‘What if’ nuclear movie might help clear the air
of what it forces us to consider: the fire, wind and chaos; the widespread damage and suffering; the desperate need for medical care; and the futile desire for order and assistance.
Society was a thing of the past.
Political television
The Day After was controversial even before it aired, with critics like Tom Shales of the Washington Post deeming it “the most politicised entertainment programme ever seen on television.” Reverend Jerry Falwell organised a boycott against the show’s advertisers, and Paul Newman and Meryl Streep both tried (unsuccessfully) to run anti-nuclear proliferation advocacy ads during the programme.
In the text that scrolls at the end of the film, The Day After declares its intention to “inspire the nations of this earth, their people and leaders, to find the means to avert the fateful day” — to, in essence, scare some sense into anyone tuning in.
Pro- and anti-nuclear groups used the film as a rallying cry for their positions. An October 4, 1983 LA Times article (“‘The Day After’ Creating a Stir”) detailed a “conservative counteroffensive” that attempted to “discredit the film and write it off as a media conspiracy against Ronald Reagan’s strong defence posture.” Reagan supporters also hoped to defuse potential public backlash against American nuclear missile proliferation in Europe.
A trigger for serious reflection outside of partisan lobbying, The Day After opened the door for public debate about nuclear weapons.
Immediately after the movie’s broadcast, Ted Koppel moderated a riveting discussion that featured a formidable group of pundits, including Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, William F. Buckley, Carl Sagan and Robert McNamara. During this special edition of Viewpoint, Secretary of State George Shultz also appeared to tell audiences that “nuclear war is simply not acceptable”. The most prescient and horrifying questions from the audience and responses from the panelists on Viewpoint anticipate a future that’s eerily indicative of where we are today — a time of multistate nuclear capability, where one unstable leader might trigger nuclear catastrophe.
That was then, this is now
In the early 1980s, of course, it was the Soviet Union that posed the nuclear threat to America.
Today’s adversaries are more diffuse. The world’s nuclear situation is also much more volatile, with greater destructive potential than The Day After imagined.
A modern-day remake of The Day After would have to reckon with this bleaker scenario: a world in which there may be no day after.
The bellicose posturing that prevails in the White House today resonates, in some ways, with the public bickering between Soviet Head of State Yuri Andropov and Ronald Reagan in the months leading up to the broadcast of The Day After.
But as then-Secretary of State George Shultz pointed out in the Koppel interview, the aim of the Reagan Administration was to never have to use nuclear weapons. It was to deter our nuclear adversary and to reduce our nuclear storehouse. Shultz’s words of assurance are a contrast to today’s rhetoric of nuclear one-upmanship that is totally removed from the devastating reality of nuclear war.
Perhaps some modernised version of The Day After could function as a wake-up call for those who have no real context for nuclear fear. If nothing else, The Day After got people talking seriously about the environmental, political and societal consequences of nuclear war.
It might also remind our current leaders — Trump, foremost among them — of what modern nuclear war might look like on American soil, perhaps inspiring a more measured stance than seen thus far in 2018.