Joseph Masco's article spoke about how the U.S. used images of a possible nuclear Armageddon to construct a new form of national culture, built upon the paradigm that arose out of the creation, detonation, and devastation of the nuclear bomb. This was because the U.S. government was panic as the true threat to national security. "Like the A-bomb, panic is fashionable. It can produce a chain reaction more deeply destructive than any explosive known. If there is an ultimate weapon, it may well be mass panic--not the A-bomb" (pg 366-367). So, in order to prevent this even more destructive weapon from taking hold of the American people and more or less leading to the end of American life, the government set about to transform the paralyzing effect of the threat of nuclear bombing from what Masco terms "nuclear terror" into "nuclear fear." A person can live with fear and still function in the everyday. Thus the goal of the government's "civil defense programs" were to train the public psychologically and make them impervious to the panic that would be likely to take hold after an atomic attack. This way, society could continue to function, even though its population and physical surroundings were damaged, and rebuild itself again, possibly stronger. Operation Cue was a prime example of the way in which this aim was achieved. Having the country witness the destruction of a "typical American suburban town" did more than show everyone the actual physical results of such an event, but also imprinted a vision in people's minds of they themselves as the victims of a nuclear attack. The result of this and other forms of propaganda over the ensuing decades made nuclear devastation an aspect of everyday life. It normalized mass destruction, and made it something that could be thought about, not in its true and terrible form, but in a manageable, after school special kind of way. At the same time, it became something sensational, that would be later replicated in movies and television shows. True, it was/is something to fear, but it's the kind of fear that one feels when watching a scary movie.
This is what I really want to focus on, the normalization of mass destruction and how that influences the way that people deal with it today. A scene that has constantly come back to me over the years is a scene in Hotel Rwanda when the protagonist turns to the American photographer and says that his pictures will bring help to those being massacred because the American people will see them and respond. But the photographer says that no, people will look at them and go back to their TV dinners, never thinking twice. I think that this scene is so poignant to me because it seems so true. But why? Why are we so desensitized to such images? I'm sure many of us in class today looked at those horrendous images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to leave the classroom and go have lunch with a friend, take a nap, catch up on your shows on Hulu. I'm not judging you. I do it myself a lot of the time. But again, why is it so easy for us to?
I think these programs have had a lasting effect, not only in how we perceive ourselves in relation to the bomb, but how we perceive its after effects, and moreover, on how we understand and relate to events that result in mass death and destruction. It has become normalized, something that happens all the time, everyday, and naturalized, in that it is a part of the everyday because it is meant to be a part of it, a force of nature, no more preventable than the wind that rustles the trees. (Of course if there was a nuclear apocalypse then there probably wouldn't be any trees to rustle. But I digress.)
Our desensitization, our acceptance of these images and occurrences have had several far reaching and possibly unforeseen effects. But this has no doubt been useful to those pressing the big red button, because if we see the aftermath as something normal and natural that we cannot prevent then opposition to their use has been effectively obliterated, less than the shadows left behind on the bridges of Hiroshima.
8 comments:
I agree with you, Elyssa. This violence has become so normalized that it's seen in everyday entertainment, like in movies. With the effects we have today, these kind of movies are both horrifying yet thrilling. These concepts don't just apply to hypothetical situations though, like in Operation Cue or these hollywood blockbusters. Changing people's emotional responses about nuclear bombing also affects real situations, like when you discussed the horrendous images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So while the US government was successful in avoiding domestic mass panic, they were also successful in psychologically changing people's responses to this kind of violence in general and made it so normalized.
What really stood out to me in this article was how this production of fear has become the new geopolitical strategy. These images/language of mushroom clouds is being used to legitimize US violence. So basically, this psychological manipulation is exploiting people's fears, normalizing nuclear attacks, and therefore justifying continuing elements of the Cold War.
I think what gets me reeling is how in trying to normalize the presence of potential nuclear war, it is suggested that the threats of nuclear war are rationally calculable under a generic scientific rubric, as though radiation and other dangers can be easily tested. But these things are very hard to accurately test and are also hard to link to particular illnesses potentially associated with them. The idea that the risks associated with the use of nuclear weapons can be easily tested is quite scary, particularly when the long term effects of it cannot really be known if these radioactive elements hang around for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.
I agree with you to a point, but I also think there is a clear line between desensitization and acceptance. It is also important to note not only that we have been desensitized, but also the role that censorship has played. The images we saw in class were, I believe, more a move towards re-sensitizing than evidence of our desensitization, as you suggest. Those are not the images that the typical American thinks of when they think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki because those are not the images they have seen; rather, it is far more likely that they will picture a mushroom cloud. I think that they are connected, but that we need to pay more attention to how discourse and the media play in to this.
I feel like another thing that is key to this discourse on nuclear violence is how the state is perceived by the domestic public. So often when we consider the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we don't see it in terms of destruction and murder of a civilian population, we see it a an unfortunate, but almost necessary cost that ended the war in the Pacific. In my experience, Americans tend to believe that we try to do the "right" thing, not what benefits our interest most. In that frame of mind, its easy to ignore the after effects of the bomb like radiation, or long term genetic mutations. I feel like for our apparent de-sensitation can be directly traced back to how we see our place and our role in global relations.
I agree with the last post, I think the public has a strong tendency to feel or believe that the measures taken are the "right thing" or that if a drastic measure is chosen it is because of security. This could be seen in the containment described at the bottom of page 364, it uses terms such as "block further expansion", "expose the falsities of Soviet pretensions". These terms immediately define the other as a threat. I also think it is interesting how it is said that military strength is an important ingredient of power or otherwise a policy of containment would be "a policy of bluff". The images of bomb explosions determine the image of power that other nations have of the US.
Going back to the original post... I think that there is a "distance" between the person looking at a picture and what is portrayed on the picture itself. Although the picture is terrifying, the fact that you are looking at a picture it may make you feel like it is part of history but not part of something that you could experience. Also, the movies that we are exposed to may not have a great impact on our lives because maybe deep inside we remember that it is just a movie that is simply fiction regardless of how realistic everything may seem.
Masco's essay described how society needed to be psychologically managed through constant fear of destruction in order to build a bomb. It reminded me of the movie "The Day After Trinity" which explores the scientists who build the bomb and their environment. These scientists were completely isolated from the rest of society; they were impressed and inspired by Oppenheimer (apparently he was very charming) that it was a cult-like environment; there was the climate of war, progressive technology, etc. such that no one questioned the destructive potential of what they were creating until after the fact, during deprogramming stage. I hesitated writing this, but the other side to it is that these were trained scientists -- how exciting it must have been for them to finally prove/apply Einstein’s theory E=mc2?? Anyway, the movie is worth watching.
I would like to mention that I didn't just brush off the feeling that last Fridays images gave me. I was thoroughly depressed for a good two hours after that. But you are right. The feeling passed and I went out with a friend later that night.
I'm not trying to justify it but I feel like the ability push those feelings aside is a way of coping with a horrific experience that is beyond my imagination. I also think that our generation has different reactions to nuclear warfare partially because we grew up without that cold war anxiety.
I think that other generations and groups that actually have experienced extreme devastation have used a similar coping mechanism. Masco describes the "absence of commentary" after the destruction of Dresden. Although he partially attributes this to a collective shame for having been the first county to deploy massive bombing campaigns and then to ultimately be destroyed by one. But it also came from an inability to describe it. Jake talked about a similar experience in Japan after the bombings there.
This is one of the points that I get out of the Masco reading. How the use of atom bomb imagery is so almost only for the purpose of public control. It is not informative because the actual experience would be unimaginable. "Nuclear war is 'fabulously textual' because until it happens it can only be imagined and once it happens it marks the end of human arhive." pg 381
To play off the relationship between desensitization and censorship that Mika mentioned, I think that in addition to the censoring roles played by our government and the media, our own minds (regardless of cultural conditions) play a huge role. It might be a slight tangent, but still a relevant/different direction this discussion can go.
Important to understanding desensitization as a complex process, existing both within and without ourselves I think is the fact that our ability to understand the suffering of millions of people is biologically limited. I remember reading an article about this- “psychic numbness” it’s called. Initially I believe it was used in the 60s to describe the lack of feeling that survivors used to cope with the bombing of Hiroshima, but later used to refer to a comparable response to genocide. Interestingly enough, psychological studies show that people donate more when prompted by images of, one hungry, poor child as opposed to even as small an increment as 2 children, or 5. Let alone 1,000. as humans, we are programmed to feel empathy and sympathy, and care deeply about those who are closest to us yet find it so easily to alienate the rest of the human world, objectify and vilify them, and consciously or subconsciously commit acts of violence and oppression against them (as we’ve discussed in class- creation of the other, our discussions on torture, even the very act of war). certainly there are deep societal reasons and justification for all of these, but also a biological one- limited by our biological incapacity to fully relate to more than one other person, as humans we are left with a mathematical understanding of the concept of millions of people without the ability to fully comprehend the humanity behind it. Jake mentioned in class that knowing and being aware of the assumptions- “leaving the class more confused than we came in”- is powerful and important all on it's own, allowing us to act as more sensitive, aware, and critical global citizens. Perhaps the same can be said about being aware of and realizing not only the vulnerability we have to becoming trapped in societal patterns of thought, assumptions, and biases, but our own limitation as human beings that also trap us in biases and prejudges, and that limit our innate compassion for others, one of our most precious traits.
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