Unit 5 Post #2: The Atomic Cafe

The Atomic Cafe, a documentary film produced in 1982 by Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty, displays life in mid-twentieth century America. Beginning with the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end war with Japan during WWII, the documentary covers the beginning of the nuclear era from the 1940s to the early 1960s, a time filled with anxiety, paranoia, and uncertainty. The entire film consists of archival footage including presidential speeches, military training films, newsreels, pop songs of the time, and American propaganda film. The documentary depicts the end of American innocence as the United States entered a new age of atomic warfare and fear that the Soviet Union would soon destroy the war. The film is also riddled with dark humor, which helps to show the absurdity of the nuclear propaganda films of the 1950s. For example, in a clip from a civil defense film, the narrator says, "Man will eventually evolve into a race of bald-headed people. Just imagine yourself with no hair! They'll call you old skin-head, old chrome-dome! The treatment, if you insist, would be a toupee. But it's only temporary, for your hair would come back: same color, same cowlick." An entertaining film, The Atomic Cafe showcases a time when nuclear warfare affected not only the military, but the American family as well, completely changing American society.
     The entire documentary consists of achieved footage taken from various sources from the 1940s to the early 1960s. The footage from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan as well as from Bikini Island helps to show the audience the destructive nature of the atomic bomb. The final scene of the film was part of a propaganda video that showed an atomic bomb exploding and destroying planes, cities, forests, etc. The family that was in their air-raid shelter got up (unharmed) at the end of the explosion and the father said, "All in all, I think we've been pretty lucky." This footage shows how hopeful America is for a brighter and better future. The soundtrack consists of pop songs from the '40s and '50s, which are a great accompaniment for the documentary, because many of the songs written during the Cold War were political. Whereas some where anti-war/bomb and others were pro-war/bomb, it gives the viewer another opinion of the Cold War. The film also uses pathos when it covers the Rosenberg Trial and execution. The Rosenbergs, accused of giving nuclear secrets to the Soviets, were given the electric chair, but Ethel Rosenberg didn't immediately die. The humane method turned into an inhumane murder of a person that may or may not have committed any crime. This was effective in showing the Second Great Red Scare in America and how it blinded the government's eye towards civil liberties. Surprisingly, McCarthyism was barely covered in the documentary, which was interesting, considering that it was a large social effect of the growing Red Scare. The Atomic Cafe very effectively used rhetorical devices to display effect the Atomic Bomb had on the Cold War.

       The Atomic Cafe. Dir. Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty, and Pierce Rafferty. Libra Films, 1982. DVD.

Unit 5 Post #1

My posts have significantly improved since the beginning of the year. My very first post,  In Standoff, Latest Sign of Unions Under Siege, wasn't very good, mainly because I wasn't really sure what I was doing. Instead of writing a cohesive argument, it was very choppy, because I treated the guidelines like a check-list. Instead of writing a smooth post including a summary, analysis of rhetorical devices, etc. the post was more like a sentence or two about one point before moving onto the next point without a transition. It was also really short, because I thought that I needed to strictly adhere to the 200-250 word limit.
     I have gotten very good at analyzing paintings, as seen in The Scream Re-Write. In this post especially, I understood how the colors and lines helped the painter to achieve his purpose of conveying human emotion. The genderless face in the foreground of the painting helped to keep the viewers eyes from getting lost in the swirling background. However, I still need to work on analyzing written rhetoric. For example, in my post Health Insurance In America, I had difficulty understanding the author's purpose and how he used rhetoric to get his point across (although to be honest, I didn't really understand the point of the article in the first place, because it was from some fancy economist magazine).
     The purpose of the TOW assignments is to help us analyze a variety of texts, both written and visual, to make us better writers as well as readers. I think that I would have benefitted from this assignment more is if we got a little bit more time to work on them during school. Sometimes I waited until the last minute to do my TOWs, and they were not as good as I could have made them. If we had a little bit more time to work on them during class, I feel like they could have been a little bit more sophisticated. Also, it would have been very helpful to get some specific feedback on our posts, this way I would know exactly what I needed to work on to make my posts better.

Rachel's Moving Journey

Riding The Bus With My Sister is a memoir by Rachel Simons where she tells the story of how she braved the Pennsylvania city bus system for a year with her sister. Beth, who has a mental handicap, has a boyfriend, a way of life, and a loving community on the bus whereas her sister, a writer and college professor, uses her incredibly busy life to camouflage her emotional isolation and has much to learn about her sister's extraordinary world.
     One of the most interesting concepts of this book was the idea of "People's First Language," which is a form of linguistic prescriptivism in English aimed to avoid perceived and subconscious dehumanization when discussing people with mental or physical disabilities, an aspect of disability etiquette. Basically, the idea is to put the person first: for example you would refer to someone as a "person with a disability" as opposed to a "disabled person." It puts a little more humanity into the disability.
     The memoir was very moving, and it was delightful to see Rachel and Beth becoming closer as sisters, because prior to this year, the two had grown further apart as each of them developed their own identities and lives. A film adaptation was created in 2005, which I have yet to see. Although some aspects of the movie deviate from real life, Rachel Simons believes it to be "Poignant, moving and a powerful film."