Surviving Armageddon: Beyond the Imagination of Disaster

Broderick, Mick. "Surviving Armageddon: Beyond the Imagination of Disaster." SFS #58 = 20.3 (Nov. 1992): 362-82.

Builds upon and argues against S. Sontag's 1965 Commentary essay "The Imagination of Disaster" (q.v., this section of the Wiki) that the dominant discursive motif in science fiction films about World War III is survival. Sets up four categories for such films—Preparation for Nuclear War and Its Survival, Encounters with Post-Nuclear Extraterrestrials, Experiencing Nuclear War and Its Immediate Effects, and Survival Long After Nuclear Was. By MB's count there are more than twice as many films in the fourth category than in the first three combined, leading him to conclude that filmmakers have, since Sontag's essay, grown even more "highly reactionary" in their advocacy and reinforcement of a symbolic order of the status quo" See also in this Category, P. Hall and R. Erlich's "Beyond Topeka and Thunderdome".

(RFS, 27/IV/95),