruction of mankind itself.
Dr. Qi Ai’s German identity and the unstoppable Nazi military salute, the plan for the survival of underground mines and the selection of races led to the re-emergence of fascist totalitarianism. Human beings always have such an impulse. Facing the reality of democracy or elite politics, democracy appears to be. So fragile, even the United States, which claims democracy and freedom, is the same. Representative government cannot completely eliminate the people’s indifference to politics. Politics is always only controlled by the elite. This is the paradox of democracy, even if it retreats to ancient Greece. In Stole’s era, direct democracy was also based on a large number of women and slaves who did not have the right to vote. Direct democracy would greatly restrict the formation of human division of labor, the expansion of production, and the accumulation of wealth. What about representative democracy? ? With the formation of nation-states, especially federal super-large-scale states, it has increasingly lost its original democratic essence and has become the plaything of a few people.
The rise of nation-states led to the proliferation of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. Roman-style peace was gone. The Cold War pattern between the US and the Soviet Union effectively countered regional unrest. After the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, US unilateralism prevailed to today’s multilateralism. Began to become the mainstream, large-scale disarmament has been slow, but nuclear weapons no longer seem to be the most feared threat. This nightmare of the twentieth century, in this new century, has reincarnated as terrorism, and what will the latter do? The face of the world is known to the world? Kubrick no longer had the opportunity to make a movie about it.
View more about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb reviews
