This movie brought out a lot of different emotions for me. Not only did I think that the movie was funny and ironic, but it was also at times very disturbing. Same went for the article. One of the main things that stood out to me was how ridiculous most of this all sounded. A lot of the movie was dedicated to a variety of different ways that people could try to stay safe in the event of an actual nuclear attack. The "duck and cover" method is obviously the most ridiculous. If you are living within a ten mile radius -or more, ducking and covering is going to do nothing to help you. It also became almost popular and culturally accepted to build a bomb shelter in your backyard. Not only is this something that shouldn't be considered popular, but once again, depending on location it could be a lot of wasted money. Most of these ideas the government came up with as a way to calm the fears of the people so there was mass freaking out. It was stupid for most of these people to believe this also, but they needed someone/something to turn to. So what would you do? I would have probably done the same thing. (Maybe minus the duck and cover).
It also talked a lot in the article about the suberbs and how they came about. It's interesting to hear that they started because a city was a "target area" so they wanted to disperse the population. This isn't neccessarily a bad idea but again, depending on location its not going to matter where the people move to. They also mentioned building highways for people to be able to evacuate the area. I kept thinking though that if they are close enough that they need to evacuate (say if a bomb was actually set off) they probably shouldn't even bother because they have been exposed to the radiation and that's something that no amount of distance can take care of.
In the article and in the movie it talked not only about being able to survive in a fall out shelter but being able to live one. The thought of actually living in one is creepy enough but the image of a woman cleaning the place and adding some special touches is just disturbing (and kinda funny). I thought it was interesting how they mentioned also that its not only enough to be in the shelter but that you need protection from outside intruders also. They mentioned how people outside might try to force their way into a shelter for safety and the famiyl must be prepared. Even letting one person into the shelter will take up oxygen, space, food, etc. and how much is the faily willing to sacrifice to help others?
My very favorite part of the article though was a quote that read, "My mother tells me that my father's whole response to the Cuban Missle Crisis was to purchase a handgun." haha! What the hell is a gun going to help in a nuclear attack?? If anything the gun would provide a sense of safety but realistically not going to help with anything.
Theres much more I could mention about this movie like the different types of women and all the new words that came about which I find ironic (bombshell, bikini, etc.) and how they were (and still are) used in everyday life. I really liked this movie and found it very interesting!
