It was acceptable in the 80s
Really enjoyed one-off documentary 1983: The Brink Of Apocalypse on Channel 4, Saturday night, except for one small thing. For once, a C4 documentary whose title was not sensationalist, it told the tale, using reconstruction and talking-head testimony from major players, of the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to nuclear war. It sent a chill through me to remember just how tense it was at that time. We really thought the end of the world was nigh, and acted accordingly. It's weird to think how much a part of our lives that dreaded face-off was. This intelligent documentary brought it all back, and uncovered a narrative that - thankfully - most of us had no idea was happening: Russian paranoia was such that they had joined a number of dots and in November, 1983, during Able Archer, a ten-day Nato exercise whose radio messages their spies were picking up, the silos opened to reveal ICBMs pointed at a number of key American cities, Russian fingers hovering over red buttons in order to preempt the inevitable first strike. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, the whole thing went off - or didn't - outside of common knowledge. (Other key factors in this massive, potentially deadly misunderstanding were the tightening of security at US facilities following a truck bomb that killed Marines in Beirut, the Korean airliner shot down by a Russian plane, the imminent arrival of America's Pershing II missiles in West Germany, and the cast-iron belief that the Americans would hit during a Russian public holiday - November 7 being the start of the Revolution Day festivities, right in the middle of Able Archer. Also, let us not forget the bellicose President Reagan and his fucking stupid "Evil Empire" speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Florida - those two little words moved the Cold War closer to becoming Hot at a stroke.)
Anyway, a gripping documentary whose authority and power were undermined occasionally by ironic use of 1983 British pop music (Smalltown Boy, Let's Dance, Blue Monday etc.), but undermined constantly by narrator Gina McKee. Fine actress that she is, and with a lovely, soft Tyne and Wear accent, she's also unfortunately one of those people, like George Bush, who pronounce the word "nuclear" as "nucular." I calculate that the word was spoken around 100 times over the course of this programme, for self-evident reasons and each time she said it - "nucular missile," "nucular stand-off", "nucular war" - I tensed up. It was as distracting as if she couldn't pronounce "Nato" or "Reagan" or "1983." Surely Gina didn't just record her own narration and send it in seconds before the tapes were sent off to C4? Surely somebody was listening to her as she recorded it - like the producer? I've done a few voiceovers - they're done line by line. Couldn't they have asked her politely to say it properly? She's an actress. She's used to direction. New-clear. It's easy.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 10:57 PM
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It's strange to think that not so long ago we lived in an age when the threat of "nucular" war hung over us like some latter day sword of damocles. Around the same time this stand off was leadiong us inexorably closer to a nuclear winter, the likes of "Threads" was being shown, scaring us shitless with it's portrayal of what a nuclear strike might actually look like in Britain. It seems surreal now that we had such a visible enemy in the Soviet Union, with the threat of an invasion still a very real possibility. Look at the media and music of the time, and we were all (quite rightly) obsessed by the looming threat.
Anyone watch "Jericho" on ITV4 at the moment?
That really is very chilling indeed. As with Tim, I recall how alarming Threads was. I've only ever seen it the once, but the images remain to this day.
That said, growing up I never really felt that there was any real and present danger. The first time I can remember thinking the end of the world was nigh was when Reagan sent the bombers into Tripoli in 1986. What I didn't realise at the time was that this was/is a fairly routine thing for the US.
I didn't see this documentary, but I'm sure it'll pop up on More4 soon.
Bad documentary narration is the bane of my life. I missed the first episode of Pop Britannia last week, but i was relieved when i was told that the narrator referred to Soho's legendary "2i's" cafe as the "21s" cafe, as if you had to be over the age of 21 to be allowed in.
please accept humble apologies is apostrophe is in the wrong place, but that seems to be how 2i's is spelt on the web.
Hi
Yes, I saw the same show and thought it was good as well. It was pretty shocking how easily the computing system could generate a "false positive". while I doubt the shrieking sirens and red lights would have appeared in reality, the testomony of the officer was that a giant sign would appear in the event of a supposed threat, saying "Attack Imminent". For anyone that would be pretty scary, let alone the Russian officer in charge of the response to nuclear weapons.
It seemed pretty shocking to me how true to life Dr Strangelove was.
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It was interesting to see how Reagan's position changed. I wasn't sure whether to congratulate him for recognising the error of his ways, or berate him for having such idiotic ideas in the first place.
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One other side point, which is that the US and UK government seem determined to push through draconian laws restricting civil liberties. At the moment, anyone in the country can now be locked up for a month ... a month! .. without any form of recourse or trial, just because the government suspects you are a threat. Yet for generations it was 48 hours. The government argues that such a huge extension is neccesary because of the scale of the threat from global terrorism.
But surely this documentary underlines the idea that the country has faced huge threats for years - such as the potential for atomic war. That huge threat didn't result in a loss of trail by jury, or a loss of freedom of speech rounfd the houses of parliament.
I've Sky+ this and am hopefully going to find time for it this week. The "It's pronounced new-clear" may annoy me, but I'm sure I'd have noticed it anyway! Threads and The War Game (set in my hometown) really did but the wind up me despite the fact that I was born on the second day of Abel Archer.
As for Threads, the documentary said that Ronald Reagan had asked for a private screening of the American post-strike drama The Day After (remember those skeleton people?), and it had really depressed him. Whether it actually tempered his enthusiasm for nukes, or merely made him more gung-ho for Star Wars, it does show that drama can have an effect on the people with the power.
I think it shows what sort of gritty realism film makers in the UK were prepared to show their audience (al la Threads) compared to their compatriots in the US (casting Steve Guttenburg in the lead role of "The Day After" was never going to illict the same horrifying reaction). The fact that Threads also dealt with how society would implode going forward a number of years, also added to the sheer horror of the film.
I also remember, as a teenager, buying "The Nuclear Survival Handbook" from my local bookshop in Reigate. Also those Public Information films with Patrick Stewart and his panic-inducing voice (coupled with World War 2 air raid sirens) were enough to make you want to join CND.
Sorry Tim, I think you mean doomy voiced Patrick Allen, not Stewart. He went on to do the intros for The Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer.
A lot of 80s music brings this stuff up. Every time I hear the "nuclear textbooks for atomic crimes" line in Going Underground it jars because it's so obviously dated, but it's hard to stress to younger people how pervasive that fear (or at least palpable unease) was at the time. An interesting contrast to how we live now - is it just advancing years that make me less wary of the "terrorist threat" than I was of the bomb?
I missed this. I'll see if it's available on 4OD.
Mike, I think the difference between then and now, with regards to the 48 hours vs 1 month detention, is that now it's civilians who are the threat. Then the threat was from an invading army aided by Russian spys. I'm sure the security services did plenty of dodgy things outside of the rule book with suspected Russian spys that simply aren't an option now with civilians who are suspected of terrorism.
The 1 month detention thing is more akin to internment, which we used against the IRA. It's justification I'll leave to others to attempt, but I'm just saying that's a better comparison than the cold war.
Shame, I missed this. It's easy to forget how prevalent the terror of nuclear war was back then. In 1983 I was at sixth form and most of us in the 'Common Room' were convinced the world would be going up in amushroom cloud before 1987. This collective fear seems to have been tapped into or least reflected by film makers, musicians, comedians and designers of the time who all drew on pre and post-apocalyptic imagery and ideas for source material. I used to have a BOY catalogue from 1981 which was loaded up with some iconic items from the time ie.. the Mickey Mouse head/nuclear explosion t shirt.
I couldn't watch this programme - I spent a lot of my childhood having nightmares about nuclear annihilation and genuinely believed that I wouldn't make it to my teens as the world would have gone by then! I also read a lot of those post-apocalyptic theme sci-fi novels. Scary. I still can't bear the thought of the whole subject. Thank God my mum wouldn't let me watch Threads at the time!
I remember watching Threads in a class at school. I was in my first year of high school and remember being far more frightened by the young girl giving birth than the threat of nuclear war. So much so that now, at 35, I still don't have children and I still turn off the TV when a birth scene, acted, real, human or animal, appears.
Why isn't this on 4OD? I have Virgin Media cable and have to watch dozens of adverts about how
4OD is so good and about all the stuff they allegedly have on it. When I went to find this show last night, all that was on there were repeats of Big Brother and Deal Or No Deal. Why??
Hi Tristan
As Andrew said in his blogpost "We really thought the end of the world was nigh, and acted accordingly", and I think accurately capture the mood at the time.
I still stand by my comments, but I see the point you (Tristan) are making, and you are correct in saying that it is probably people rather than nuclear weapons that are the greater threat in an age of terrorism.
The greater point I was trying to make was that the government seems determined to present the terrorist threat as a huge threat, almost without parallel, wheras in fact we have had far greater threats in the past. As reagan pointed out, if the US 'won' a nuclear war, it would result in 150 million deaths. On the winning side. A similar proportion would be killed in the UK. So a huge threat existed in the past, far greater surely than that of terrorism today.
I am sorry to have missed this. When 'Threads' was originally shown I was working in a shop, and the following morning three of the normally happy-go-lucky girls I worked with came in in tears, having seen it. They were not a politicised bunch, but this programme touched the same fear in them that was prevalent in us all at the time.
Thank you for writing about this, Andrew.
I thought this was one of the most gripping programmes I've seen in a long time and I loved the fact that they were able to talk to so many of the people involved, both Russian, British and American.
And, you have highlighted the two things that also marred it for me slightly as well.
I thought that it was just me mis-hearing Gina McKee's mis-pronunciation of 'nuclear', so I'm very pleased you've pointed it out.
And why did they bother with the soundtrack? Surely it would have been just as easy to find generic 'tense' music.
Anyway, proof for me that C4 can put out genuinely good stuff, even if it was 'lost' in Saturday night primetime
I was really pleased as normally c4 docs can be over the top, it was bit long at 1hr.30. I was annoyed by the music as most of it, I think was after 1983 (pedantic i know)! As to Threads I'm suprised most of my fellow schoool mates and I didn't top ourselves as one term we watched threads, when the wind blows and something like soylent green in english, cheery or what Oh and the wall by pink floyd.
Yes, I thought this was great. The reconstruction bits seemed to fit really well with the interviews ie, they didn't seem ridiculously theatrical or patently out of place. I know what you mean about the music, but I assume this was a deliberate choice to underline the cheesy pop culture of the time, in contrast to the deadly games being played by the US and Russia, and to give it a whiff of the time as well. But yes, they could have done it more subtly and less in your face annoying. The pronunciation thing didn't bother me one bit, in fact I didn't even notice it.
As someone with a (distant) background in physics, I found the "nucular" thing literally unbearable. I couldn't stand to watch more than half the programme. In the end I had to do a load of research online to find out how the story developed.
Just to add to the Kids Today Don't Understand VIBE - I looked up the words to "Ask" online last week, and found a lovely discussion next to it, where a group of Young People were trying to work out what Morrissey was singing. Some thought it was "the Bond", others thought "the bomb", but none of them could work out what he meant. Not one of them had any idea what The Bomb (something which I had nightmares about every evening as a teenager) even was - and I thought that was lovely, that however crappy the world is now, at least teenagers aren't convinced they'll die in a nuclear apocalypse before their twenties.
It right cheered me up!
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