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Will TV bring us the brighter side of Nuclear War?
[line] I believe that the recent much-ballyhooed showing of the television "docudrama" The Day After launched a process that may ultimately increase the chances of a nuclear holocaust. This is the process by which frightening possibilities
After the Bomb becomes a new genre in American entertainment.
But once the stereotypes have been established and After the Bomb has become a new genre in American fiction, can the sitcom be far behind?
The difficulty with all of this, of course, Is that a problem doesn't disappear just because it has been trivialized. In fact, it usually gets worse. Again, crime is a good example. Violence didn't take to the streets until it had been made commonplace on the TV screen. People have a hard time distinguishing between the original human tragedy, which continues and grows, and the sanitized version fed to them by the marketers of "entertainment." Since the sanitized version needs no fixing, they put less energy into the reality. I am afraid. I am afraid that we are going to stop trying to solve the problem of nuclear stockpiling and turn it into a TV game. This will be fine as long as those ugly machines in Siberia and North Dakota stay in their holes. But as the Big Boom becomes more and more familiar, the likelihood increases that some addled politician will try it out. (Why not? Last night on the tube, it almost looked like fun). Then we will all get a bigger dose of reality than anybody wanted. Perhaps it would help if someone would point out that in a nuclear holocaust, the electromagnetic pulse will destroy all TV sets first. This should strike terror in certain circles that no contemplation of megadeaths or radiation levels ever could.
Travel bum George Towner departs this month for Africa, leaving behind bits and pieces for future publication. For further details, see the "Ex-Editor's Note" in this issue. You can read about George's latest book here!
More Articles by George Towner
Travel bum George Towner departs this month for Africa, leaving behind bits and pieces for future publication. For further details, see the "Ex-Editor's Note" in this issue.
You can read about George's latest book here!
The Day After was a made-for-TV nuclear holocaust film that aired in November of 1982 by ABC. The last half of the film was so intense that ABC could find no advertisers to sponsor the second hour, thus that portion was run ad free. This article in Wikipedia explores this film in great detail.
"The Trivialization of Armageddon" also appears in Geroge Towner's book, Ecphorizations, under the group called Opinions, Theories, and Whimsy. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these three is appropriate for "Trivialization."