Oppenheimer: Or How I Learned to be Worried about Fascism All the Time
What does the bomb represent? The astounding reception of the film needs to be explained. Why does this resonate with audiences like so? What psychic investments at work in everyday life are being siphoned off and manifesting in this pop culture phenomenon?
Let’s start by talking about an odd moment — towards the end of the film, JFK gets name-dropped, as many tweets have noted, like a character to be properly introduced in the next installment of the MCU. Indeed, uhh, what? But it does make sense if we recall that what is basically at issue is the control, or containment, of Atomic weapons; and JFK presided over the Cuban Missile Crisis. He is the exceptional man who will understand and rise to the moment that Oppenheimer’s thousand yard stare can’t yet see.
But what deserves further scrutiny is Strauss, who at one point in the film says, “Power works in the shadows.” Very troubling, much evil. For anyone living in the year of our lord 2023 this sentiment must clang off the ear. The workings of power have never been more transparent and out in the open. What is Nolan on about? Well, he’s a liberal. Thus, Strauss’ dark crusade to defame Oppenheimer, who humiliated him professionally, to gain a cabinet position now appears as Trump’s disinformation campaign to delegitimize his previous election loss and bolster his ongoing Presidential ambitions. Though Strauss’s workings are much more concealed then Trump, for the liberal, the demand placed on the audience is the same — didactically telling us we have to call out these lies! If only citizens were brave enought to tell the truth (!) (like Rami Malek), recognize and affirm it (JFK in voting against Strauss’ appointment), then we will become a responsible society (elect JFK and, yes, Joe Biden president). It’s within this context that Oppenheimer is indicted. The man of theory and no practice is a coward. He’s a doormat who will not stand up against the lies levied against him. Consequentially, he is a man who can only be redeemed by people in actual positions of power, like JFK, who turns out, surprisingly, to be the real protagonist after all. Indeed, this is essentially a “resistance” film dependent on the fantasy that people in power will act accordingly when those who are brave enough speak the truth. But this is already the dominant narrative, and the film then just one more affirmation of it. Yet, what is most troubling is not just how eye roll inducing these injunctions to “resist!” “vote!” “bring truth to light!” are, but the underlying conceit of such injunctions — which says those who can theorize and identify the nature of their lives do not have the power to actually change it. Not merely because they may be, like Oppenheimer, cowardly, but rather because power is located solely with the dominant regime, and the dynamics at work therein. Nuclear physics aims to penetrate the underlying nature of our reality, to challenge and go beyond everything we think we know so as to bring about radical change; no doubt communist aspirations are doing something similar. Both sciences are invested in the idea that the potential to transorm our lives lies dormant in our present world, through analysis that potential can be revelaed and cultivated for purposes hitherto unimaginable. And yet, Nolan settles in affirming this resistance fantasy that postures as a realist outlook, which says, “only by appealing to our elected officials can we ‘change’ things”, or, more bluntly, does outright blackmail to it’s audience, saying, “not supporting liberal officials risks nuclear annihilation” ie, not voting (for Biden) is a vote for Trump, etc etc. This is a film that fears anything other than the liberal status quo, fears change, and fears the prospect that power might emerge in unexpected places; it lives in a perpetual state of anxiety that the constancy of the post war hegemonic liberal present might pass. What a dud.
This is a “dramatization” of the upcoming American election from a liberal perspective. It’s no coincidence that this summer blockbuster was released just before the campaign begins to heat up proper (the first Republican debates are at the end of August). The potential horrors of the bomb bring on Oppenheimer’s harrowing thousand-yard stare, but the bomb, of course (despite Strauss’ being defeated), is the prospect of another Trump victory; and this stare a sad call to action.
