Description
Pop culture, particularly fiction, is an important site where societal notions of common sense are expressed and reinforced, which is how films that depict nuclear weapon use contribute to narratives of nuclear security that are maintained by the continued existence of nuclear weapons and their inclusion in security policies world-wide. This relationship is both inherent and recreated by considering our interactions with images: even in films where their use is sometimes questioned, the use of nuclear weapons reinforces the idea that they perform a legitimized security function in the greater system of global politics.
This paper is a critical evaluation of my doctoral project, where my goal is not only to discuss the ‘image’ of agency, but how these images generate a capacity for agency. Popular films are capable of creating impactful change on public impressions and understandings of nuclear weapons, particularly because of the dearth of real world examples of their launch during conflict. In the absence of anything else, we default to imagination as a tool of justifying anticipatory politics such as security strategies and traditional IR theories. My research question asks: what narratives of decision-maker agency are shared through popular film and how do these ‘stories’ compare with, reify, reproduce and/or question the historical and political expectations regarding the control of, responsibility for, and accountability to nuclear weapons, in the American context? My design plan involves a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative interpretivism of the existing social politics of nuclear weapons, in the ‘real world’, as they are expressed through a narrative historiography of the first decision-making space of the Manhattan Project combined with theoretical interpretations of the political problem of nuclear weapons in relation to decision-making. This will be combined with a detailed content analysis of popular films that depict nuclear weapons.
Using content analysis to review such ‘texts’ is a concrete way of looking at changes over time of ideas of danger and threat. My coding scheme focuses on characters responsible for nuclear launch decisions, allowing me to analyze the decision-space and isolate what is being conveyed to audiences as the most significant influences on launch decisions. Because my coding scheme was developed a priori, this paper presents a preliminary test against three films from my case selection: Thirteen Days (2000), The Dark Knight Rises (2013), and Independence Day (1996). Each represents a different categorical context: historical docudrama, inclusion of non-state actors, and presentation of non-traditional threats, respectively. In doing so, I review my coding scheme as it is put into practice to identify potential gaps, and test the connections between my quantitative analysis and qualitative interpretivism to strengthen my mixed-methods approach. I hypothesize that themes across the case selection will reveal various narrative tropes that influence real-world understandings of nuclear weapons ‘use’, including purported distinctions between heroes and villains, the influence of politics on military decision making and vice-versa, and how these stories define common sense in the nuclear age.
