I’m rather interested in atomic-pop at the moment and how much of Japanese post-war culture is wrapped up in dealing with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while never admitting this preoccupation.
In the West the very same issue is always so foreground and there’s no self-consciousness about it. Let’s call our videogame ‘Fallout’ or have our television character bravely stop terrorists from getting nuclear weapons. It’s all so explicit. Everything is Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Dr. Strangelove.
But, right now, I’m more relating to the other side of it. The idea there’s this overwhelming fear out there, which we all feel, don’t understand and must never talk about. That feels like a better metaphor to me.
Frame is from ‘I Live In Fear’ aka ‘Record of a Living Being’ or ‘What the Birds Knew’.
