Why Dr. Strangelove is more depressingly relevant than ever

Fifty years after its release, Stanley Kubrick's Cold War classic still has plenty to teach us about global politics

Dr. Strangelove
(Image credit: (Bettmann/CORBIS))

It was just 50 years ago that Stanley Kubrick’s legendary satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb hit theaters — but the world was a very different place. The Cold War was at its height, and America was still recovering from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy just two months earlier. It’s into this charged landscape that Stanley Kubrick launched Dr. Strangelove, a jet-black comedy that gave voice to the nerve-jangling paranoia of the era.

Dr. Strangelove, which loosely drew inspiration from Peter George’s 1958 novel Red Alert, follows an all-too-plausible doomsday scenario in which a rogue commander sets the U.S and the Soviet Union on an inescapable path to mutually assured destruction. Described by one critic as "the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across," Dr. Strangelove mercilessly spoofs the military and political insanity of the age, laughing at the prospect of nuclear destruction at a time when drills, fallout shelters, and public safety warnings were a reality of everyday life.

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Daniel is a freelance writer, an Englishman abroad, and a pop culture junkie. He writes about film, TV, and lifestyle for outlets including MSN, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Evening Standard, and Yahoo.