In the aftermath of its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US government embarked on an outlandishly dishonest campaign to assuage public fears about a nuclear attack.
One nine-minute public-safety film shown to American schoolchildren featured a cartoon turtle named Bert promoting the duck-and-cover method – aka hiding under furniture – of protecting yourself from a blast.
“You know how bad sunburn can feel,” the voiceover says. “The atomic-bomb flash could burn you worse than a terrible sunburn, especially where you’re not covered.”
At 73, Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the Oscar for best director, remembers those TV spots and drills at school.
“I literally grew up hiding under school desks in case of an atomic-bomb blast,” she says. “That was the go-to protocol. Well, that’s not going to help you. But it was a conversation.
“All dialogue about nuclear weapons has really been nonexistent for years. We are in a situation where it has been normalised that nuclear weapons are out there. Yet we’re living in a house of dynamite. My question is, how do we get the dynamite out of the walls?”
A House of Dynamite, Bigelow’s new film, is a tense, high-stakes thriller t
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