Nuclear Imaginaries and Power in Oppenheimer.

ABSTRACT

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is in awe of physics and the power it can bestow. Its central character is both mythic and human, and the film critiques and constructs the mythology surrounding him. The film presents science and technology as the individualized work of masculine genius, though it is ultimately more interested in nuclear weapons as political objects than as technological ones. Its nuclear imaginaries contain personal anxieties and stunning spectacle but also forget the nuclear uncanny and the human scale of nuclear weapons.