Today in seminar we debriefed the movie the day the earth stood still. We discussed if the film was a liberal film or conservative. I concluded that the film was liberal and democratic the reason , why I think is democratic is because it has much more dialog than any other alien movie we have watched. In seminar we discussed if the movie was pro detente or if it was more totalitarian or

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Compare The Thing with The Day the Earth Stood Still. Based on the text and the categories we discussed in class, which one is more conservative and the other more liberal/progressive? Why? Are they critical of the same things or different things? Support your answer from scenes in the movie and/or ideas from the text.
The movie the day the earth stood still, is different from the thing in their political point of view. The thing for example is very patriotic, republican, and anti diplomatic. In the movie The thing killing the monster is the only option. Also the point were diplomacy was given a chance just failed. This happened when the scientist tried to reason with the monster. In contrast with The thing, The Day the Earth Stood Still is democratic and very open to dialog. The alien wanted to talk to all of the representatives of the world to warn them about the fate of the earth. It is also democratic in the sense that it shows how irrational people were in judging the alien. It gives the enemies point of view and makes out of the foreign treat the hero. The movie the day the earth stood still is very liberal it welcomes literally, alien ideas and makes out of them, the more rational answer. The film shows the inflated level of paranoia and hysteria people had. Just when the alien got out of his ship they responded by shooting him. The whole movie is based of thinking rationally with consideration, unlike the thing where the only answer is to kill the threat.

Today we had a seminar discussing the movie The Thing and an over view of the text Look to The Skies. During our seminar we discussed many things such as gender roles, the roles of the main characters, and the historical links that could be made. In the handout it mentioned that gender roles are according to the theme of the movie it could promote them or discourage them. In the case of The Thing it promoted gender roles. One of the main points of discussion was the role that the main characters of power played in the movie. In seminar we agreed that the lieutenant and the scientist were the two figures of main power. The reason why they are the characters of power is because the lieutenant made all decisions and the scientist challenged his orders. The lieutenant seems to be the anti diplomatic, get rid of your enemy type of guy. In contrast the scientist is the one that wants peace and agreement with the visitor. In seminar we discussed what was the purpose and point of view of the movie. We came up or painted the idea that the movie is conservative and anti détente. The reason for this is that thought the movie the visitor is seen as a hostile, blood thirsty, irrational, character. Even if the visitor is smart and capable of extraordinary things, it is still irrational. At the end the visitor is shown to be such a brute that it hurts the only person that offered it friendship and dialogue. What this shows is that if you and your enemy are so different don’t try and talk to it because it is just use less. In the other hand the heroes of the movie try and stop the monster they don’t want to talk to it, they seek to kill it. The movie creates a scenario and gives such vile characteristics to the creature that the only true option is to kill it. This one-way scenario makes the scientist look stupid, and the lieutenant, as a rational logical hero.

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father of scientific management Frederick Winslow Taylor

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In the movie the thing, the authority / experts of the film are the lieutenant and the scientist. The reason why they are the main characters of power is obvious. The lieutenant commands and runs the small base also he has the highest military rank, it being a air force base, it is obvious he was in charge. In addition he took all major decisions. The reason why the scientist holds a position of importance is because, he is the only one that challenges the lieutenant. The scientist also has the more controversial idea. He is the biggest scientist of all the present and even won a Nobel prize. What the movie does with these figures of authority is that they place the leaders in situations where they are or could be responsible for the safety of others. A good example where a decision was made was when the lieutenant chose to kill the thing, this decision was very important. In conclusion I think that the leaders of the film are given great power to shape the future in the film. The power presented to them is present thought the film.

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I am not very sure how the movie the invasion of the body snatchers directly relates with the cold war, but think some connections can be made. Some thing that stood out is how in the movie the pod people are all the same and without feelings or sentiment. I related this to communism where every one is supposed to be equal. This idea also reminded me of the Fat Man reading where it mentions the enemy to be “cold blooded, machinelike opponent…a mechanized Enemy Other.” (Page 6 line 40) How I related the movie to the red scare, is by noticing that in the body snatchers people little by little became this thing. In referral to the red scare and McCarthyism it compares because in the red scare and in McCarthyism people are paranoid of the government and public figures being communist there is a tension or rather phobia of people being communist. Also thought the movie there is a lure to be equal, to have no feeling to just admit the change. (to become a communist) The hero of the movie fights this change, which includes no love and tells the world of this danger. A connection that I made was when the friend of the doctor states that he didn’t have a choice to be free he had to become this creature. I connected this to communist politics were you don’t get to chose you just admit and follow.

Today we had a seminar that included the Fat Man reading Failsafe and Dr. Strange love. In our seminar we first had a debrief of Fat Man and some really good questions were asked and answered. On Thermonuclear War states that nuclear war was possible, probable, and winnable. A question was asked based on this idea. If the book would state such, why would pacifist praise it? The answer that we came up with was since the book made nuclear war so imminent, disarming all nuclear bombs became an even more urgent mater. Some thing else that was discussed about Fat Man was the quote “War is a terrible thing but so is peace.”(page 4 line 4) How we interpreted this question quote was that this quote referred to baby deformities after nuclear war. It infers that during peacetime, there already are baby deformities and after an atom war “ we would mess up our hair a little bit.” The high light of our seminar was when we started to talk about Dr Strange love, and about his stone cold logic. Some thing that was mentioned and that related to the Nazism of his character was the intended genetic cleansing that would happen when selected specimens were to be placed in the mineshafts. This link also pointed out Herman Kahn being compared to Adolf Einchmann due to his nazi like stone cold logic. The comments that followed up I was struck by the most. Peter commented that stone logic was the causer of the Fail Safe fortune. After the comment I analyzed the two possible ways of dealing with the presented situation feeling or logic, as for me logic was the obvious answer. Saul closed the discussion by stating that a reason to do is based on logic, and a reason not to act is sentiment or values. In my opinion a great quote that could be discussed.

Even after the seminar I still had some questions a question. Why would anybody build a doomsday device and how would this be logical?

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Ronald Regan and Mikhail Gorbachev
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Doctor Strange Love Response
I find for doctor strange love to be extremely similar to Fail Safe. The similarities are many like the plane dropping a nuclear bomb on Russia and the U.S. president not being able to call back the strike. The obvious difference is that Doctor Strange Love has more of a playful, satirical tone, while Fail Safe is serious the whole way though. In the end of the movie Doctor Strange Love when all of the generals are in the war room some thing greatly stood out. The nazi scientist that was sitting in a wheel chair gave a very Herman Kahn perspective on the annihilation of the human kind. The nazi scientist explains that we would be able to survive nuclear war and even prosper afterwards. The scientist also gives a perspective that would be hard to grasp, he explains that only fit, and smart people should enter in the mineshafts. Much like Kahn’s perspective of feeding radioactive food to the old. The notion or idea to give hazards to the old so the young could prevail, in the perspective of the scientist to let weak, dumb, people die so the strong smart, different aspects of society could go on. I also was able to make another link between the nazi scientist and Kahn. In the Fat Man Kahn is compared to Adolf Einchmann a nazi SS leader that was many times called the architect of the Holocaust.
I think that the reason why the scientist played the role of a nazi in the movie is because of his idea of human life and preservation. His idea is somewhat genocidal, gene cleansing to rid of the dumb and weak and only to let the strong and smart prevail. In conclusion I find many obvious similarities between Strange Love and Fail Safe and I find some type of similarity between the nazi scientist and Kahn.

Something that i would like to more more about, would be if a nuclear war survivable? Was there any plans for survival? In case of nuclear war how would the president of the U.S. be protected?

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What I think of Khan’s ideas now that I have read a bit more on his work and seen a movie that relates to the topic is that Herman Khan is a nuclear war optimist. What I mean when I say this is that Khan has a somewhat can do attitude. The book he wrote, On Thermonuclear War seems to make or paint the picture that life after a nuclear attack would be bearable and that some how humanity would be able to overcome the tragedy. I still find his ideas hard to analyze. The ideas of having a possible and even very, very probable nuclear war make some of his comments a bit hard to deal with and come to understand. For me it is sickening to think that humanity would be willing to reach this point of destruction and complete death just because two super powers viewed things differently.

Something that I would like to know more about would be to research the level of dialogue and communication that both countries had between each other.

homework- fat man

Herman Khan is an individual that was born in the year of 1922. Khan went to U.C.L.A. and majored in physics. During WW2 he served in the Pacific in a non-combat position. He worked in the making of the hydrogen bomb in a laboratory near Berkley. He also was a part of “rand”, which is a research / think tank of the cold war era. In Fat Man Khan is described as a person that would always think ahead, he would always try to find a different way of viewing things. Khan also wrote a book titled On Thermonuclear War. This book presents the problems of nuclear war as not so big. The book represents the problems of genetic deformities and radiation hazards as something that could be managed.

The main ideas of the book that Herman Khan wrote is that nuclear war is terrible, but that well get over it. The book mentions that nuclear war is possible and winnable. The book gives a lot of different hard to imagine scenarios on nuclear war. In the reading it mentions that after nuclear war deformities in babies would rise but that there are deformities in babies anyway. Another thing it mentions is that in case of a nuclear war old people should eat the food with radiation because they would die before cancer could get them.