NFR Project: 'Duck and Cover' (1952)

  

NFR Project: “Duck and Cover”

Dir: Anthony Rizzo

Scr: Raymond J. Mauer

Pho: Drummond Drury

Premiere: 1952

9:15

It’s the most dissociative thing I’ve ever seen. It consciencelessly lies to children about their chances of survival in an atomic attack. It’s what was known as a civil-defense film; it was propaganda.

I am a Space Age kid. Born in 1960, I grew up in a house with a bomb shelter in the basement. You can read that story here.

During the Cold War, the uncertainty about the perils of Communism and the Soviet Union was intense. It provoked a second Red Scare, from 1946 to 1957 (the first being in 1919-1920). It motivated people to build bomb shelters in their backyards. Public buildings had yellow-and-back signs on them stating their status as a “Fallout Shelter.” The idea of nuclear annihilation was thought to be high, especially after the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb in August of 1949.

There were a lot of misconceptions about what an atomic bomb could do to you, despite the excruciating reporting of John Hersey in his Hiroshima in 1946. This film reinforces them all.

We are shown a cartoon turtle, Bert. A monkey dangles a firecracker in front of him; Bert goes into his shell. The firecracker blows up. The monkey vanishes; the tree is wrecked. Bert is fine. And a cute little jingle proclaims: “There was a turtle by the name of Bert/and Bert the turtle was very alert/When danger threatened him he never got hurt/he knew just what to do:/He'd duck and cover!/Duck and cover!/He did what we all must learn to do/You, and you, and you, and you/Duck and cover!”

Then the film shows us what it means: schoolchildren get under their desks, clasp their hands behind their heads, and scrunch down into a ball. This is the government’s recommendation for the population in case of atomic attack. Duck and cover.

“If you were not ready and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways.” No kidding.

In all probability, many of these schoolchildren would be vaporized. The survivors on the edges of the blast will all have been polluted with radiation, sporting tattered flesh. The film does not cover this. Instead, we are proffered the examples of good little children in various situations, ducking and covering. In the end, we are shown a family crouched under a picnic blanket.

This film was rightly cited extensively in the 1982 documentary The Atomic Café. It represents the wishful thinking of a generation of adults who had no idea what they were talking about.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Gerald McBoing-Boing.