the bomb
The atomic bomb upended life on Earth in the second half of the 20th century. Yet even as the U.S. arsenal ages and fears mount about nukes in the hands of North Korea and Iran, the apocalyptic technology doesn’t generate the same public reaction that it did at the height of the Cold War.
Perhaps a new century requires a new approach. Organizers of the Feb. 5 Union South screening of the 2016 experimental documentary The Bomb seek to place nuclear weapons back in the popular psyche.
Co-directed by filmmaker Smriti Keshari, the project collages megatons of media, presenting a mesmerizing testimony to the technology’s awesome power. The Bomb is organized thematically: Cold War-era tutorials on keeping tidy homes to guard against fireballs give way to irradiated bodies painted by Hiroshima survivors. The film opens with military marches, which appear quaint in comparison to humankind’s harnessing of atomic power.
“The film shows an idyllic America that thinks it is prepared to survive a nuclear attack with little real consequences,” says Tara Drozdenko, the managing director of the Outrider Foundation, a group that seeks an end to the threats of nuclear war and climate change. “It kind of pulls back the veil of the lies that we live with every day.”
Drozdenko, who holds a doctorate in plasma physics, will moderate a conversation with Keshari; Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; and Tom Weis, an assistant professor in the industrial design program at the Rhode Island School of Design. The group will discuss artistic approaches to confronting the possibility of nuclear war.
Keshari drew inspiration for The Bomb from co-director Eric Schlosser’s 2009 book Command and Control, which digs into the history of accidental nuclear detonations and the flaws in the system designed to alert the U.S. of an incoming attack.
“There’s an entire system, processes, timing, and reasoning that led us to this reality,” says Keshari. “In order to understand how we’ve gotten here, we must first recognize the emotions nuclear weapons evoke — their allure, their beauty, their construct, and the ultimate death wish at the heart of them.”
Keshari enlists minimalist electronica band The Acid to provide the eerie musical backdrop; the only other voices in the film are in archival clips. The Bomb was first screened as a video installation, with the band playing live. Though the soundtrack is a highlight, in the most terrifying segments of the film, silence reigns.
While the Cold War is ostensibly over and disarmament treaties stand — for the moment, anyway — Drozdenko urges audiences to question their representatives on nuclear policy and crumbling infrastructure. She adds that the New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia will end in 2021, opening the possibility of an expansion in nuclear arsenals. Trump has already pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prevented the U.S. from constructing land-based ballistic missiles carrying nuclear bombs in a certain range.
“The status quo will remain until citizens make change a political priority,” says Drozdenko. “There isn’t anything out of our hands.”
-----------------
[Editor's note: This article has been changed to note the correct title of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.]
