The End of the World Essay -- Movies Films Science Fiction Essays

The closure of the WorldIn writing definitively about American films of the nineteen fifties, Douglas Brode refers to the societal hysteria resulting from fear of both the communist threat and the possibility of nuclear war. Accompanying this general state of mind was the emergence of the science assembly film as a major genre. Titles in the genre dealt with delusion topics ranging from alien invasion (The Thing, 1951, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956), to biologial missing golf links (The Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954), to the bizarre side-effects of nuclear contamination (The Incredible decrease Man, 1957), or to actual nuclear war (The World, the Flesh and The Devil, 1959). A nonher provoke example of this last category is Stanley Kramers On the margin, released in the last calendar month of a decade which would be remembered for its omnipresent bomb agriculture. As the exploit of the decade approached, some changes were apparent. At the same time that exchan ges amid Eisenhower and Khrushchev were delivery new, less frightening discourses to the political arena, Kramers film in the bomb culture tradition negotiated new approaches to the depiction of the nuclear threat. As is so oftentimes the case in genre studies, On the Beach should be considered in equipment casualty of how it is representative of the context from which it emerged, but also in terms of what makes it unique. Through such an examination, as well as a sketch of the impact that the film had upon its audiences, I hope to discuss On the Beach as integral in a culture of the bomb which wheel spoke proactively and unequivocally against nuclear armament.Bomb Culture & Science Fiction in the FiftiesAs the notion of an all-out nuclear confrontation became a viable possibility, w... ...reatly changed from Arnolds day) for their evocation of some disjoint of each of us which reaches toward others in defense against a world which can be truly frightening. On the Beach is m uch the same. Aesthetically and narratively, it is impressive it would be difficult not to be moved by the final honest exchange between Admiral Bridie and Lieut. Hosgood the reflection of the young husband and wife as they think back their first meeting or the chilling void of a grey, black-and-blue and black world in which people used to live. Produced as part of the culture under- the-bomb, On the Beach speaks memorably of that specific context produced as a carefully planned passionate requiem on the speciality and vulnerability of human existence, it transcends this context, and reminds us today that no matter what the threat, as long as there is the human spirit, there is still time.