Bikinis and Other Atomic Incidents: The Synthetic Life of the Nuclear Pacific

This article examines a range of mid-twentieth-century American fashions, particularly women’s intimate wear, that went by the name of “bikini.” In doing so, it identifies the bikini as an overt but unremarkable incident of racial and colonial violence. Treating the nuclear Pacific as conspicuously incidental in mainstream atomic culture enables new insights on the visual interplay between white femininity and primitive sexuality—an interplay that, the author argues, was integral to establishing domestic virtue and modern living as atomic age touchstones of “peace.” To elaborate on this argument, this article tracks the bikini’s achievement of propriety within a broader fashion revolution spurred by the use of high-tech fibers in swim, sleep, and support garments. It shows how an atomic ideal of “nature” arose from an imperial desire for security in the face of extreme risk—both the global risk of nuclear war and the domestic risk of sexual promiscuity.

‘Leaving a record of their coming’

Creature from the Black Lagoon (Arnold US 1954), perhaps the quintessential and most enduring atomic-age creature feature, is a rich text for ecocritical analysis. Not only does the film heavily emphasise extinction and evolution in its narration and plot line, but the film is full of tensions that both calcify problematic Anthropocenic narratives and erode them. The film offers us a way of critiquing Anthropocenic histories and ongoing narratives without erasing racial and colonial injustices. It also offers us a way to imagine other stories - other ways of writing on our world - that engage material entanglements, disorient colonial and anthropocentric perspectives and create empathy. Recognising the film’s rocky Anthropocenic and extinction narratives enables a more fluid approach. Reading through water, emphasising evolutionary entanglements, brings into high relief past injustices against humans and nonhumans, and it engages a palimpsest effect, where an awareness of our muddled materiality helps us write over hierarchical pasts. Framing the film ecocritically by reading extinction and evolution emphasises the tensions of Anthropocenic violence (through colonial science and Anthropocenic erasures) and of positive material entanglements (through empathy and disorientation).

Faith, Fallout, and the Future: Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction in the Early Postwar Era

In the early postwar era, from 1945 to 1960, Americans confronted a dilemma that had never been faced before. In the new atomic age, which opened with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, they now had to grapple with maintaining their faith in a peaceful and prosperous future while also controlling their fear of an apocalyptic future resulting from an atomic war. Americans’ subsequent search for reassurance translated into a dramatic increase in church membership and the rise of the evangelical movement. Yet, their fear of an atomic war with the Soviet Union and possible nuclear apocalypse did not abate. This article discusses how six post-apocalyptic science fiction novels dealt with this dilemma and presented their visions of the future; more important, it argues that these novels not only reflect the views of many Americans in the early Cold War era, but also provide relevant insights into the role of religion during these complex and controversial years to reframe the belief that an apocalypse was inevitable.

Masses and Historical Consciousness: Beauty and the Nation in Western Culture during the Atomic Age

The article proposes an analysis of atomic culture in the United States and Western Europe, during the first 20 years of the Cold War, in the light of George L. Mosse’s work and approach. It shows how ‘habits of mind’ and the ‘general mood’ concerning the atomic bomb and risk of nuclear war were profoundly intertwined with deep-seated representations of the nation. It also exemplifies how the romantic attitudes toward life analyzed by Mosse – the longing for ‘shelter’ felt by men and women the more the world demythologized, and their need for symbols, especially connecting man with nature and its permanence – played an extremely relevant role in shaping attitudes about the ‘atomic age’. The nuclear question is thus ‘framed’ within longer term attitudes and cultural responses to modern war, as well as put in context with Western postwar culture, as investigated by Mosse: a culture marked by a renewed fear of technology, nihilism and widespread fears of alienation, as well as the continued relevance of nationalism and respectability. The article mainly examines two national cases: the USA and France. In the final section, comparison with other European countries is proposed and some general conclusions advanced.