A “Fluid” Truism: Dr. Strangelove’s Confrontation of the Malleability of Knowledge and Truth

Abstract

Power serves, at its most basic, as a fundamental force that shapes the world we live in. Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) aptly captures the play between power and resistance under the lens of the Cold War. Unlike previous examinations of Dr. Strangelove, this essay is founded on Foucault’s power/truth regime in which reality is bent through the dispersal or confinement of knowledge and choice. The ability of
power to mold subjective truths is explored in an attempt to distinguish between true truths and ideological manipulation not only during the Cold War era, but in modern life.