Duck and Recover

Atomic Cafe {Jayne Loader, Kevin + Pierce Rafferty, 1982}




It's pretty difficult to pay any more compliments to this film other than those it has already earned. The device of montage and polar imagery is used in perfect form. The scrutiny of the audio and era-born music provides meat to the overriding social commentary of the found footage. The images they use more often than not speak for themselves.

Of course the majority of the information (or misinformation rather) that is cut together does its job of shooting America's Atomic Age and Cold War policies of hysteria in the foot. However, some elements are taken out of context in a questionable manner. What I find interesting, after further reading, is a specific inconsistency on which several sequences of this film thrive. In the criticism of modern agenda-oriented documentaries, this forcing-of-the-hand would have been red flagged from the get-go.

That inconsistency is the use of "duck and cover" reels that have become so well circulated in contemporary wartime satire. Apparently these segments of footage actually misrepresent the intentions of these "preventative" drills. Along with a few internet sources, I asked my mother over the phone about these drills, as she was attending school during the Red Scare of the Cold War era. She said at her boarding school in Rhode Island, her buildings were all loose mortar with weak steal framing, and ducking under their desks was a measure to avoid debris in case of a nearby bombing. Another source on one internet forum addressing this question explained that many school houses at that time still had very high windows left over from the days before electricity, and the drill was meant to protect them from shards of glass loosed by sonic impact. My impression is that these drills were not advertised as "ways to survive" a direct atomic attack, but rather for more practical civil defense regarding low-impact bombing areas (or in short, peripheral damage zones).

Of course the ridiculousness of many of the frivolous cautionary measures shoveled out by the government during the Cold war stand without question as horrific but true. Also, the assumed air of authority by a government as confused about atomic fallout as the general public still rings as an act of smarmy fear-mongering. This "duck" film however, seems to be heaping anger on a plate that's already full enough with our country's other failures at sanity, without any outside help from clever placement and editing. It's a shame that this is the only hole I can find in the film's netting. The rest of the film seems so hard to criticize, simply because of its (shameful) social and historical accuracy.