Oppenheimer, celebrated director Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed new film, is sensually disguised apologia for the inevitability— even desirability— of Daddy USA dropping nuclear bombs on a thirsty world, writes Akshat Jain.
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WHILE Christopher Nolan’s previous films were marketed as entertaining, albeit mind-bending, capers— which nonetheless were quite obviously political (read David Graeber and indi.ca)— Oppenheimer is ostensibly marketed as a timely political intervention.
The director calls the film “a cautionary tale” and a “kind of a horror movie”.
Both the director and the lead actor Cillian Murphy can’t stop waxing eloquent about the historical salience of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man, and his relevance today (Nolan goes so far as to compare the atom bomb to the printing press).
Given that the Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has ever been, one cannot but argue that the timing of the film— about the ‘birth pangs’ accompanying the atom bomb— is damn-near perfect.
Even before the war in Ukraine began, the United Nations had warned that “the risk that nuclear weapons will be used is higher now than at any point since the duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters of the Cold War.”
Given that the Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has ever been, one cannot but argue that the timing of the film— about the ‘birth pangs’ accompanying the atom bomb— is damn-near perfect.
Things have only gotten worse since then, with US President Joe Biden even saying that we are closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
While the film has sparked a lively debate about whether it is pro-nukes or anti-nukes, I think the debate entirely misses the point.
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The film, which is very much a part of the US’s wartime propaganda, is ultimately about the inevitability of using nuclear weapons; a moral tale about why the US should use nuclear weapons (instead of listening to cry-babies, as President Truman says; or as Krishna says, instead of being klibas); and how we, the rest of the world, ought to love the US for making war (to us) and dropping its atomic loads (on us).
The inevitability of using nuclear weapons
In the film, when President Harry S. Truman tells Oppenheimer that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not about the scientist at all, he provides the key to understanding the scientific-military complex of the US.
In the US, the separation of Church and State is also the model for the separation of science and the State. It is not for nothing that many US citizens think science and Church are substitutes for each other, as has most clearly been shown by their evolution versus intelligent design debate.
But just as the Church is not actually separated from the State and provides its ideological underpinning, so the scientific establishment is not really separated from the State and provides its military backing.
For a cool moment in the film, Oppenheimer dons the army uniform, thus erasing the artificial distinction between scientists and the army. As he sees it, he is part of the army because he is working for the army. But that is corrected soon enough.
In a telling scene, Isidor Rabi, a consultant in the Manhattan project, played by David Krumholtz, tells Oppenheimer to take off his army uniform because, according to him, scientists work best for the army not as officially part of the army but as civilians.
In fact, Oppenheimer is later punished precisely because he oversteps this foundational boundary again and interferes in foreign (read: military) affairs, a cardinal sin in the US.
Scientists are supposed to develop their ‘gadgets’— be it the atomic bomb, or massive surveillance machines— merely out of scientific curiosity.
They get to live in a pure world devoid of politics, they get to act innocent while developing the deadliest gadgets. If this was not done, they might refuse to develop such gadgets due to the demands of their conscience. As separate entities, they are spared all of that. They can pursue ‘science’ freely.
It is not their fault or their responsibility when the US government takes over those ‘gadgets’ and weaponises them. The production of gadgets can never be stopped because they represent pure scientific endeavour; and the weaponisation of gadgets cannot be stopped because no one has the power to stop the US government from protecting its interests.
Even before the war in Ukraine began, the United Nations had warned that “the risk that nuclear weapons will be used is higher now than at any point since the duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters of the Cold War.”
Borrowing from the Bhagavad Gita, it is Oppenheimer’s ‘dharma’ to create the bomb and Truman’s ‘dharma’ to drop it.
Neither are responsible for the duties of the other and neither can be blamed for discharging their own duties, but more on this later.
The US acts, and the film goes along with this act, that we can separate science from politics and in the same instant celebrate the scientific achievement of the bomb while denigrating the political decision to drop the bomb. But if the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun has taught us anything, it is that if there is a gun, it will be fired.
If we do not stop scientists, their creations will be used by the government.
But we cannot stop scientists because that will be stopping scientific progress, the holy grail of modern man.
If we can’t stop scientists, we are inherently allowing politicians to use their creations without ever explicitly consenting to it.
It is the moralistic inevitability of scientific progress that translates to the realpolitik inevitability of dropping the bomb. This can really be translated to any other scientific achievement— surveillance, drones, exploration (and colonisation) of space and so on.
Why the US, and only the US, should use nuclear weapons
The film’s (and the US’s) central conceit is that the use of the bomb saved lives.
That it would have been even worse for humanity had the US not dropped the bombs which pulverised two cities in Japan.
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If one hears echoes of the US justification for torture under the auspices of the War on Terror, that is because this conceit is still central to the US foreign policy.
The key to understanding this conceit is provided by the Bhagavad Gita, one of the greatest justification for war ever written.
The Bhagavad Gita has a long history but in modern times when Oppenheimer found it and used it to justify his actions, it was also being used by everyone in India from Khudiram Bose, an Indian revolutionary who opposed the British rule in India, to K.B. Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; and from M.K. Gandhi to his killer Nathuram Godse.
While the Bhagavad Gita is quite long, only a small part of it interests us, the part which most interested all these illustrious personalities, the part which divides the world into good and evil and advocates the use of righteous violence against those designated evil.
Just before the beginning of the war with the Kauravas, which Arjun does not have the power to avert anymore, he is hit by a pang of conscience. Presumably so that he can later tell anyone who finds fault with his actions that he tried to stop but Krishna convinced him to do it, so it is not really his fault he killed almost his entire family.
In true godly fashion, Krishna tells Arjun to stop pussyfooting about. Then he gives a discourse on why it is right for Arjun to wage war.
It is not only Arjun’s duty (dharma) as a warrior to participate in a dharmayuddha (righteous war) but it would positively be more harmful if he walked away from fighting the enemy when called upon to do so.
This scene is repeated between Oppenheimer and Isidor Rabi when Rabi refuses to join the Manhattan Project because of his moral qualms about developing such a powerful weapon of mass destruction.
For a cool moment in the film, Oppenheimer dons the army uniform, thus erasing the artificial distinction between scientists and the army.
Oppenheimer plays Krishna and tells Rabi (and the audience): “I don’t know whether we can be trusted with such a weapon, but I know the Nazis can’t. We have no choice.”
In short, it will be more harmful if the US does not develop the bomb (and then drop it of course, because what else are you supposed to do with a bomb?).
Just like the moral universe of the Bhagavad Gita neatly divides the world into good (Pandavas) and evil (Kauravas) and asks the good people to fight the evil people, the US moral universe is also thus divided. The US is good (or at least the best under the circumstances) and everyone else is evil (or at least not as good as the US).
It is the foundational US philosophy and foreign policy calculus. We will do a bad thing which will prevent something even worse. We have the power and capability to choose the best of all possible words or at least the least worst of all possible worlds.
Whatever the US does, it is (retroactively, because the US did it) for the greater good. This logic really works for any morally repugnant and violent thing the US does.
Just like we dropped the bomb for the world’s good, we use surveillance for the world’s good, we torture for the world’s good, we invade countries for the world’s good, the US continues to repeat ad nauseam.
Taking the Bhagavad Gita’s moral universe further, the US will do these things even though it doesn’t really want to do them. It will do them only as a duty to the rest of humanity, without any expectation of reward for itself. What the Bhagavad Gita calls nishkama karma, or action without the desire for the fruits of action.
This is what Oppenheimer’s guilt and remorse really show and this is what he means when he tells Rabi that they have no choice. Oh look, the guy who made the bomb did not even want to drop it, but he had to because it was the best thing to do. This argument is just made easier when you separate the dropper of the bomb from the maker of it.
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One part of the US is always so good, they want to do the best thing. But the other part does what is practical. In this way, the US does everything without wanting to do it. With the necessary plausible deniability of responsibility.
They invaded Iraq even though they did not really want to. They bombed Vietnam even though they did not really want to. Of course, they did not do any of that to secure their own interests but only to do the right thing with no expectation of reward.
By presenting a moral universe in which the US is the ‘good’ side in a war that had no good sides, the movie ultimately is just an apology for US foreign policy and an argument that it should continue to decide what is best for the world and use whatever means are at its disposal to put its decisions into effect.
Therefore, the US should save women, defend human rights and promote democracy with as many bombs as it wants. Only the US should spy on its citizens and everyone else in the world, not China. Only the US should use nuclear weapons, not Russia.
Scientists are supposed to develop their ‘gadgets’— be it the atomic bomb, or massive surveillance machines— merely out of scientific curiosity.
That is why even though Einstein turns his back on Germany, and everyone in Russia and China should turn their backs on their (evil) countries, Oppenheimer refuses to turn his back on the country he loves (and Snowden should have refused to do so too).
How we want the US to use its nuclear weapons on us
The Bhagavad Gita sex scene may seem gratuitous at first glance (except to Kangana Ranaut) but it is not really so.
The sex scene masterfully shows the equation of sex with violence (“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Cillian intones as Pugh straddles him), which is central to the movie.
She is orgasming not because he is having sex with her but because he is destroying worlds (she gets up in the middle of sex, finds the book and asks him to say the words to her).
In David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, Kristen Stewart (sex symbol extraordinaire) tells Viggo Mortensen (another widely recognised sex symbol) that surgery (read: bodily violence) is the new sex.
This is part of the zeitgeist where violence really has replaced sex as the primary thing people get off on. It is only as part of this culture that the film’s Bhagavad Gita sex scene makes sense.
But first, let us see what this culture is.
In as early as 2013, Capital Lifestyle published an article titled, ‘At the movies, violence is the new sex’, which talked about how “gratuitous violence would appear to have replaced gratuitous sex as a marketing tool” at the films screened at Cannes that year.
That was an early indication of a trend that would only become stronger in the years to come and manifest most openly in violent thirst tweets.
GQ magazine came out with an article in 2019 addressing how ‘Our Online Thirst Has Taken a Violent Turn’. Violent thirst tweets are those in which people ask a celebrity they are thirsting over to commit violence on them.
For instance: “I won’t tweet that I want to have sex with Margot Robbie but will write that I want her to chain me to a fence, chop me to pieces, put me in a meat grinder and have me for dinner. Or something like that!” There are lots of these on the internet. For instance, a woman asking John Cena to choke her with his biceps.
Such tweets are proliferating to such an extent that Buzzfeed even has a series of videos in which celebrities read thirst tweets addressed to them.
Cillian Murphy was not chosen to play Oppenheimer because the actor looks like the late scientist. Cillian was prepared for this role by Nolan ever since he was cast as Scarecrow in the movie, Batman Begins. As the hero of that film, he was already elevated to a sex symbol.
However, it took him twenty years and six seasons of playing Tommy Shelby in the series, Peaky Blinders to mature into the sexy god that he is considered to be today (a sexy god fit to destroy our worlds).
One part of the US is always so good, they want to do the best thing. But the other part does what is practical. In this way, the US does everything without wanting to do it. With the necessary plausible deniability of responsibility.
He was chosen for the role because he is, according to many popular polls, one of the sexiest men alive. In fact, he has been dubbed “the sexiest actor alive” by Glamour magazine in its September 2023 issue.
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It does not take a very fertile Freudian mind to see the phallic connotations of the atomic bomb. It also does not take much to see that Cillian Murphy has been burned into our minds as Oppenheimer.
We do not see the real Oppenheimer when we think of the father of the atomic bomb, we see Cillian.
Do we want Cillian to drop that bomb on us? Of course we do. It is Cillian destroying our world. The atomic bomb is the epitome of violence and thus the epitome of sex.
Given the thirst tweets mentioned above, is it really so hard to imagine people asking Cillian to drop that bomb on them? Not only is it inevitable that the US will drop the bomb, but it should drop the bomb and we want it to drop the bomb!
The sex scene masterfully shows the equation of sex with violence (“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Cillian intones as Pugh straddles him), which is central to the movie.
To sum up, the film is a remarkable piece of US propaganda which not only attempts to convince us that the bomb is necessary but also convinces us that we want it to be necessary.
One can expect nothing else from a country which used Donald Duck and jazz as propaganda tools.
One can expect no less from a filmmaker who used the third Batman instalment to discredit Occupy Wall Street, arguably the greatest outburst of mass democracy in the US since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
