The argument up until me...

The argument about the effect of the atomic bomb on American culture in the early years of the Cold War is something that has been extensively written on. I think one of the reasons for that is that the effects are so far-reaching and so obvious that they should be simple to dissect. But they aren't. The atomic bomb affected us in every way we could imagine, and some that we haven't imagined yet, necessitating a continual production of literature and research on the topic. There is a political pool of research, culminating in work like that of Spencer Weart and Allan Winkler. These two men have taken very different views of the possibilities of the atom. Weart's book, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images takes a negative view, looking at nuclear secrecy and visual representations of the bomb and nuclear energy as dangerous things. Allan Winkler takes the opposite view, looking at peaceful applications of the atom and nuclear energy. Each one of these authors makes valid points, and there is no reason that both of them can't be seriously considered. That would be the root of the problem, though. There is no one answer, no right path to pursue when questioning the effect of the atomic bomb. Elaine Tyler May has gone in yet another direction by connecting the bomb to an increase in the sexualization and objectification of American women in her book Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era.  She has one illustration that was published in a nuclear safety handbook illustrating the three deadly types of radiation given off by a nuclear blast. They are alpha, beta and gamma and in the illustration, they all appear as drunken prom queens with the name of their radiation type printed on wilted sashes across their chests. Her book also connects effectively with the intense standardization we see in gender roles in this period; at least the gender roles that were distributed through propagandist media sources. John Hersey' s book Hiroshima is also an excellent place to look for the elements of guilt and the Japanese perspective on the bomb. 

Back to nuclear history ...

So. In comparing the book and the movie versions of Nevil Shute's On The Beach, I realized that I was making some pretty interesting implications about American culture in general and the way we deal with conflict. If we say that conflict results in several cultural symptoms like presentation of a united front and psychosocial standardization, then the American past becomes unbelievably checkered with mini-wars. The Cold War was only cold in the sense that it didn't involve smoking gun barrels. The distribution of propaganda, as we can see through the changes made to Shute's novel in the movie version, absolutely insisted on a closed cultural front presented to anyone watching from the outside. This mini-war, this cultural war, was just as damaging to healthy national growth as any hot war would have been, but in ways that are harder to pinpoint as bad. It would be an interesting line of research to see how these mini-wars have carried through our culture. I think we might find that we still act as though we're in one. 

Mighty Mo!

Ok, ladies and gents. Here is one of my all-time favorite history stories, and it just so happens that it happened to me. I was in Hawaii presenting a paper I wrote at a history conference in Waikiki. I got to the island a little early and stayed a little after my presentation to do some sightseeing, namely to the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor and the USS Missouri. The USS Missouri was by far the more fun (if not the more affecting) of the two. Our tour guide had brought us around the whole ship in fine style, making jokes, making us all comfortable and generally having a really wonderful time. We finally arrived at le piece de resistance, a gold medallion set into the deck that marked the exact spot where the Emperor of Japan signed the surrender after the Second World War. So here we are, reveling in the history, having our first moment of silence and solemnity in an hour and a half of touring and we all hear this voice. A tiny, screechy voice with a heavy New York accent saying, "Excuse me, mister tour guide, why is there a TV in the captain's room? I am absolutely sure they didn't have THOSE things back in 1945! This boat isn't even right!" I turned around slowly, on behalf of my whole tour group. Our guide was a little too dumbfounded to respond. "Actually, miss," I started, "the TV was probably added in the 1980's when Reagan had the ship refitted as part of his 600-ship navy plan. It was added. It wasn't here originally. So...yeah." She just stood there staring at me. And the approval of my tour group, and my tour guide was palpable. Good times aboard shit, mateys. :-)  

The TOPOI

Ok, I have a confession to make. 

The topic I wrote about in my previous post was not quite so simply arrived at as it may have seemed. In fact, i struggled for a while to figure out how exactly i wanted to attack the cultural issues I was seeing, wondering how I was going to unpack them and make them accessible to people who weren't necessarily thinking the way i was. 

So I used a tool that I just recently learned about called the Topoi. Topos is Greek for place, and basically the topoi is a set of tools that allow you to take your argument to different places, to look at it through different lenses until you find one that is the clearest, the most interesting and the most relevant for you and your audience. The topoi helped me get specific, and helped me narrow down my examples to the On The Beach ones I mentioned before. I was on Leave it to Beaver, The Honeymooners, academic discourse on family structure and partridges in a pear tree before that. And if nothing else, the topoi is just fun. It's a really enjoyable mental exercise, almost like a game to tease out a concept and just see what you can do with it. 

I'm having a thought...

Just recently, I have become extremely interested in nuclear history. Not just the science end of it, but the cultural effects of the bomb, especially in the United States and the way it's mere existence impacted our foreign and domestic policy. And what I'm finding is very interesting. I'm actually using this information or at least this line of argument in 2 separate papers I'm writing this semester. 

The atomic bomb created an incredibly deep seated atmosphere of guilt, suspicion and fear. So powerful were these emotions that they actually managed to culturally convince this country that we were still in a state of active warfare. The Cold War, like the twenty years between world wars I and II may not have been a war with explosions and fire, but it was a war nonetheless, and it's effect on American culture was palpable. 

I've been finding a bifurcation in culture after the dropping of the bomb. The dominant culture became a "Leave it to Beaver" crowd, white, middle class, clean cut, with no problems with drugs, sex, confusion, doubts or broken families. It was the perfect united front; like a never-ending Coke commercial. The other half were the rebels, the questioners, who rather than defend themselves against the fear, coped by exploring and probing it. These were often the people who were blacklisted, labeled as lunatics or traitors to America. Even in cultural products there is a distinction. I'm currently comparing the Nevil Shute's counterculture novel On The Beach to the movie version of it made in 1959. The movie was a dominant cultural product, and the differences are vast. 

The implications of this argument for our own time are also interesting to consider. We are in the middle of a recession. We are fighting an expensive war against an abstract concept that we'll never really be able to destroy. And yet, we project our image to the world as clean, vital, prosperous and capable of caring not only for ourselves, but for anyone in the world who needs or wants our help... even some that don't yet know they need it, or just forgot to ask. Are we still at war, then? Have we really not matured beyond this intense fear, self-suspicion and squeaky clean defense?

Check out my Pageflake!

My technological education continues, folks... now I'm onto a content aggregator site known as Pageflakes. And trust me, that's a lot simpler than it sounds. A content aggregator just takes information from many different sites and gives you access to it from a single location, in this case, Pageflakes.com.
I just completed building my own page, filling it with very specific things that interested me. That's the single greatest thing about the site. There is an almost unlimited number of flakes, more commonly known as widgets to choose from and they range all over the map. In addition to the flakes that are tied to the site, though, you can add RSS feeds from any other website that has the capability. So while there isn't a New York Times flake on Pageflakes, nytimes.com has RSS capability, and by clicking on the RSS icon, you can add that URL to your page and have access to it every time you log in (By the way, the mere fact that I'm using all this jargon and understanding it is a huge step for me. So huge it's almost frightening... any thoughts?).
My Pageflake is therefore tailored to the kind of stuff that I want access to. The most prominent thing you see when you first log in is a game based on Tetris. I am (more than) a little obsessed with this game, and I think it gives the page a nice break from the pattern of small information boxes. Just down from that is a Webpage flake that I've set to give me Wikipedia, because I use that resource a lot more than I should. Under that I've got another Webpage flake to an annotated bibliography I've created on Citeline.com. I am currently working on some papers, and having access to my bibliographic materials from any computer has been a huge help. Under that, I've got a tool that one of my professors introduced me to, the Topoi. I know that I'll forget how to use it if I don't have it to hand... so there it is. :-)
The other two columns are filled mostly with RSS feeds that I want to have access to. I included my bookmarks from Diigo, and those of my social bookmarking soulmate Elsamary. The New York Times is there, along with The Onion... one does need a balanced perspective on the news. I have Epicurious, which is one of the greatest recipe websites ever. If you're ever hungry, check it out. Trust me. Then I have some helpful career feeds like Variety, and Playbill. And naturally, some of the blogs I follow from Blogger are on there. Finally, I included an online poetry archive that I have been visiting and really enjoying for years. If I'm ever at loose ends, bored, tired, I can go there and just cruise the poetry for as long as I want. I encourage you, perhaps above all the other widgets on the page, to check out this one.
Finally, at the top right of the page I have the Universal Blogsearch and Universal Newssearch flakes from the Pageflakes arsenal. Now, I don't even have to go to Google to search for things I'm looking for. There is a definite question about whether this almost horrifying level of convenience is a good thing or not, but I'm at least oing to learn how to use it. Take a look at my page. Maybe you can build one of your own!

2 More Cool Sources

A couple other fun sources I've found in my hunt... 

"Please Don't Steal The Atomic Bomb," by Alan Adelson-  “The most powerful club in the Universe”- that’s the marketing of possession of the atom bomb in this primary source article. The article then goes on to detail just how easy it is to come into possession of all the different elements necessary to make an atom bomb. There is a simple description of how an atomic explosion works, and a good set of descriptions about how the AEC and the media were dealing with the knowledge of how unsecured their intelligence was at that time. The article approachably discusses nuclear secrecy, legal enforcement, and the dark possibilities of a proliferated nuclear world. 

The History of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes-  Richard Rhodes is one of the foremost historians on the history, implementation and ramifications of the atomic bomb. This book is one of if not the definitive volume on the history of the bomb, written like a detailed character study of every major figure involved it it’s research, construction and use. The book is huge, but very well-researched in terms of pscychology and science. 

It's difficult to choose which sources to tell you about... there are so many wonderful books out there about the making, the history, the science, the politics and even the culture of the atomic bomb. One, Hiroshima by John Hersey, was originally published as a series of articles in The New Yorker very shortly after the bombs were dropped on Japan. It's a fabulous read, and very quick. 

Another interesting angle is to look at the leisure culture surrounding the time of the bomb. David Hogan does this in his book Science Fiction America: Essays on SciFi Cinema. With a chapter on Flash Gordon and his role in the propaganda of World War II, Walt Disney and even the sexuality of nuclear science as portrayed through the media, Hogan approaches his topic humorously but with a high level of credibility and interest. 

The more you look, the more you find, it seems. :-) 

Happy hunting! Again...