Dr. Strangelove and the Psychology of Comic Distance

Bibliographic Data

ID21833461
AuthorsMarc Hye‐Knudsen (0000-0002-8804-7430, Aarhus University, corresponding author), Marc Hye-Knudsen (Graduate, Aarhus University [email protected])
Year2022
Volume16
Issue2
Pages53-73
Publication date2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueProjections (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1934-9688 • E-ISSN: 1934-9696
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/proj.2022.160203
OpenAlexW4283713379
LanguageEN
References cited9

In 1964, near the height of Cold War nuclear anxiety, millions of Americans flocked to movie theatres to see their own nuclear annihilation hilariously enacted for them in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove . How did Kubrick transform one of his time’s most pressing causes of psychological distress into a source of humorous pleasure? To answer this question, I offer a cognitive account of how comic distance works on film, building on research indicating humor to be an evolved response to benign violations. I show that Kubrick consistently optimized for psychological distance in Dr. Strangelove , comparing his narrative and stylistic choices to those of Sidney Lumet in Fail Safe , a contemporaneous film that plays the same essential story for drama instead of laughs

Anxiety · Art · Comics · Drama · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Pleasure · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Visual arts · Film in Education and Therapy · Humor Studies and Applications · Psychology · Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism · Social Psychology

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