The Atomic Cafe is a 1982 American documentary film directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. It is a compilation of clips from newsreels, military training films, and other footage produced in the United States early in the Cold War on the subject of nuclear warfare. Without any narration, the footage is edited and presented in a manner to demonstrate how misinformation and propaganda was used by the U.S. government and popular culture to ease fears about nuclear weapons among the American public. In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Synopsis The film covers the beginnings of the era of nuclear warfare, created from a broad range of archival material from the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s including newsreel clips, television news footage, U.S. government-produced films (including military training films), advertisements, television and radio programs. News footage reflected the prevailing understanding of the media and public. The film covers both the impact of the atomic bomb on popular culture and daily life, as well as documents the military's increasing fascination with carrying out more and more dangerous tests. The film opens with footage of the Trinity Test and concludes with a montage of stock footage simulating a nuclear attack on the United States. Though the topic of atomic holocaust is a grave matter, much of the humor derives from the modern audience's reaction to old training films, such as the Duck and Cover film shown in schools. Another sequence involves footage of US Army training maneuvers in which soldiers are instructed to walk into a mushroom cloud as part of an exercise to study how efficiently the armed forces could kill the survivors of a nuclear bomb strike if Soviet Soldiers ever made it to US soil; prior to the beginning of the exercise, the soldiers are informed, "Viewed from a safe distance, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man."
People shown The following people are shown in excerpts from speeches, interviews and news reports, along with several unnamed actors, civilians, members of the armed forces and narrators: Lloyd Bentsen, William H. P. Blandy, Owen Brewster, Frank Gallop, Lyndon Johnson, Maurice Joyce, Nikita Khrushchev, Brien McMahon, Seymour Melman, George Molan, Richard Nixon, Robert E. Stripling, Val Peterson, George Portell, Bill Burrud, George Putnam, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, Douglas MacArthur, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, Mario Salvadori, Lewis Strauss, Paul Tibbets, Kermit Beahan, Harry S. Truman, and James E. Van Zandt.
Historical context The Atomic Cafe, referred to as a "compilation verite" with no "voice of God narration" or any recently shot footage, was released at the height of nostalgia and cynicism in America. By 1982, Americans lost much of their faith in their government following the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal the previous decade, alongside the seemingly never-ending arms race with the Soviet Union. The Atomic Cafe reflects and reinforces this idea as it exposes how the atomic bomb's dangers were downplayed and how the government used films to shape public opinion. Loader, who grew up in 50s-60s Fort Worth, Texas living across the street to E.O. "Soapy" Gillam, better known as the "bomb shelter king of North Texas", while also remembering one of her friends used her family's bunker as a clubhouse/secret party spot, felt compelled to revisiting the era that formed her childhood. The Atomic Cafe was also released during the Reagan administration's civil defense revival. Barry Posen and Stephen Van Evera explain this revival in their article "Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment" published in International Security. They argue that in 1981–82 the Reagan administration was moving from an essentially defensive grand strategy of containment to a more offensive strategy. Due to the greater demands of its more offensive strategy "the Reagan Administration ... proposed the biggest military buildup since the Korean War." Of key relevance to The Atomic Cafe, the Reagan move toward offense included the adoption of a more aggressive nuclear strategy that required a large U.S. nuclear buildup. Containment only required that U.S. strategic nuclear forces be capable of one mission: inflicting unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union even after absorbing an all-out Soviet surprise attack. To this "assured destruction" mission the Reagan administration added a second "counterforce" mission, which required the capacity to launch a nuclear first strike against Soviet strategic nuclear forces that would leave the Soviets unable to inflict unacceptable damage on the U.S. in retaliation. The U.S. had always invested in counterforce but the Reagan administration put even greater emphasis on it. The counterforce mission was far more demanding than the assured destruction mission, and required a vast expansion of U.S. nuclear forces to fulfill. Civil defense was a component of a counterforce strategy, as it reduced Soviet retaliatory capacity, hence civil defense was a candidate for more spending under Reagan's counterforce nuclear strategy. Posen and Van Evera argue that this counterforce strategy was a warrant for an open-ended U.S. nuclear buildup. Bob Mielke, in "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Nuclear Test Documentary" (Film Quarterly) discusses the release of The Atomic Cafe: "This satire feature was released at the height of the nuclear freeze movement (which was in turn responding to the Reagan administration's surreal handling of the arms race.)" In "Atomic Café" (Film Quarterly), Fred Glass points out that the technical and cultural background needed to create the film was not available in 1955. The film's themes, critical of government propaganda and the nuclear arms race, would have been seen as unpatriotic during the McCarthy era. And getting the necessary permits and funding to make Atomic Café can be quite difficult.
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