Speaking
as a Baby Boomer (born 1948, riding the front
of the wave {and
on the way down, i fear me}), i
can say of my generation that Roger Daltrey
and Pete Townshend weren't the only ones who
expected to die before we got old -- and
probably in a nuclear war. (See Ray Davies's
"Apeman" [on Lola vs Powerman & the
Money-Go-Round {1970}] -- dreaming of
running away to a tropical clime and living
simply, the protagonist meditates "I don' feel safe in this world no
more/I don' wanna die in a nuclear war...")
Shortly after i met Kate, i was giving her
daughter Helen a ride to school, and we were
discussing the difference between her
generation and mine in that regard; Helen had
just celebrated her 14th birthday. I pointed
out that my 14th birthday was 22
October 1962 -- and that, as it
happened, Air Force Major
Rudolf Anderson came
from my home town of Greenville SC.
Younger people can't really imagine the
climate of emotion; in kindergarten and first
and second grade in the schools in Cleveland
we did duck-and-cover drills. (Despite a lot
of bumpf written since, the drills that we
were doing in the early Fifties had nothing to
do with surviving nuclear attack; they were
just ordinary air-raid drills left over from
World War 2, which, after all, was only eight
years past when i began kindergarten. And they
were good for tornadoes, too...)
But we expected it. And then there was Korea,
and the beginnings of organised terrorism in
the First World, and the paranoia grew...
And thus this TV movie.
The terrorists' demands and MO don't seem all
that far-fetched, given the climate of opinion
of the time. This was a time when the nastiest
terror cells operating in the First World
tended to be intellectual political-
theoretical types, committed to the
Radicalisation of the Masses (the
Bader-Meinhoff Gang, the Red Army Faction, the
Symbionese Liberation Army, the Weathermen...)
rather than people who actually had something
resembling a real grievance.
And so a group of people have decided to
dramatise the danger of nuclear weapons; if
they are not allowed to strike a symbolic,
internationally-acknowledged blow against the
nuclear-war-machine, they will strike a REAL
blow against America that will, they hope,
bring the realities home to the masses.
And so the stage is set for tragedy.
"Special Bulletin" is, intentionally, made to
look as much like real television news
coverage as possible -- unlike most TV movies,
it is shot on video rather than film (In fact,
i wouldn't be at all surprised if the image
wasn't intentionally slightly degraded to
emphasise that it was tape and not
film). While a lot of people may not actually
be able to describe what the differences
between a film image and a video image are,
they are perceptible to almost anyone, and the
mind, consciously or otherwise, identifies the
video image with "real TV" and the film image
with "movies".
Another thing that helps to create the rather
scary level of verisimilitude in this film is
the fact that it is paced like real TV; its
rhythm is keyed to commercial breaks, and this
enhances the realism of the recreation of the
staccato, punchy nature of television news
coverage, both when Something Is Happening and
in those long stretches when you have had
nothing actually new in hours, but you can't
just let the story go, if only because the
Competition might get a ratings jump on you if
something new happens and they're able to go
live with it faster than you. (We saw both of
these aspects in the recent coverage of the
DC-area sniper story and, further back, of l'affaire
OJ.)
((This film is so tied to its commercials that
when a local science-fiction club decided to
use it as a program item after viewing a
commercial-less dub they wound up adding one
award-winning or blooper-reel commercial at
each break, because without the pauses it just
didn't work.))
Aside from the video imagery and the pacing,
there is the fact that the production makes
use of realistic sound effects, especially the
flat, popping sound that real gunshots have
when recorded, and the familiar sound of
voices just off-mike, discernible but muffled.
One mistake, i feel, that was made was the use
of a video-generated special effects shot for
the climactic moment of the film; maybe that's
what such a blast WOULD look like on video,
but it doesn't match my memories of footage of
actual open-air atomic test shots.
But the aftermath footage is chilling...
(I have read complaints that the
electro-magnetic pulse effects of the blast
should render TV equipment that close to
Ground Zero in operative; i don't know -- this
is a very small burst, and remote-news
equipment is built pretty tough...)
And the visuals and account of the
after-effects that we hear as a follow-up
story are at once frightening, heart-breaking,
accurate and a pointed reminder of just how
insufficient anything we could realistically
expect to be able to do to take care of
casualties and destroyed cities from even an
isolated nuclear weapons incident would be...
Grim, scary, still a valid cuationary tale
(though the potential nuclear terrorists might
have different motives and might strike
without warning, the results would be the
same...) and brilliantly done.
Deserves a DVD release, perhaps with
historical material about the Cold War and the
terrorists of the day...
I
recently (well, within the last year) found
out just how close i (and many others in the
Southeast) came to not surviving the period.
In
1961, a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air near
Faro, North Carolina.
The two four megaton Mk 39 Mod 2 hydrogen
bombs it carried were released. (Four
megatons is what The Guardian article says;
Wikipedia say 2.5 megaton. Either would
have been excess to requirement, in my
opinion.)
One was found with its parachute snarled in a
tree; one landed in a field.
The government carefully (and hastily)
explained that the Mk 39 Mod 2 bomb had four
safety devices to prevent accidental
detonation - that there had been no danger.
Last year (September 2013), i read articles
(in The Guardian
and other places) that told a somewhat
different story.
The story in The Guardian says (among
other things):
Jones found
that of the four safety mechanisms in the
Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended
detonation, three failed to operate
properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a
firing signal was sent to the nuclear core
of the device, and it was only that final,
highly vulnerable switch that averted
calamity. "The MK 39 Mod 2 bomb did not
possess adequate safety for the airborne
alert role in the B-52," Jones concludes.
Further:
Each bomb
carried a payload of 4 megatons – the
equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT
explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal
fallout could have been deposited over
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as
far north as New York city – putting
millions of lives at risk.
Baltimore? NYC?
I lived in Simpsonville SC, rather closer
to Faro than any of those cities.
Scary stuff, indeed.
|
