Media Stereotyping & Violence
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During the final half of the 20th century, the U.S. and former Soviet Union were engaged in an ideological struggle commonly known as the Cold War. During this era, fear, paranoia and suspicion often ruled politics, the military and the media in American society. Also during this era, politicians, the military and the media conspired to create a “culture of security” among the American public. The American public’s fear of nuclear annihilation was in part ameliorated by the normalization of war and violence by politicians, the military and the media. Fear of nuclear attack made Americans supportive of policies that vigorously defended the national interest. The Cuban Missile Crisis hit close enough to home that Americans were ready to believe the worst about the Russians, and political, military and media fear-mongering exacerbated those feelings. Such fear and paranoia and the aggression they engender is the subject of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, 1964). In this satirical black comedy, Cold War politics and nuclear annihilation are the subject matter. The film portrays how politicians, military personnel and the media are complicit in whipping up fear and paranoia that ultimately results in bad policies. A low-level military commander inadvertently launches an attack on the Soviet Union, triggering Russia’s Doomsday Machine that will
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ereotyping of a scapegoat or “other” that they paint as a villain much as President Reagan declared the former Soviet Union the “evil empire” just before declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!” (In relation to the Berlin Wall). In Dr. Strangelove we see social institutions are parodied for how they portray the enemy in order to make it “acceptable” to kill them or use other violent means to maintain control over them. For example, Major Kong says, “Nuclear combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies” (Kubrick). General Ripper is even less sympathetic to the “other”, and in his speech to his troops about the Russian threat he sounds eerily similar to President Bush warning us about our “new kind” of enemy – Muslim extremists – “Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own” (Kubrick). Of course, the media and the U.S. government tried to make it clear to the American public that not all Muslims are bad Muslims. Nevertheless, by painting our enemy as an evil “other” with no regard for human life (not even their own); we are able to normalize our actions against them. As one analyst recently noted about our war on terrorists, “The U.S. is in a cultural war with parts of the Islamic world that, in their terms, thr
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Approximate Word count = 2389
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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