http://letterfromhere.blogspot.com/2...thinkable.html


Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Making nuclear war thinkable



What's wrong with this picture? To begin with, if it weren't a
Hollywood special effects shot, the guy would probably be blind from
looking right at the exploding nuke -- he clearly didn't duck and
cover. Also, the whole detached observer quality of the photo
subliminally says nuclear catastrophe is no big deal, something that
can safely be survived at a distance. The biblical name and hint of a
halo even hint at something transcendent.

In other words, CBS is helping make the use of nukes a little more
thinkable.

I wonder how this thing ever got off the ground. Maybe it went
something like this:
You guys have been in the doghouse for a couple years now, ever since
the Janet Jackson costume malfunction and the Dan Rather mess. Getting
Katie for the news was a start, but you need to do more. Here's a
thought. How about a "high-concept" TV soap featuring a plucky red
state small town with a biblical name surviving nuclear catastrophe
while those sinners in the big cities apparently burn in hellfire and
disappear? How cool is that?
CBS seemed to buy it. They signed for at least 13 episodes, and the new
series "Jericho" will air weekly, starting this Wednesday.

A drama about what happens when a nuclear mushroom cloud suddenly
appears on the horizon, plunging the residents of a small, peaceful
Kansas town into chaos, leaving them completely isolated and wondering
if they're the only Americans left alive. Fear of the unknown propels
Jericho into social, psychological and physical mayhem when all
communication and power is shut down. The town starts to come apart at
the seams as terror, anger and confusion bring out the very worst in
some residents. But in this time of crisis, as sensible people become
paranoid, personal agendas take over and well-kept secrets threaten to
be revealed, some people will find an inner strength they never knew
they had and the most unlikely heroes will emerge.

Again, what's wrong with this picture?

More than 20 years ago, in the early years of the Reagan
administration, loose talk about "survivable nuclear war" created a
huge outcry, here and abroad. ABC produced a TV movie called "The Day
After." While operating within the constraints of network TV, the show
tried to communicate some of the true horror of a nuclear war. The
Reaganites learned their lesson and shut up.

Now, little more than two decades later, CBS is about to show nuclear
war as something that happens elsewhere, off-camera except for a
mushroom cloud or two on the horizon, nothing that can't be survived by
good people learning to work together in a small town far from Ground
Zero. Yeah, right.

Call me a cynic, but I don't think it's any accident that this show is
airing at the very time that the Bush administration is trying, through
a disingenuous combination of leaks, diplomatic initiatives and
gradually escalating threats, to build support for a preemptive strike
-- possibly with nuclear "bunker busters" -- against Iran. And while
they insist they haven't made up their minds to go to war yet, chances
are -- based on past performance -- they've already made their
decision. It's not a matter of "if," but "when" -- and how to sell it.

The neocon strategists know they don't have a snowball's chance in hell
of selling another preemptive war to the public through rational
argument. What they can do, without ever discussing the real issues, is
make emotional appeals to their base, get them worked up, and then use
them to bludgeon political opponents of preemptive war.

Who knows? "Jericho" might do the job. On the one hand, it stirs
anxiety about nuclear war, and thus builds support for a "preventive
war" against Iran. On the other hand, showing nuclear war safely going
on in the background while people are fine and going about their lives
in the foreground helps desensitize the audience to the horror of
nuclear weapons and makes nuclear war less unthinkable. It helps erode
taboos about a U.S. nuclear first strike -- should that become
necessary to get rid of those underground labs in Iran.

It just might work.

Holy ****! (Update): Here's executive producer Jon Turteltaub on Sci Fi
Wi
Jon Turteltaub, the executive producer of CBS' upcoming
post-apocalyptic drama series Jericho, told SCI FI Wire that he did
research about what might happen after a nuclear attack and was
surprised by the answers he found. "This is going to sound odd, but a
nuclear bomb is not as bad as everybody thinks," Turteltaub in an
interview. "Without question on the scale of things in the world, it's
on the bad scale of things that can happen. Puppies are on the really
good side of things [laughs]. But sometimes we have this image that one
nuclear bomb would take out all of New York City and Brooklyn and
Queens and parts of New Jersey."

That wouldn't be the case with the initial blast, Turteltaub (National
Treasure) added. "Part of the question is how much of the area is
uninhabitable versus how much in our perception and our fears is
uninhabitable," he said. "Coping with our own panic may be a greater
enemy than the reality of these things."
Just in case there was any doubt about where these guys are coming from.