Paranoia & the American ConscienceDr. Strangelove

All the President’s Men&

Primary Colors

Ula Gabrielle Gaha

Paranoia• Dr. Strangelove: satires threat of

nuclear annihilation• All the President’s Men: power

surrounding Watergate Scandal• Primary Colors: ethical dilemmas on

the campaign trail

ThesisParanoia results from the process of

becoming conscious of political instability & complexity

Instability:The Arms Race• 1949 Soviet Union announced successful

explosion of an atomic bomb• January 31, 1950 Truman ordered Atomic

Energy Commission to develop the hydrogen bomb

• 1952 America detonated a hydrogen bomb 700 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima

• August 8, 1953 Soviet Union announces possession of their own hydrogen bomb

Source: Maland (699)

Dr. Strangelove The Pentagon War Room

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The Big Board:A Message of Omniscient

Power

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Complexity: The Watergate Scandal

& All the President’s Men

• Lighting and mise-en-scene

• Shrouded in mystery, the complex unraveling scandal feels oppressive and gloomy

(Quart and Auster 55)

Paranoia as Contagious

• The pace of the film reflects Woodward and Bernstein’s experience

• “Everyone is involved”

Movement from dark to light emphasizes Woodward and Bernstein’s experience as

they gather information

http://dvd.monstersandcritics.com/reviews/article_1134866.php

Surveillance:Paranoia as Contagious

http://dvd.monstersandcritics.com/reviews/article_1134866.php

Political Instability & Complexity: Primary Colors

• Modern 24 hour news cycle fosters paranoia on the campaign trail

• Instability of a shift in power with Presidential elections

• Scandals feed a candidate’s desire for gaining & maintaining power

Freddy Picker:The Political Scapegoat

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Libby Holden:The Sacrificial Lamb

Would the Stantons have spared Picker if Holden had not committed suicide?

“Our job is to make it [the system] clean”

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Works Cited• All the President’s Men. Dir. Alan J. Pakula. Perf. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford.

Warner Brothers, 1976.

• Burgess, Jackson. “The “Anti-Militarism” of Stanley Kubrick.” Film Quarterly 18.1 (1964): 4-11

• Corrigan, Timothy J. A Short Guide to Writing about Film. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007.

• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Columbia Pictures, 1964.

• Maland, Charles. “Dr. Strangelove (1964): Nightmare Comedy and the Ideology of Liberal Consensus.” American Quarterly 31.5 (1979): 697-717.

• Primary Colors. Dir. Mike Nichols. Perf. John Travolta and Emma Thompson. MCA/Universal Pictures, 1998.

• Quart, Leonard and Albert Auster. American Film and Society Since 1945. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002.

• Scott, Ian. American Politics in Hollywood Film. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.