SCREENCRAFT ANALYSIS

RTV 4930 - Documentary Production Workshop

Hill - Spring 1999

Steve Mizrach

Wednesday, February 24^th, 1999

As a historical documentary, the Atomic Café seems to work in a curious fashion without any of the usual documentary devices such as 'talking head' professional scholars and historians, narration, onscreen text, or a narrative 'skeleton' to frame the story. There are no identifiable protagonists, villains, or other characters to identify with; there is no underlying dramatic tension to draw the viewer into the video. It contains no interviews and no present-day footage. Instead, the video seamlessly brings together clips from various newsreels, TV commercials, government films, Hollywood pictures, and other visual materials from the period of the 1950s concerning what life was like under the shadow of the atom bomb. Many documentarians would probably not undertake such a risky project, since without framing devices one might expect audiences to lose the "point" of whatever the project might be. Although a historical montage might possibly be "pointless," simply providing people with a melange of contemporaneous events, the Atomic Café definitely has a point, even if it buries it along with tongue in cheek.

The sequences that are chosen by the editors and producers of Atomic Café provide an ironic tension instead of a dramatic tension, and it works. On the one hand, segments showing the destructive power of the atom bomb clearly awe and terrify the viewer and probably help remind him of the horror of living during that period. (Admittedly, modern viewers are not so removed from the possibility of atomic destruction. Although the Cold War is considered over and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have moved their clock of destruction back to 10 minutes from midnight, the Soviet Union and the U.S. still continue to point thousands of nuclear warheads at each other, ready to launch at a moments' notice.) On the other hand, the somewhat awkward civil defense "advertorials" and other advice hawked by the government are quirkily funny. One can't help but laugh at the horrific acting and dialogue delivery of the spokespeople, or the way in which they casually discuss fallout shelter preparation in the same tone of voice as giving teenagers dating advice. It is strangely ironic to see a cartoon turtle giving children advice on what to do when at atomic weapon hits their school, as if ducking under their desk would prevent them from vaporization by a hydrogen bomb.

It is the curious juxtaposition of the deadly seriousness people seem to have held atomic peril in, with the bizarre surreality of their responses to it, that provides the tension inherent in the film. Perhaps it's too much to expect of any culture to deal with the end of the world with complete gravitas ; being one of the first cultures in the history of the Earth to deal with it as a literal threat (as opposed to a religio-mythical apocalyptic possibility), 20^th century America seems to have handled it with a combination of curious responses -- "defusing" it by circulating it into pop culture, and denying it by proposing ridiculously absurd drills and exercises for survival. (Although, once again, the idea of a 'winnable' nuclear war seems to have raised its ugly head once again in the 1980s Reagan Era, with Cap Weinberger and other officials once again discussing with aplomb how to minimize "collateral damage" from the conflagration.) The pop culture examples are really quirky and fun, with 'atomic' creeping into the names of cars, pets, fashions, convenience foods, sports leagues, and comic books. And, of course, "cafes."

The real bite of the film is the extent to which it shows how the government of the 1950s casually lied to the American people about atomic matters. Although in 1990s America few people would doubt the extent to which the U.S. government lies to its people, we have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Back in the 50s, people bought the government propaganda lock, stock, and barrel. So the viewer sits back with a knowing smile as government spokesmen tell people to patiently sit inside their homes after atomic tests when the wind shifts until fallout clouds pass by (as if nuclear fallout was just like a bad case of smog), or tell soldiers that they are at no risk whatsoever from observing an atomic test a few miles away in a dirt trench, or tell others that atomic radioactivity is mostly harmless, probably not much worse than what one gets from a dental X-ray. Today we know they were pumping cesium through the bodies of guinea pigs in this quixotic effort to get people to ease away their fear of the power of the atom. Like the rest of the populace, either these spokespeople are willfully ignorant of the truth of atomic dangers, or they are lying through their teeth about them. One isn't sure which possibility is worse.

Although some people might criticize such an absurdist and whimsical way of treating such a weighty topic as the threatened destruction of all life on Earth, the documentary producers are in essence really only attempting to recapture, through their choice of video clips, the inherent 'absurdity' of living through that time period. The juxtaposition works well because the "serious" clips cannot be taken seriously, and the "funny" clips still contain a certain gnawing hint of dread at the back of them - like the laughter of the guy waiting at the gallows. One suspects that part of the surreal attitude of Americans toward atomic weapons stems from the fact that they never experienced direct atomic attack - and they were probably well sheltered from the sights of what postwar Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like. Thus, they had to believe what the scientists and doctors and generals were telling them - there was no real evidence to draw on to the contrary.

As I've suggested, the choice to do the Atomic Café with no narration or framing whatsoever could have been a massive flop. The viewer gets the message, however, that the documentary attempts to document an age of irony, by reproducing its sights and sounds in an ironic fashion. However, the clips seem to flow well from one to the other, and there are clips that are successfully used to make careful transitions from one thematic area to another. The popular music from the period - light, fluffy, and totally unreflective as it is - helps add to the ironic effect - fortunately, it does not overwhelm the dialogue in the clips themselves. Although the producers could have opted to take modern footage of sites from the atomic age (such as closed down 1950s testing sites), to interview professional historians (or even just people who lived through the period) on what living during that time was like, or to add commentary and narration, all of these things would have taken away from the ironic tension of the film. By not beating people over the head with the message that mankind is really, really stupid when it comes to playing with atomic fire, and that its technological prowess seems to have well outstripped its wisdom, the Atomic Café nevertheless carries that message effectively.

Not every documentary needs to have a 'point,' I suppose, and some purist documentarians would insist that if one wants to express an opinion about a historical period or event (instead of just describing it), they should do it through "P.O.V." films. Still, the Atomic Café does have one, and it communicates it effectively through subtlety. Too many documentaries lose their message through heavy-handedness, and beating the viewer over the head. Atomic Café works more like the Madison Avenue whose heyday it seizes - nailing you through jingles and ballads. If I would have added anything to the Atomic Café, I probably would have tried to get a hold of 1950s era Soviet films on nuclear preparation and readiness (although those might be harder to obtain, even in post-glasnost Russia.) My suspicion is that the Russians were probably far less immune to lying to their own people about nuclear dangers, and lurking behind the socialist-realist aesthetic of their films and popular culture was probably a subtle hint of farcicality as well. After all, they peddled Stalinism to their people with a straight face. Combining the two would show that the absurdity of the atomic age was not just a purely American phenomenon.

In conclusion, the Atomic Café is an excellent "period piece," focusing not on the totality of what life was during a historical epoch, but instead zeroing in on a particular cultural phenomenon -- the lack of a response to the threat of nuclear war in anything remotely resembling grounding in reality during that time. In many ways, summarizing an epoch with overarching cultural generalizations seems kind of pointless (although we like to do this with "the 50s," "the 60s," and so many other decades, as if people kind of magically switch identities at ten year intervals), although it can be more interesting and fruitful to probe one particular aspect of the national psyche during that time. Atomic Café allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions about how America reacted to the Bomb during that time. However, one cannot help but draw the conclusion that this response, like so many others in history, showed a common American reflex of avoiding difficult truths.