Perhaps instead of the Cold War/Post-Cold War dichotomy, it is something else. Consider the humor of Austin Powers with that of Dr. Strangelove–and I don’t mean toilet humor vs. non-toilet humor. Rather the use of “irony”. In Strangelove, there are no obvious jokes, except the face full of Coke. When General Ripper yells, “Mandrake, in the name of her majesty the Queen and the Continental Congress, get over here and feed me that belt!!” it’s not an in-your-face joke. Or more accurately, it’s not been foreshadowed, hinted at, and then announced before arriving. In Austin Powers everything is painfully obvious; "Here, we’re making a joke…isn’t this joke fun…hey everybody, we’re making fun of a genre (but we kid because we love)… "
In Strangelove, the humor is in the writing. Everything is played straight. The jokes are subtle and woven into the plot, like a tapestry. In Austin Powers, there isn’t a subtle thing to be found. The joke writing is uninspired, and it all comes from the acting. Nothing is played straight–except when played sarcastically straight.
So I guess I might suggest that the generational gap has less to do with memories of the Cold War, and more to do with the humor Zeitgeist.
I don’t think it’s a generational thing. I’m 27 and two years ago I showed this to my roomates who were one, two, and three years older than myself, and none of them got it. At all.
Kubrick once said, confront as man with a nuclear alarm in his office and you have a documentary. If the news reaches him in his living room, you have a drama. And if it catches him in the bathroom, you have a comedy. Gen. Tugidson (George C. Scott) is in the bathroom when the news reaches him.
The battle scenes at Burpleson Air Force Base are particularly chilling. They were filmed with a hand held camera (in 16mm, I think), to duplicate newsreel footage. I don’t think those scenes would have been nearly as effective in color.
Also, given the enormity of the events being played out (the end of the world), consider how absurdly small the locales are.
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. I am saying only ten to twenty million people killed, tops. Depending on the breaks.”
I have read the original book fail-safe, which I picked up at a used bookstore, and I can’t image that Strangelove is not a deliberate parody.
Chapter two starts off in the “War Room” which is described as being completely dark except for a table in the middle and the big map on the wall (I think the book may even have called it the “big board”). Sound familiar? Failsafe (the novel) even has a character, a general, who has a revelation about women that General Ripper’s character seems to be a parody of. After reading Failsafe, I was taken aback to read that Strangelove was supposedly based on another book.
I absolutely love Strangelove, and tonight I checked Fail-Safe out of the library so latter I might post back on how the two movies compare.
I thought the story of how Slim Pickens was hired is amusing. According to the various interviews and commentaries that I’ve seen:
When they needed another actor to play maj. Kong, Kubrick complained that “You can’t replace Peter Sellers with another actor! You can only replace him with the real thing!” – so they hired Slim Pickens.
When Slim shows up on set, dressed in cowboy hat and boots and talking with an accent, the actors remember thinking “Oh, that great; he arrived already in character” – nope, it was just Slim Pickens being himself.
“You can’t let them in here! They might see the Big Board!”
The first time I saw Strangelove, I’ll come clean and say I didn’t get it. But how old was I? Ten, prolly. Seen it a few times since, and I get it now. 'Tis pretty damn funny.
And for the record, I’m not old enough to really remember Ronald Reagan.
Every hawkish, military stereotype in the movie made me think of dear old dad, and laugh.
My father is really a great fellow, but the associations I could make with the way he talked all while I was growing up make the movie all the more funny for me.
I laughed out loud in the theater when Maj. Kong blurted out, “We didn’t come this far to dump this thing in the drink.” Sounded just like dad.
I really only signed up to the board to show my displeasure at the attitude of some of the posters here!
First of all, I’m 18 years old. I know a little about the Cold War. Granted, I’m sure it’s not all that we deserve to be educated on, but maybe the school systems are thinking it’s enough(not like history hasn’t been botched in text books before). But I did appreciate Dr. Strangelove. It’s become one of my favourite movies, I thought it was excellent and hilarious. I don’t think people my age are too young to appreciate the film, nor are they too ignorant. I think it’s just a matter of taste…
Damn. I couldn’t have been more then 14 when I saw it, the Cold War ended when I was 8 or 9, but I really enjoyed the film. Mayber I didn’t appreciate it as much as I would have if I had lived through the cold war, but I consider it one of my favorite movies stil.
Well, I almost wish that were the case, but I’m describing the initial reactions after the class had watched the film but before any class discussion, so I don’t think teaching methods have much to do with it. I mean, it’s hard to show a video wrong, unless you can’t get the machine to work in the first place.
The more I think about it, js_africanus’ theory is plausible – it is a very different sort of humor than most of these students had been exposed to. I don’t know if that’s really a generational difference or a mainstream pop culture vs. cult classic thing; obviously, there are younger viewers who do enjoy dark and subtle humor (welcome to the board, Eva Bombshell!) and older ones who don’t. (Come to think of it, if you showed the film to a completely randomized group of forty-year-olds, it’s entirely possible that most of them wouldn’t get it either.)
Are we talking about “enjoying” it or “getting” it? If an American high-school student enjoys “Just Married” to “Dr. Strangelove,” that’s a matter of taste. If the student doesn’t get the latter, as in not knowing what it’s about, that suggests a serious education gap.
