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Mar 17, 2022 By Austin Saalman

The mythology perpetuated by atomic society and the ensuing geopolitical nightmare stemming from its advent form the backbone of The Atomic Café, directors Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty’s exploration into the sociopolitical mania so deeply embedded within many of the 20th century’s post-war institutions. The resultant product, more a tasteful collage than traditional documentary, was hailed by The Village Voice as “a comic horror film” upon its release in 1982. Indeed, this often grotesque patchwork of various Cold War-era Americana—composed entirely of old newsreels, propaganda material, and safety and training videos—absurdly chronicles a nation on the brink, as it stumbles further toward its current fugue state of paranoid hyperindividualism and psychic degradation.

The film’s comedic elements are present throughout, especially in moments such as Vice Admiral (later Admiral) W.H.P. Blandy’s sudden and bizarre insistence that he is “not an atomic playboy.” One can also find bleak amusement in the adventures of Duck and Cover’s Bert the Turtle, as well as the slew of excerpted disinformation and propaganda crafted to acclimate the public to a fresh national identity in the Atomic Age’s inevitable wake. Also documented is the simultaneous acceleration of rampant consumerism, one commentator attempting to justify this phenomenon by likening the advent of shopping malls in Southern California to the American Way (e.g. liberty and virtue), while the directors’ clever use of imagery featuring supermarket aisles, high protein cereal, beer, cheeseburgers, and TV dinners during such impassioned narrative sequences revealingly highlights this philosophy. Certainly, the very notion of the Bomb had quickly become a prevalent industry in and of itself, influencing all others cast within its great shadow.

The film is rich in irony, allowing the archival content to speak for itself in exposing the alarming state of terror advanced exponentially by technological innovation. The film’s soundtrack, which consists almost entirely of atomic-themed pop tunes from the era, adds another layer of campy surrealism to the experience, with such lost gems as the Golden Gate Quartet’s “Atom and Evil,” Lowell Blanchard with The Valley Trio’s “Jesus Hits Like An Atom Bomb,” and The Five Stars’ “Atomic Bomb Baby” accentuating the grim fate befalling the national landscape. All this as a suburban child clad in a hazmat suit bikes to the nearest air raid shelter and a nun in a gas mask lingers like some morbid Ghost of Christmas Future. The Family, Youth, and Cross remain integral to this narrative, these three cornerstones of the American self now mutated into something else entirely, as we watch a mark of corruption spread insidiously, winding its way through both Church and State.

Symptoms of this social epidemic are surveyed in bulk, most chillingly in President Harry S. Truman’s public assurance that the Bomb has fallen into American hands and shall be used as an instrument of God’s will. “It is an awful responsibility which has come to us,” Truman states. “We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies, and we pray that He may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.” Cue Karl and Harty’s “When the Atom Bomb Fell” as blissful footage of post-war merriment commences—servicemen dancing in the streets, kissing their sweethearts as flags wave around them, sidewalks packed with crowds celebrating the country’s victory. Aerial footage of Hiroshima, demolished to rubble, features remarks from two commentators, one of whom humorously compares the scene to “Ebbets Field after a doubleheader with the Giants.” Scorched corpses of men, women, and children litter the ground, many burned beyond recognition. Demolished city blocks sprawl as far as the eye can see. Grainy medical footage depicts survivors of the blast, gazes solemn, skin welted and blistered, some missing limbs, faces mutilated, strange cavities agape—their new flesh ringing in a subsequent generation of humanity.

The film’s tendency to juxtapose such emblems of occidental prosperity as sock hops, roller coasters, beach trips, shiny automobiles, goin’ steady, church services, picnics, Thanksgiving meals, and parades with images of scarred flesh, maimed features, and infected extremities paints a stirring portrait of a cultural meaning since vanquished, the gnarled branches of that desolate pit once known as Eden tangled against the skyline as a searing fireball ascends past the clouds and into the coming dawn. The utter dishonesty with which much of the operation was handled may seem less startling to modern viewers “knowingly” living through the era of post-truth, but The Atomic Café remains a stunning experience nonetheless.

The faces of key figures such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Stalin, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Nikita Khrushchev, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Paul Tibbets craft a familiar popular culture tapestry throughout the film, a dour “who’s who” of the era. From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Bikini Atoll and eventually on to Maple Street itself, witness creeping doom as it spreads from ocean to ocean, as faithfully cataloged here. Ultimately offering a frank peek into our continued collective schizoaffective condition, The Atomic Café depicts modern civilization consuming contaminated tea, digging mass graves for radioactive fish, and likening the Bomb to God Himself—begging the question latent within Nietzsche’s infamous declaration of His death: What would inevitably replace God in His absence? By the century’s conclusion, the nuclear apparatus had since developed into a permanent extension of the American psyche, influencing our faith, politics, economics, and social norms.

The Atomic Café remains a crucial film, its underground appeal and alarming message making it ideal for cult status, something it has enjoyed now for four decades. The effort is funny, provocative, terrifying, and timely, a work of indie art still so urgent, reminding the viewer that the war is still being translated through our media, any discernible sense of meaning disintegrating in one final flash as we the faithful await the Hour of Judgment, the moment of annihilation.

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