Dr. Strangelove: Or, Who Did a Better Job Playing the President of the United States, George Bush or Peter Sellers?
Norman Horowitz
12.23.2006
In this 60's movie, directed by Stanley Kubrick, ALL of the characters are, to say the least, off the wall, or totally crazy.
Dr. Strangelove, is an eccentric, wheel-chair bound German scientist and presidential advisor meant to be similar to the real-life Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger.
The cast is replete with "wacko" characters and situations that are at the same time very funny, and very tragic.
One of these "nut cases" is George C Scott as a crazed General, Buck Turgidson.
Many of the film's recurring images have to do with symbolic analogies for "sexual things."
Rumors had been circulating among western leaders that the Soviet Union had been at work on what was darkly hinted to be the Ultimate Weapon, a Doomsday device
A Strategic Air Command General Jack D. Ripper is a right-wing paranoid psychotic bomb-group commander who is convinced that the Russians are fluoridating our water in order to weaken American men. Ripper is impotent, and the entire film is replete with suggestions that there is a connection between war, sexual obsession, and male sex drive.
Who am I to say that this is wrong?
Ripper claims that there has been a Russian sneak attack, a "shooting war," and orders Plan R (later identified as "an emergency war plan in which a lower echelon commander may order nuclear retaliation after a sneak attack if the normal chain of command has been disrupted.) He goes on to say... Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own. And for this reason, men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in the uniform of our own troops. But however he comes, we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base...."
One of the B-52 bombers that are involved is called "the Leper Colony." The plane's crew is commanded by Major T. J. "King" Kong, a simple-minded, thick-accented Texan cowboy who says when he becomes convinced that we are a nation at war "... old Ripper wouldn't be giving us plan R unless them Russkies had already clobbered Washington and a lot of other towns with a sneak attack." Kong dons his ten-gallon hat and solemnly announces to his crew, as the soundtrack plays a snare-drum accentuated theme song: "When Johnny Comes Marching Home": "Well, boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear (pronounced 'nookular') combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies... but I want you to remember one thing - the folks back home is a countin' on ya, and by golly, we ain't about to let 'em down. Tell ya somethin' else - this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions an' personal citations when this thing's over with. That goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. Now, let's get this thing on the hump. We got some flyin' to do."
There is, of course, so much more to the film. While there are only a few direct analogies between this movie and the reality we are currently suffering through, I will leave connections to the reader, and if you have forgotten, or never seen this film, give yourself a treat and watch it.
It is so easy once again to compare the "commie threat" depicted in this as well as in so many other movies with "terrorist threat."
One of my favorite moments in the film is when Scott is wrestling with the Soviet Ambassador and the fight is broken up by the President who chastises Scott by telling him something like "General, you know the rules, no fighting in the War Room."
When our President announces his plans for Iraqi victory after the first of the year, the media and the congress will go crazy, and "there WILL be fighting in the War Room."
Although some of my few remaining friends will be critical of my saying this, I will do so anyway.
I would much rather have a President obsessed with getting a blow job in the "oval office" than I would having one that took us into a needless war, and refuses to find a way out of it other then "WINNING IT."
Norman Horowitz
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