The Atomic Cafe (1982)

The decades following the 1950s bring to America considerable historical perspective of a prior era characterized by extreme fear and suspicion of Soviet Russia. Accompanied by patriotic hillbilly songs from the 40s and 50s, retro video clips comprise almost all of the visuals in this documentary about America's response to the Cold War. And what a response it was, as demonstrated by two overarching themes.The first theme was one of hypocrisy. Government and military propaganda devices tried to reassure people that America was a peace loving country, yet one that needed to be prepared for war. Says one clip: "Our object is not aggression; we need not become militaristic, but ..." Another spouts: "This is the destructive power we pray God we will never be called upon to hurl at any nation, but ...". And yet another: "All the world knows we Americans are constructive, not destructive, however ..." Yes, there's always a "but" after sanctimonious feel-good babble.A second theme was paranoia. Quite humorous are the responses to the prospect of a nuclear attack. The bomb shelter craze; the silly "duck and cover" instructions that schoolchildren received; those ominous air-raid sirens; those hideous gas masks. It was all a cultural fad of fear, promulgated by a military industrial complex that craved war.Throughout this era of hypocrisy and paranoia, the distraction of consumerism dominated peoples' lives, egged on of course by the same military industrial complex. A traditional nuclear family and spending money became encouraged values, to counter those evil Russians.In one segment, a man with great earnestness intones: "It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to represent two outstanding shopping centers ... concrete expressions of the practical idealism that built America ...; you'll find beautiful stores ... and of course plenty of free parking for all the cars that we Capitalists seem to acquire. Who can help but contrast the beautiful ... settings of the Arcadia Shopping hub ... with what you'd find under Communism".Americans had valid reasons to fear and repel Hitler and similar dictators. But post WWII, the military industrial complex used the experience of WWII to manipulate a fragile and misinformed American public. Without any narration whatsoever, "The Atomic Café", with skillful editing, uses the voices from that era to convey a cultural subtext that, in retrospect, reeks of deception and sanctimony.

I'm not rating the videos within the film with a ten out of ten; they are disturbing, inaccurate propaganda used to keep US citizens unaware of the horrifying effects of nuclear fallout and "the bomb". During the Cold War many countries lived in fear of the bomb, and with the internet today, online communication and truths being exposed, we know enough not to be fooled by propaganda... right? Well, I'll tell you one thing, all that "go green" environmental anti-pollution stuff all over movies, TV and the news right now is all propaganda.What Atomic Cafe does with these old videos of nuclear testing, mushroom clouds and the portrayal of Japan and Russia as evil monster countries is gather them into a shocking and powerful collection of real propaganda that was seriously aired on the radio and on TV during the 40's and 50's.One of the more disturbing ones is where a cheerful man casually dresses his little boy in a safe-suit and tells him to "hurry and not be late getting to the air raid shelter!", waving goodbye with extreme nonchalance as his kid rides off on a bike. Atomic Cafe shows the corrupt politicians and soldiers in power, some seriously messed up cartoons done for children on the bomb, the racists who discuss the natives of Bikini Island as if they're sub-human and too dumb to understand the destruction of their once-beautiful island, and then there's the disturbing song and full-color cartoon about radioactivity "blowing commies into the ground". A woman claims communism is better in a hypothetical situation and is then degraded by three men (feminism wasn't even a movement back then).To understand just how sadistic, disturbing and frightening these video clips are, you'll have to watch this movie yourself. Just remember that this was all from an era where science was the new solution to all issues, and that things today are very different... and be very, very grateful you live in an era of technology but also very wary of what other propaganda is right in front of your eyes in the modern society.

I just ran this film for a high school Social Studies class. Part documentary, part propaganda, part satire. I, too, remember "duck and cover" civil defense drills mixed in with fire drills. It is particularly interesting to consider this film in a post-9/11 world and think about the messages in the current news media and our security-phobia today. The more things change...the more they stay the same. I saw this film in 1982 when it was released, and it hasn't lost any of it's impact. It is entertaining, informative and a little frightening. There is an aura innocence as well as something sinister captured at a time in the history of the United States.

For the record, I'm sort of a nutjob and against all forms of atomic energy, so you'd think this movie would be right up my alley. But actually I found it quite offensive. This movie suffers from what I like to call "nowism," a distinct present-day phenomenon in which the past is viewed through current-trend glasses, and people of past eras are seen as ignorant, naive, and downright stupid. Nowists excel at taking things out of the original contexts of their times in order to do little of productive value but ridicule the past ironically for their own amusement.I see this film, The Atomic Cafe, as one of the first and finest examples of the nowist agenda. People, especially the middle class and members of the military/industrial complex, are demonstrated (admittedly through their own film records) to be nothing but idiots, warmongers, and sadists. Is this montage of spliced news serials and army propaganda films a true representation of the people of the Atomic age? Of course not. For one thing, the powerful medium known as television was just being invented back then, and these television broadcasts, while appearing primitive and apparently buffoonish, in retrospect are demonstrations of the affects of television as a simple-minded medium. This does not mean that the people in charge of our nation, or even the common soldier or man on the street, had a mind that can best be reflected in the television broadcasts of their day, that we may watch and snicker at in our day. On the contrary, the corny dialogue must be taken with a grain of salt. People are complex creatures, and a person confronted with this new device called television, be it on the street or reading from a script, will not act as they really are. When this film lampoons the media of the past, it unintentionally lampoons the crisis of that time. This film captures the hysteria of the atomic age, yet fails to recognize the imminent and very serious threat all believed was an inevitable result of the cold war: mutual destruction. This fear may seem "funny" to us now, but at the time it was a serious matter.Artistically, the splicing of propaganda videos and instructional tapes and news reels is handled very well, (though anyone who's had to sit through a Michael Moore documentary may groan at the ironic atomic-bomb-themed country music used as the overture). Artistically, I think this is a very capable film. It takes a great deal of talent to splice up a gigantic mass of stock photography and make a cohesive narrative out of it all. But this talent is sadly misused in creating this snickering, snide, snarky, smarmy, one-sided propaganda vehicle. A montage of fast food joints is spliced over Eisenhower giving a riveting speech about America. Mutilated Japanese victims are spliced over a voice-over of one of the A-bomb pilots. The Rosenbergs, arguably the greatest traitors of the era, are shown with unexplained yet palpable sympathy. Why? Why any of these things, except to show Eisenhower to be an idiot, a pilot to be callous, the Rosenbergs to be innocent. But why? What explanation is given for any of these arguments? Nothing but the same tricky ploys of the visual medium those old stock propaganda filmmakers thought they perfected years ago, now ironically used against them. And there can be no new criticism of The Atomic Cafe: it brings nothing new to the table. It has no new content. The old is its only content, and only to be ridiculed. Like a VH1 I LOVE THE ___ episode, it is an indestructible silent windbag, because it reflects back upon itself.Yes, sometimes people in the past seem funny and stupid, LOL, but what can be learned by the common nowist superiority complex, demonstrated in The Atomic Cafe, that is informing the people of right now?