I will limit this analysis to two observations, due in large part to the overall scope of the picture, and length of analyses. I’ve enjoyed watching this film so much, that I think I’ll come back to it as a possible final paper. The multiple meanings one discovers in Stanley Kubrick’s film Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Bomb, are abundant, due in large part to the films use of satire. With what opinion does one walk away with after watching this film? Here we see the human element (man) taken out—powerless to technology (machine). Yet, it was man who acted as architect, designing the different “fail safes,” (paranoid) procedures of communication, and atomic weaponry; the machine(s) just functioned as they were supposed to—as servants.
An excellent example of paranoia is at the beginning of the film, when General Ripper calls Peter Sellers’ character and asks him if he recognizes his voice, tells him he’s implemented “code red,” and that the United States can’t allow the enemy to disrupt/taint our “precious bodily fluids.” We the viewer laugh, for we recognize the obvious: The General, the chief operator, the one individual with the most responsibility, access, and power on a military base—has lost his fucking mind. We can relate this film to Freud from two perspectives.
First, in Sigmund Freud’s, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Freud discusses the use of “double meaning proper, or play upon words” (40). Freud writes:
Here no violence is done to the word; it is not cut up into its separate syllables, it does not need to be subjected to any modification, it does not have to be transferred from the sphere it belongs to […] Exactly as it is and as it stands in the sentence, it is able, thanks to certain favorable circumstances, to express two different meanings. (40)
Found on walls and flags throughout the film, the slogan “peace is our profession,” acts as “double meaning proper.” The individuals who are suppose to keep us safe are insane. This coalesces well with satire, for satire relies heavily on irony in its exposing of “human follies.” Here Kubrick is presenting the military industrial complex—as satire. Human folly leads to the destruction, not just of the individual players, but of the whole world. The system we have implemented is illogical. In Jackson Burgess’ “The Anti-Militarism of Stanley Kubrick,” Burgess contends:
The curious thing about Dr. Strangelove as a satire is that General Ripper, Col. Kong, “Bat” Guano—the ones who effectively blow up the world—are shown not as incompetents or villains, but as lovely lunatics, and when the fireballs unfold in the final frames and the girl begins to sing “We’ll Meet again,” the picture has allied itself with their lunacy, leaving the viewer all by himself with no place to stand” (4).
In many respects this is an anti-war film told through the lens of comedy. We (the viewer), try to align ourselves with the most human, sympathetic, logical character (the President), when he proclaims “war is insane,” but we laugh at his ridiculous/ironic exclamations, and one of the film’s most famous lines, “Gentleman you can’t fight in here . . . this is the war room!”, when General Turgidson is fighting with the Russian Ambassador.
Second, this taps into Freud’s description of the “analogy,” and how it functions alongside the joke (96). Freud comments, “There is a feeling . . . which tells me this is a joke, I can pronounce this to be a joke even before the hidden essential nature of jokes has been discovered” (96). There is humor (recognizing the analogy) in watching the ex-Nazi scientist (Peter Sellers), awkwardly stepping out of his wheel chair like a new born calf, and shouting “Mein Führer, I can walk” with such resonating theatrical ecstasy. This is our “go to guy!”
In the end the scale of everything, from the maps on the wall to the “incommunicado” bombers in the air—is out of man’s reach. We have overstepped our bounds through our own arrogant, technological prowess. I find this to be an excellent film for further/deeper study.
Works Cited
Burgess, Jackson. "The Anti-Militarism of Stanley Kubrick." Film Quarterly 18.1 (1964): 4-11. Web. 7 Feb. 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210143.
Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989.
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