Godzilla e Dr. Strangelove: Representações do medo no cinema da Guerra Fria

Abstract

This dissertation aimed to analyze two of the most impactful works of art produced in the Cold War cinema, masterpieces that changed the cultural history at the time for both westerners and easterners: Gojira (1954) and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). The first movie is a Japanese production with an original screenplay; the second one, in turn, is a British-American production, which screenplay was adapted from the previously book Red Alert, by Peter George. The kind of analyze that we are proposing will not discuss merely the movies’ plots. We will approach their historical context and how these films manifest anguishes, traumas and fear – especially the fear of nuclear annihilation. Those were common feelings in that moment, when the memories of the atomic bombs in World War II still vividly haunted the witnesses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the tension between United States and Soviet Union arose. Our effort, here, is to understand the universe in which these selected movies work as dramatic transpositions and artistic re-elaborations of historical events, and symbolic translations of political and social dramas.