Dr. Strangelove: Critique of Masculinity

Dr. Strangelove (1964) is one of Stanley Kubrick's earlier films. It follows the political leaders of the world as they come together to discuss how to stop U.S. Air Force General Jack D. Ripper's (who has gone insane) order to bomb the U.S.S.R. As most of Kubrick's works, this film is a hilarious critique of masculinity and men in general, as they crack sex joke after sex joke while nuclear war looms because one man can't get a hard-on.

What is notoriously known as a man’s weapon? It’s not a nuclear bomb, it’s the very thing that controls his ego of course: his penis. An attack on one man's weapon is an attack on every man’s weapon. Dr. Strangelove shows its audience that a man’s penis rules him, even in the workplace and in times of immense danger, as initially seen with Jack D. Ripper as he orders his troops to bomb Russia after he fails to get an erection during intercourse. This causes him to believe that the U.S.S.R. is poisoning everybody's semen. This film highlights the importance of sex to a man, portraying sexuality as power within masculinity.

The men accept the possibility of the doomsday device going off and Dr. Strangelove grabs their attention as he explains a bunker that would keep people safe in this type of situation. To reassure the men of the Pentagon, he explains that it would specifically keep them safe; they would obviously be the ones going into the bunker as they are rich, white, and powerful. As the bomb drops, the men get hung up on the idea that there would be ten women for every one man. Rather than getting to work or addressing other matters such as national security, they completely forget the goal of their meeting and end up raving about this sexual fantasy. 

The only woman in the film is only seen in a short scene where she is lounging on a bed in a bikini. She acts as a messenger between General Turgidson and the man calling him, mediating the conversation as Turgidson is screaming from the bathroom (Yeah, this movie does not pass the Bechdel Test). The use of a woman to keep an intense conversation calm between two men in authority positions pokes fun at the whole point of the movie, the fact that the men get nothing done except the one thing they weren’t supposed to do: drop the hydrogen bomb.

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