Daily Discussion Thread: Thu 20 Jul 2023
Daily Discussion Thread: Thu 20 Jul 2023
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We are in the cinema about to see Oppenheimer. I’m very nervous. I have spent the entire day translating the account of a doctor who spent the days following the bomb treating the victims so I am in a very biased mindset, I know. But god I hope this is done well. A group of colleagues and people I put out a private and public plea to Nolan and Atlas entertainment to include epilogue text in the film and acknowledge the plight of the hibakusha and the downwinders and the Marshallese and all the other global hibakusha. They were ignored. Urgh Urgh Urgh. I’m trying to not be pessimistic.
I had a ticket for 7:30 but just cancelled/refunded it. Really not up for a 3-hour hard drama tonight. The only thing I was looking forward to was the boysenberry choc top.
It was good, honestly. Was definitely long though, and not exactly lighthearted.
Great to know from the expert that it is good. Now I am extra looking forward to it. I’ll be watching both on Monday.
Ultimately one film can only cover so much ground.
My worries aren’t about what it covers, it’s about the narrative it tells and the motives behind it. Anyway, I’ll reserve judgement until it’s done.
I'd expect it'd be written for entertainment with occasional inspirations of accuracy.
i saw a twitter thread pointing out all the inaccuracies just from the american side and just from the trailer
The trailer was quite deceptive. The trailers made it look like war propaganda, which is was not (not entirely anyway, and not in the way I was expecting). There were still a lot of inaccuracies that were conveniently glossed over, but as dumblederp said, it’s for entertainment purposes, you can’t expect 100% accuracy
Does it talk about the all the death camps in China and Burma where millions were murdered by Japan?
Why would it? That’s not what the film is about.
Look, I get the point you’re trying to make here, Seagoon, but that’s not what I’m getting at. My work, my research, the organisations and individuals I work for and with are about making known the human consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. Not just the victims in japan, but the Marshallese from Bikini Atoll, the First Nations displaced because of British testing in Maralinga and Emu Fields, the downwinders of Utah, the Kazakh of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. The people who, if they survived the bombing or the test, are still living with the consequences. Nuclear weapons are created and wielded by those countries with money and power and they’re the ones who control the narratives around it, the stories were told about them, not the survivors, even though it’s their story to tell. They’re the only ones who truely understand it. My worries about the film were that it was going to be a bunch of nuclear propaganda, that fed the false narrative that nuclear deterrence is the only way forward, and I was pleasantly wrong. Forgive me if I’m touchy on the subject but at 90 seconds til midnight I don’t find these kinds of comments helpful.
Everyone do yourselves a favour and go and watch this, read through this site and watch this interview with my good friend Mary talking about how the American government let her, her family and her community down after exposing them to massive amounts of radiation from all of the testing they did. Did you know that the brunt of radiation affects are born disproportionately by women? Or that it’s inherently linked to colonialism? Or that just the use of one bomb can and will cause a nuclear famine that will mean 1/3 of the worlds population will starve to death?
This is what people need to be aware of when going to see Oppenheimer.