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Maybe not, but Dr Strangelove is extremely dated, and the people and issues it satirized are mostly dead now.

mechanical_fish 14y ago
The question was "Is Idiocracy the greatest satirical film since World War Two?" not "Is Idiocracy the greatest satirical film since the end of the Cold War?" Now, it's true that many aspects of the Cold War feel like really old news. Thank god. (Though at this point, as (arguably!) a former colleague of Hans Bethe [1], I'm professionally obligated to deliver this public-service announcement: Nuclear arsenals are way out of fashion these days, and are never talked about outside of defense procurement committee meetings, but that doesn't mean they're gone. Nuclear weapons still exist and could blow you up today.) However, even apart from the nuclear angle, Dr. Strangelove continues to be a movie about a big war that is secretly planned in advance by cabinet-level executives working with the military-industrial complex. Then the war gets kicked off by a very small cabal which engineers a highly visible attack on a handful of targets by a few rogue aircraft. Can anyone else see how this story might have remained relevant in the twenty-first century? --- [1] I was a grad student in his department. It's a bit tenuous, really. But, for better and for worse, I consider myself inducted into the guild of people that build doom devices and later come to regret them. Sigh.
forensic 14y ago
What a lot of computer scientists don't know is that Dr. Strangelove was DIRECTLY modelled on John von Neumann. They don't talk about this in CS departments. Your hero was Dr. Evil.
- lobster_johnson 14y ago
  Inspired, not directly modeled, I think. Dr. Strangelove was in part based on Edward Teller. Unlike von Neumann, Teller actually a bit bonkers in many ways; he was a deeply jealous and vindictive person who was directly responsible for destroying the career (and likely shortening the life of) J. Robert Oppenheimer, and he tried to convince people that Stanislaw Ulam did not contribute to the Manhattan Project. Teller wanted to use hydrogen bombs to dig deep-water harbours, and to extract oil by blowing up underground oil deposits with nuclear weapons, and lobbied to create what became known as Reagan's failed "Star Wars" project. He also tried to get the US to build a network of underground shelters similar to the scenario that Dr. Strangelove outlines at the end of the film.
  - forensic 14y ago
    It's very direct. 1. Von Neumann was biggest proponent of first strike 2. Was in a wheelchair 3. Wanted to create a doomsday machine that would destroy the worlds crops with intentional global warming. By destroying Russia's crops USA would end up ahead by better agricultural tech 4. Time magazine and others have acknowledged that it was directly based on Von Neumann. Also Von neumann was way more important. He was easily the most important intellectual of his time. Without him there might have been no nuke at all--it was his design that finally suceeded.
- taejo 14y ago
  Perhaps partially, but John von Neumann was Jewish and left Europe for America before WWII, while Dr Strangelove is a former Nazi... the references to Operation Paperclip seem clear.
  - forensic 14y ago
    This is literally the only part of Dr. Strangelove that doesn't fit Von Neumann. Everything else including the accet is a dead ringer.
lobster_johnson 14y ago
I hope you're kidding. Dated? It satirizes the cold war, the elements of which — deterrence, mutual assured destruction, espionage, minority factions which desire to provoke war, etc. — are still relevant, if in a modified form. (USA and Russia are no longer in a cold war, but there are plenty of nukes, and plenty of countries who desire them.) It's still consistently and widely considered a masterpiece of political satire.

The question was "Is Idiocracy the greatest satirical film since World War Two?" not "Is Idiocracy the greatest satirical film since the end of the Cold War?" Now, it's true that many aspects of the Cold War feel like really old news. Thank god. (Though at this point, as (arguably!) a former colleague of Hans Bethe [1], I'm professionally obligated to deliver this public-service announcement: Nuclear arsenals are way out of fashion these days, and are never talked about outside of defense procurement committee meetings, but that doesn't mean they're gone. Nuclear weapons still exist and could blow you up today.) However, even apart from the nuclear angle, Dr. Strangelove continues to be a movie about a big war that is secretly planned in advance by cabinet-level executives working with the military-industrial complex. Then the war gets kicked off by a very small cabal which engineers a highly visible attack on a handful of targets by a few rogue aircraft. Can anyone else see how this story might have remained relevant in the twenty-first century? --- [1] I was a grad student in his department. It's a bit tenuous, really. But, for better and for worse, I consider myself inducted into the guild of people that build doom devices and later come to regret them. Sigh.

forensic 14y ago

What a lot of computer scientists don't know is that Dr. Strangelove was DIRECTLY modelled on John von Neumann. They don't talk about this in CS departments. Your hero was Dr. Evil.

lobster_johnson 14y ago
Inspired, not directly modeled, I think. Dr. Strangelove was in part based on Edward Teller. Unlike von Neumann, Teller actually a bit bonkers in many ways; he was a deeply jealous and vindictive person who was directly responsible for destroying the career (and likely shortening the life of) J. Robert Oppenheimer, and he tried to convince people that Stanislaw Ulam did not contribute to the Manhattan Project. Teller wanted to use hydrogen bombs to dig deep-water harbours, and to extract oil by blowing up underground oil deposits with nuclear weapons, and lobbied to create what became known as Reagan's failed "Star Wars" project. He also tried to get the US to build a network of underground shelters similar to the scenario that Dr. Strangelove outlines at the end of the film.
- forensic 14y ago
  It's very direct. 1. Von Neumann was biggest proponent of first strike 2. Was in a wheelchair 3. Wanted to create a doomsday machine that would destroy the worlds crops with intentional global warming. By destroying Russia's crops USA would end up ahead by better agricultural tech 4. Time magazine and others have acknowledged that it was directly based on Von Neumann. Also Von neumann was way more important. He was easily the most important intellectual of his time. Without him there might have been no nuke at all--it was his design that finally suceeded.
taejo 14y ago
Perhaps partially, but John von Neumann was Jewish and left Europe for America before WWII, while Dr Strangelove is a former Nazi... the references to Operation Paperclip seem clear.
- forensic 14y ago
  This is literally the only part of Dr. Strangelove that doesn't fit Von Neumann. Everything else including the accet is a dead ringer.

lobster_johnson 14y ago

I hope you're kidding. Dated? It satirizes the cold war, the elements of which — deterrence, mutual assured destruction, espionage, minority factions which desire to provoke war, etc. — are still relevant, if in a modified form. (USA and Russia are no longer in a cold war, but there are plenty of nukes, and plenty of countries who desire them.) It's still consistently and widely considered a masterpiece of political satire.