Atomic Cafe

"The Cold War isn't thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting."
-Richard Nixon

The documentary The Atomic Cafe was released on March 17, 1982, approximately nine years before the official end of the Cold War. The documentary is made up of propaganda issued by the American government to show what to do in the event of nuclear attack and in some cases what could happen if nuclear war were to occur. Footage of the aftermath of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also shown. This footage itself is very disturbing. The filmmakers made it even more disturbing by adding a voice over explaining, to Americans, that there should be no worry over exposure to radiation. The filmmaker's did an amazing job presenting the information in that way. Juxtaposing videos of American families following, what now seem like, ridiculous precautions against nuclear war with actual footage of effects of atomic bombs. Arranging the footage in this way made you understand why Americans would take all the precautions. If we bombed Japanese cities in order to end a war, why wouldn't Russia do the same to us?

Having been born in 1990, therefore living for only the last technical year of the Cold War, this footage and information always surprises me. In a way I'm thankful I didn't have to be a kid during that time. How terrifying it must have been to live in a big city during that time? The article "Civilian Threat, the suburban Citadel, and Atomic Age American Women" states that in New York City, children in elementary schools were forced to wear dog tags to school. When I was in High School my band teacher told us he was one of the children who had to wear dog tags. His teachers told him point blank "you must wear the dog tags in case of a nuclear attack and your body is burnt beyond recognition." Although it seems goofy now, it must have been scary to be a kid then. The article also addresses fallout shelters and the responsibilities of men and women within the shelters. I couldn't help but laugh when I read that the wife's responsibility was to make the shelter feel homey and safe. A gun was also highly suggested to be included in a fallout shelter. The article states "...fallout shelter literature instead emphasized that one should be equipped to kill potentially radioactive interlopers -neighbors, perhaps, who could not afford to build fallout shelters of their own or had lacked the motivation to do so." The idea of the women holding down the shelter while men went out to shot any individual exposed to radiation reminded me of a zombie survival film. So odd to imagine. In Atomic Cafe, there is a scene shown with a little boy in a protective suit made by his father. Another scary and now humorous example of the extreme attempts made by American families to protect themselves against nuclear attack.

At the end of the film, clips of propaganda were put together to simulate Americans taking cover during a nuclear attack. This is another part of the film I thought was done well. It was interesting to see and imagine the chaos of cities and towns in the event of nuclear war. Although it did end again quite ridiculously with a family sorting amongst the "wreckage" of their home, (The father, telling his children that they had lucked out and it could have been much worse.) it still had an impact on audiences in 1982, still awaiting an end to the Cold War.