Learning to Love the Bomb Essay Essay Example

Learning to Love the Bomb Essay Essay Example Learning to Love the Bomb Essay Essay Learning to Love the Bomb Essay Essay Essay Topic: Dr Strangelove At first glimpse to the nonreader filmgoer this film looks like an early 70’s feeble effort to demo the farcical side of war. I was prepared from something somewhat humourous and mildly entertaining. However. I was shocked to happen that I was riveted to the plot line during the full film. absorbing so many symbolically charged characters and duologues that I was practically fascinated while I worked out the significances and messages that Stanley Kubric was slyly relaying to me through the medium of movie. Kubric’s movie. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Love the Bomb. is a black comedy with some really interesting messages about work forces. gender and war. Symbolism abounded in a assortment of signifiers and was so smartly disguised that it took several minutes for the spectator to experience the full impact of Kubric’s message. See the gap scene. set to the background music of really cockamamie love affair music we are introduced to two elephantine military planes in the act of refueling during flight. The first feeling is that of strife. War-time aircraft and love affair music in a scene that lasts what seems likes five full proceedingss. The manager prolongs the scene long plenty for the audience to go leery of the underlying sexual symbolism of two planes copulating before he cuts to his following instantly sexually charged scene of a perfect imitation of a US Army officer. with an tremendous cigar stick outing obscenely from his oral cavity. As the film continues. so do the sexual insinuation. By the terminal of the film Kubric’s message is clear. but it takes clip to construct us up before we reach complete realisation of his intent. which in itself is besides interesting. The first compelling character that we are introduced to is the US Army General and his of all time present cigar. The cigar is evidently a phallic symbol. It rises when the General is excited and sags lamely when the letdown of his work forces overcomes him. He is an interesting character chiefly because of his compulsion with â€Å"bodily fluids† and what he feels to be the infiltration of his â€Å"pure essence† . This is the viewer’s foremost existent hint to the ties between work forces. gender and war that Kubric is seeking to relay. The General’s name is Jack D. Ripper. Taking his name from a sexual psychopathic was no error. Ripper is obsessed with the fact that he can non blurt out during sexual intercourse and attempts to happen the reply to this quandary by faulting the Russians for fluoridizing the American H2O supply. There are several interesting imitations here get downing with the outward visual aspect of ultimate maleness. that of an American Army General. his of all time present cigar. and the tremendous gun he pulls out as he starts hiting at the soldiers that are seeking to salvage him. He is every inch a sexual sociopath. Ripper is more interesting when seen from the point of view that work forces and their obsessional sexual issues wreak mayhem on the remainder of the universe. Ripper’s psychopathologic behaviour leads him to believe that he must take issues into his ain custodies and declare war on Russia. even if that means overruling the President of the United States. He is bound and determined to eliminate anyone who stands in the manner of his sexual disfunction. The General moves swimmingly from faulting others. to quashing himself. right into violent reverberations for himself and everyone else. Closely connected to Jack D. Ripper is an English Officer in the US on an Officer Exchange Program. Although the imitation of the English Officer is humourous. his name. Mandrake. keeps us on Kubric’s way. Mandrake root is an herb that is frequently used in male powerlessness. for virility and as an aphrodisiac. This is interesting because of the interplay between Mandrake and Ripper. Straight-laced. foreign or different. and a spot feminine Mandrake is the complete antonym of Ripper. He besides tries to comfort Ripper that his â€Å"bodily fluids† are absolutely normal and that he has no job utilizing them. Several times Ripper asks Mandrake to assist him feed the tremendous gun he is exerting approximately. and Mandrake’s response is rather feminine when he lays prostrate on the floor impotently. The sexual symbols grow more legion and less hidden as the film progresses. We are introduced to the little group of work forces on the bomber who are sent to transport out the orders. The pilot in charge. Major Kong. plays an interesting function in presenting a different type of imitation of work forces. As opposed to Ripper who was psychopathologic and sexually dysfunctional. Major Kong was the All-American cowpuncher. Honest. naif. and non afraid to acquire the occupation done. There are several scenes in which the major attempts to drop the bombs he is transporting and discoveries that they are stuck. Although his work forces can non pull off to work out the job Major Kong leaves his station at the planes helm and goes to the underbelly of the plane to seek to repair the wiring. He succeeds but when the bomb drops he is siting it. the bomb between his legs. This is the largest phallic symbol used in the film and the sing the pilot’s name. Major Kong. it is no surprise. However. Kubric has the Major ride the bomb to its mark where it so explodes in an tremendous mushroom cloud. The detonation which is evidently symbolic of the conclusiveness of climax and the madness that drives work forces to accomplish that terminal appears to be a perennial subject. The male sex thrust as connected to war is once more driven place by Kubric. Furthermore. he builds on this subject and gives us a footing for understanding with the characters and plotting that occurs in the War Room. It is here that we meet the President. whose sexually illicit name refers to sexual zones of a adult female. and the really vocal Buck Turgidson. The imitation of Buck is absolutely summed up in the significance of his name. The term vaulting horse means stud while the word turgid means swollen. These two chief characters do most of the speaking in a really big room. The President mimics the properties of his female name and is really submissive and feminine. His address is fretful and excusatory on the phone and most of his controversy is with Buck. They argue across a big tabular array and are so far off they practically have to shout to be heard. Buck merely gets excited when he sees chances for devastation whereas the President is ready even to destruct his ain bombers to maintain the peace. The functions of these two characters are symbolic of the male versus female positions. Even the great distance across the room from which they speak contributes to the feeling that they are coming from different points of position. The female position of peace and harmoniousness as opposed to the male position of domination. As a character survey Buck portrays several properties of male domination. He is ever the first to talk. overbearing when he communicates. frequently ill-mannered and junior-grade. ever stuffing tonss of gum into his oral cavity and thwacking obscenely. and moues like a yearling when he is asked to act. He uses tactics to overmaster the others by standing on his chair. glowering rebelliously with those who disagree. and going physically violent to acquire his manner if all other tactic fail. Of all the characters he is most wishful to transport out the war programs. for no other intent than to win. The sexual insinuation associated with Buck relate to the lone female in the film who we meet briefly before he is called into the War Room. Kubric’s pick to do Buck’s love involvement a secretary much younger than himself and who is ever shown barely clad in a Bikini and high heels dramas along with the typical male stereotype. At one point in the film Buck receives a phone call from his kept woman. He tries to guarantee her that he doesn’t want her for her organic structure but â€Å"deeply respects her as a human being. † He so promises he’ll be back shortly to â€Å"take attention of her needs† shortly. Buck besides was unable to hold intercourse with his kept woman before the meeting as he was busy traveling to the bathroom and so was called off. Kubric is mocking the male demand to replace sex for war. Another interesting facet about the war room is the â€Å"Big Board† that is set up as the background. It is an tremendous map of Russia with the locations of all the bombers bleeping around the boundary lines of the state. As the planes are all given the â€Å"go† codification. the blinking visible radiations start their class toward the boundary line of Russia. The first plane to traverse the boundary line will so trip the unwanted reaction of the Russians. This is really symbolic of the sperm’s rushing to the egg. All the sperm racing to be the first to occupy the egg. One of the last characters introduced is Dr. Strangelove. Although he has little do in the film his symbolic presentations are truly Kubric’s implicit in message. First. the name Strangelove is an accurate portraiture of what’s been go oning in the film from the beginning. This unfamiliarity or perversion of love is the kernel of Kubric’s subject. Dr. Strangelove himself has several symbolic issues as a character. First is his inability to maintain his arm from involuntarily toasting Hitler. Second is his sudden remedy from stationariness from his wheelchair when he stands vertical from so much exhilaration. Although both of these Acts of the Apostless are sexually symbolic. the cause for the exhilaration is the disclosure. As the work forces sit in the War Room they discuss the possibilities and reverberations of atomic war with Russia. Dr. Strangelove suggests taking a little community of people and populating in belowground mines. This prospect doesn’t seem appealing until he mentions that in order to animate all the lives lost from the desolation of atomic war each adult male will necessitate to hold ten female spouses. The treatment becomes lively and animated as the work forces imagine the possibilities and so get down to denominate appealing sexual attributes the adult females must possess. Suddenly the immanent day of reckoning that awaits them with the entire obliteration of the planet doesn’t expression so bad with a 10:1 ratio of adult females to work forces. and they find themselves looking frontward to doomsday after all. It seems as though Kubric is seeking to portray the fact that work forces use utmost state of affairss such as war and entire devastation as a tool to open up doors to see sexual phantasies that would otherwise be tabu. Kubric’s jeer of this attitude relays his thought that this is the most farcical thought of all. and all of a sudden the rubric makes perfect sense. The film ends with orgasmic detonation after detonation of H bombs. merely as it began with the arousal of military planes. Stanley Kubric’s penetration and sentiment about the relationship of sexual compulsions. power and war were astutely masked in the symbolism that abounded everyplace in the movie. but even to the untrained oculus his message came through loud and clear. REFERENCES Dr Strangelove or: How I learned to Love the Bomb. Dir. Stanley Kubric. 1964.