viz.

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

Megan's and Cate's recent posts have highlighted multiple visual representations of the current crisis in Japan.  Concurrently, there's a lot of talk these days about the future of nuclear power in the U.S.--what we should do about our existing nuclear power plants, whether nuclear energy is the way to go, what we might do in the face of a nuclear catastrophe. These issues have been rather dormant in recent years. However, as we look ahead in considering our options, it's also worth looking back at the rhetoric that made us somewhat comfortable with nuclear power. Cold War culture is rife with material that attempts to mask the threatening aspects of nuclear material (i.e. bombs) when used by the Soviets (Duck and Cover cartoons, this film made specifically for Austin, TX) . Less often discussed are those media that may have sold us on our (eventual) destruction.  Sometimes such propositions come from unexpected sources including... Walt Disney.  

This gizmodo post introduced me to Walt Disney's atomic fetish in the form of his 1957 film Our Friend the Atom. Predictably, the blogger is quite baffled by the film's endorsement of how "radioactivity could be used for things like making bigger, safer agricultural products (just put radioactive particles in the soil!) or creating better livestock (give cows radioactive food!)." Yet, in addition to the kind of scientific exploration the film advocates, I'm also taken by its downplaying of its own rhetoric, as WD insists, "We don't pretend to be scientists. We're storytellers." Instead, a German scientist emerges from the corner to narrate the discovery of the atom, which was "almost like a fairytale":

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

This coupling of atomic energy with images from familiar fairytales is a powerful tool to make nuclear science safe in the minds of the general public, particularly those Baby Boomers who would be planted in front of the television set:

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

In a fifth-grade science kind of way, there are multiple attempts to explain how we engage such energy. Here the German scientist demonstrates using a geiger counter:

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

We also have images such as this one, which, remarkably, look a lot like what we're seeing on the news these days as our present-day institutions try to explain to us how nuclear power plants work:

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

Yet, we end with this guy, granting all our wishes "to create food and cure disease":

Image Credit: Screenshot, Our Friend the Atom, via YouTube

The film is available in five parts on YouTube and runs roughly 50 minutes. Here's the first installment: