A.

Bowdoin Van Riper | Special In-Depth Section

From Gagarin to Armageddon:

Soviet-American Relations in the Cold War Space Epic A. Bowdoin Van Riper Social and International Studies Program Southern Polytechnic State University

also tend, because they are carefully crafted, to deliver their messages (implicit or explicit) w ith a clarity and precision lacking in less expensive, less prestigious science fiction films. Early space procedural tended to be apolitical, relying on Man vs. Nature confiicts to dri\e their plots. Where Man vs. Man conflict existed at all, it took place betw een members of the crew or between the crew and officials on Earth, never between nations. The closest that Destination Moon Beating me bo\ iet> to tiie moon l^. tor the Amencans in CounidoH n 1 absolute good. comes to a political statement is a vague reference to the need its realism and its focus on the details of its characters' profesto reach the moon before other, unspecified foreign pow ers claim sional activities. The difference between a space procedural it as their own. Neither the steady intensification of the Cold and a film that simply takes place in space is a matter of emphaWar nor the "space race" inaugurated b\ the Soviet Union's sis. In the former, space travel remains in the foreground and launch of Sputnik I in 1957 brought significant changes in space drives the plot; in the latter, it is simply means of mo\ ing the procedural. The 1961 flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin characters around. Apollo 13 (1995j is a space procedural; Star and President John F. Kennedy s subsequent call for an AmeriWars (1911) is, not. can moon landing by the end of the decade had no visible effect on the sub-genre. The major space travel films of the mid-1960s Space procedural are common in written science fiction, tend toward comic-book broadness, not detailed realism.' Bebut have always been comparati\ ely scarce on film.- Destinaginning in 1968. however, space procedural became increastion Moon, generally acknowledged as the first, appeared in 1950 ingly realistic and Cold War politics began to play an increasingly and fewer than a dozen have followed it. The rarity of space explicit role in them. procedural is a product of two factors: their production costs, and their dismal record as entertainment. High costs are a builtThere is no obvious, satisfying explanation for this shift, in hazard of the sub-genre. Depicting space travel realistically, or for why it happened when it did. It is tempting, but probas Robert Heinlein wrote w hile a consultant on Destination Moon. ably misleading, to link it to the gradual slackening of supertakes time, money, and careful attention to detail. Low enterpower tensions that began w ith the Test Ban Treaty of 1963. It tainment value is another matter. It is due less to the inherent is equally tempting, and probably equally misleading, to see it limits of the form than to Hollywood's unfamiliarity with it and as an attempt to capitalize on the rapidly advancing Apollo to filmmakers' tendency to lose track of plot and character in program. The real reason is likely more complicated and more their anxiety to keep the technical details under control. The prosaic, tied to shooting schedules, the availability of spacemoney thrown at a typical space travel procedural does not alrelated properties, and Hollywood's cyclical interest in science ways buy effective storytelling, but it generally buys craftsmanfiction. Whatever the reason, the space procedural became ship, and space procedural thus tend to be well-made. They politically aware in 1968. This essay is concemed with what

The phrase "Cold War sciencefictiontllms" inevitably conjures up images of giant insects, alien invaders, and the end of the worid. Films of this type account for most of Hollywood's science fiction output between the late 1940s and the late 1980s, and their status as cultural artifacts of the Cold War has been discussed at length.' There is, however, another dimension to the stor\: a much smaller sub-genre that, for the purposes of this essay. I will term "space procedural." The space procedural, like its myster}-stor\- counterpart the police procedural, is defined b\'

Vol. 31.2 (2001) I 45

Van Riper | From Gagarin to Armageddon. Soviet-American Relations in the Cold War Space Epic

happened over the next three decades. It explores the ways in which space procedural from three distinct phases of the later Cold War depicted, and commented on, Soviet-American relations in their eras. The real-world space race was drawing to a close in late 1968. Both the Soviet and American space programs were close to putting manned spacecraft into lunar orbit. Both programs had landed robot probes on the moon, and both could, in principle, attempt a manned landing in the near future. "First On The Moon" was the last great prize in the first phase of space exploration. No other goal attainable with existing spacecraft carried the same prestige. Certain that the United States would beat them to a manned landing, Soviet officials hoped to win a share of the glory by making the first manned orbital flight in late 1968 or early 1969. Upon learning of this, American flight planners rearranged existing flight schedules in order to launch their own lunar orbital mission in December 1968. The tlight of Apollo 8, which reached lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, marked the effective end of the space race. When Apollo 11 left for the moon seven months later, the question was not "Can America get there first?" but "Can America do it the first time?""' Robert Altman's Countdown (1968) appeared in the year that ended with the flight oi Apollo 8, but adapted a Hank Searls 1964 novel The Pilgrim Project. The film traces the last, desperate weeks of a Soviet-American race to land the first man on the moon. Nominally set in 1968, its attitudes are more characteristic of 1964a time when the Soviet lead in space seemed unassailable. The assumption that the United States must beat the Soviet Union to the moon (the last, greatest prize) is central to the logic of its story. The story begins when Colonel Charles "Chiz" Stewart, training his crew for an Apollo moon landing mission still a year in the future, receives word that a Soviet landing is imminent. A one-man Soviet ship is headed for the moon to survey landing sites from orbit, and a three-man ship will attempt a landing in a month or less. Stewart explains to the other two members of his crew that NASA has anticipated, and prepared for, this kind of Soviet surprise. A secret moon landing program code-named "Pilgrim" has been developed as an emergency backup for Apollo. The Pilgrim spacecraft, a heavily modified version of a two-man Gemini ship, will carry fuel and supplies sufficient to get a single astronaut to the moon, but not to bring him home again. Once the astronaut has landed, he will move into a shelter delivered by an earlier, unmanned rocket and subsist on supplies sent from Earth until the first Apollo landing mission arrives to ferry him home. Pilgrim will, Stewart says, be ready to launch in three weeksjust in time to beat the Soviets at the finish line. Beating the Soviets is, for the principal characters in Countdown, an absolute and unquestioned good. They take the importance of doing so for granted, and have little patience for anyone who fails (or refuses) to see it. When Stewart's Apollo crewmates express doubts about the Pilgrim concept, he brandishes the technical manual like holy writ and snaps that "It's all in there!." When a flight surgeon expresses concerns about

the physical demands on Pilgrim's lone astronaut, NASA chief Ross Llewellyn overrides his objections and threatens to have him court-martialed if he speaks out. Lee Stegler, the astronaut chosen to fly the mission, brushes aside the doubts of his wife and young son with more gentleness but equal finality. Thirty years on, audiences would probably concur with Mrs. Stegler and the flight surgeon: Pilgrim seems like a hare-brained idea. Technologically it is a dead end, dependent on a jury-rigged spacecraft that will do little to show off America's technological sophistication. Operationally it is vacuous, its astronaut functioning less as an explorer than as a flag planted to claim new territory. Morally it is dubious, marooning the astronaut for a year in a hostile environment with no possibility of rescue. Sending Pilgrim to the moon seems rational only if getting there first is matter of such transcendent importance that it trumps all other concerns. Late in the film, when it becomes clear that a threeman Soviet crew will reach the moon first. Project Pilgrim's reason for existing appears to have evaporated. Stegler, however, wants to fly the mission anyway. He is so committed to it, in fact, that he lands even though he cannot locate the shelter that is his only hope of survival. The main characters' steely-eyed intensity is not politically motivated. The race to the moon is, for them, analogous not to a war but to a sporting event. Llewellyn is the victory-obsessed coach, Stewart the veteran player sidelined on the eve of the Big Game, and Stegler the untested rookie who must replace him. Stegler's argument for launching Pilgrimbetter second by three days than second by a yearechoes the Olympic ideal that competing well is as important as winning. His decision to land on the moon rather than retum home is, like a last-second Hail Mary pass or a last-inning swing for the bleachers, a high-stakes bet that his strength and skill will allow him to beat the odds. Consistent with the mythology of the Big Game, Stegler is rewarded for his confidence and tenacity. He reaches the shelter safely and, while traversing the lunar surface, discovers the wreckage of the Soviet spacecraft and the lifeless bodies of its three cosmonauts. The United States has achieved at least a draw: first man to land on the moon and retum safely to the Earth will be an American. Nobody quotes Yogi Berra, but Countdown'^ implicit message seems to be: "'It ain't over "til it's over." The first footprints on the moon are at least a generation old in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but the tensions of the Cold War have not abated. Americans and Soviets alike reside on the moon, but each superpower has its own base, its own personnel, and its own scientific agenda. The first major human character to appear on screen is Dr. Heywood Floyd, a scientist called to the American base to examine a still-secret project. His first substantive conversation, with a group of four Soviet scientists, shows that Soviet-American competition is as much a part of 200rs world as it was of Countdown's. Floyd knows one of the Soviets, Elena, personally. He knows Dr. Smyslov, apparently the senior member of the group, only by reputation. He exchanges a few vague pleasantries with Elena, but it is Smyslov who captures and holds his attention. The encounter takes place by chance, aboard an Earth-orbiting

46 I Film & History

A. Bowdoin Van Riper | Special In-Depth Section

space station that serves as a voices) and ritualized transfer point for all travelers (Smyslov alludes to a lunar to the moon. It is a politically treaty), but it is no less real and neutral space (their immediate no less intense than the homisurroundings resemble an airnids' battles over food. If port departure lounge), and the words have replaced bones as conversation is studiously pothe weapons of choice for inlite. Beneath his politeness, tertribal conflict, it is only bethough, Smyslov is intense, cause the same ingenuity that probing. AU communications brought humans into space has with the American lunar base At a politically neutral site. Soviet and Amencan scientists engage in a battle of made the real ones too powerat Clavius have been out for the wits, not force, in 200/.- .4 Spuce Od\sse\ (1968). ful for everyday use. The past ten days. A Soviet transport with engine trouble was denied Cold War, Kubrick seems to suggest, began not in 1945 but permission to land there, in direct violation of an intemational millions of years ago on the dusty plains of East Africa. treaty. Floyd expresses astonishment; his face is the epitome of Soviet-American relations in the two films of 1968 were American openness and innocence. Smyslov leans closer, his defined by competition: physical in Countdown, mental voice taking on a conspiratorial tone. He has heard, from reli(substituting for physical) in 2001. The competitors, in each able sources, that an epidemic of unknown origin has broken case, respect each other and respect the rules under which out at the American base. Can Floyd confirm the fact? The they compete. Neither Soviets nor Americans have reason to American responds, a bit primly now, that he is not at libert\ to fear death at the hands of the "enemy:" such violence would discuss the matter. Smyslov smiles in triumph. be an unthinkable breach of the unspoken rules. Equally, however, neither Soviets nor Americans have reason to expect Several scenes later, it is clear that Floyd, not Smyslov, the other side to relax its guard. The worlds of Countdown won the verbal chess match aboard the space station. The ruand 2007 thus have much in common w ith the world of the mors of an epidemic are part of a disinformation campaign demid- to late 1960s. Cold War competition is a fact of life, but signed to keep the rest of the world at arm's length from the the competition is not bellicose and not a direct threat to eiAmerican base. Briefing an audience of American scientists, ther superpower. Aggression has been muted, channeled, and Hoyd thanks them for their help in maintaining the lie. He accontained by joint agreement. It can, like a chronic illness, knowledges the discomfort the scientists feel about withholding be li\ed with but never eradicated, informadon and lying to colleagues, but does not share it. He appears, in retrospect, to have enjoyed misleading Smyslov. John Sturges's Marooned (1969) alters the formula estabThough an eminent scientist, Floyd is also a political animal. At hshed by its predecessors. The film's release date linked it, inevithe briefing he speaks not as a scientist but as an emissary from tably, to the successful lunar landings of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. American political leaders, sharing the frame w ith an American Its story of astronauts imperiled by a damaged spacecraft also flag that stands in the comer of the room. foreshadowed the Apollo 13 near-disaster of February 1970. It is, how e\ er, equally suggestive of events outside the space program. 2007 begins with a long prologue, set four million years It belongs, both in release date and in oudook. to the first moin the past. A group of primitive hominids leams to use tools, ments of the era of detente: to first to procure food and then the \ ears that \\ ould see the radto defend it against a rival fication of SALT I and President group. The famous cut that Richard Nixon's improbable, ends the prologuea bone, epoch-making visit to China. thrown into the air, becomes the ship carrying Floyd tow ard Marooned revolves the space stationunderscores around the three-man crew of the continuity between the Ironman One. an Apollo-type tools of four million years ago spacecraft stranded in Earth orand those of 2001. Floyd's bit by the failure of its main enverbal sparring with Smyslov gine. One ofthe astronauts dies underscores a similar continuin a repair attempt, leaving the ity of behavior. Floyd guards two survivors with barely his secret information as zealenough oxygen to sur\ ive unously, and Smyslov pursues it dl NASA can launch a rescue as avidly, as the prologue's rimission. Delayed by a hurrival groups of hominids fought cane, the rescue vehicle lifts off over a wildebeest carcass. The hours behind schedule. The two sur\i\ in2 American astrocompetition is polite (no raised Marooned (1969) is a hopefulfilm,released as the era of detente began. Vol. 31.2 (2001) I 47

Van Riper | From Gagarin to Armageddon. Soviet-American Relations in the Cold War Space Epic

nauts, Lloyd and Stone, are half-dead from oxygen deprivation when salvation arrivesin the form of a Soviet spacecraft. The Soviet is given neither a name, a face, nor a voice, but he is allowed to define himself by his actions. He and Stone first attempt to transfer the unconscious Lloyd to the Soviet ship. When the transfer fails, leaving Lloyd adrift and out of reach, the Soviet crosses from his own ship to Ironman One. Once there, he saves the lives of both Americans: sharing his own oxygen supply with Stone and spotlighting Lloyd so that the just-arrived American rescue ship can retrieve him. Then, with all the surviving Americans safely united aboard the rescue ship, the Soviet silently departs. Nothing in the first two hours of the film suggests that Soviet assistance for Ironman One is even a possibility. When the President asks NASA manned space director George Keith about it, Keith replies that all the Soviet ships currently aloft are in orbits far from the American ship. When a Soviet ship does arrive in the nick of time, Keith is astonished. He had, clearly, made no further overtures to his opposite number in Moscow; the Soviets acted entirely on their own. Astronaut Stone is equally stunned by the arrival of the Soviet ship. Delirious from lack of oxygen, he first mistakes its dark, unfamiliar shape for that of the Angel of Death. Only when its hatch opens, revealing a fellow space traveler, does he see that it represents Life. Marooned presents its climactic rescue in space in ways that recall a rescue on the high seas. Keith, briefing reporters, refers to space as a hostile environment that will cost lives to explore. The American astronauts and their ship are shown, for the first time, in long shots that emphasize their isolation and dependence on outside help. Lloyd's slow passage from ship to ship suggests a maritime rescue by breeches buoy. Stone is saved from "drowning" in the vacuum of space by a rescuer's gift of his own (bottled) "breath." Both the Soviet and American rescuers must leave the safety of their ships and, like Coast Guard rescue swimmers, plunge into the abyss themselves in order to save others. The sea-space parallel is common in science fiction, and by no means unique to Marooned.'^ By using it in a story about a crippled ship, however. Marooned invokes the unwritten "Law of the Sea" that bids mariners to render all possible assistance to others in peril. Absent evidence to the contrary, the audience is encouraged to conclude that the Soviets acted for humanitarian reasons. Marooned is a hopeful film, and far more optimistic than its counterparts from 1968. It is also more optimistic than the 1964 Martin Caidin novel on which it was based. In the novel, the pilot of the Soviet rescue ship is dispatched by his govemment in the hope of scoring a propaganda coup. The groundbased Soviet officials in the novel play the Cold War game as relentlessly as their counterparts in the films of 1968. Caidin allows only the Soviet pilot to display concern for the man he is sent to rescue. Sturges not only allows the Soviet pilot to play a greater role in the rescue, but eliminates the scheming political officials on the ground. It suggests, but does not insist, that what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature" have exerted their infiuence in the Soviet version of Mission Control. The

film ends abruptly once the rescue is concluded, pointedly denying its characters the opportunity to comment on the impromptu Soviet-American cooperation that made it possible. Whether such cooperation is a harbinger of things to come or an extraordinary event bom of extraordinary circumstances, Marooned does not speculate. Fifteen years later, 2070,- The Year We Make Contact displayed no such reservations. Released in December 1984, 2010 appeared at a time when superpower tensions were at their highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, U. S. support for anti-Communist forces in Central America, unprecedented peacetime arms buildups, and titfor-tat boycotts of the 1980 (Moscow) and 1984 (Los Angeles) Olympic games provided ample grounds for mutual distrust. The rise of hard-line leaders on both sides (Ronald Reagan in 1980, Yuri Andropov in 1981) further reduced the possibility of reconciliation. 2010's message is, like the politics of its era, deeply polarized and drawn in bold colors with sharp-edged strokes. It is, at once, a far more hopeful film than its 1968-69 predecessors and a far more despairing one. 2010 is, as its title suggests, a sequel to 2007. Heywood Floyd is once again a major a character and, once again, his first significant act is a conversation with a Soviet counterpart. The conversation in 2070 is, initially, the same sort of verbal chess match as the one in 2007. Quickly, however, it moves in a very different direction. Moisevich, the Soviet, is not the humorless Smyslov of 2007. He soon cuts through the Cold War gamesmanship by proposing that he and Floyd "play a game" called "The Truth." For two minutes, Moisevich proposes, he and Floyd will each tell nothing but the tmth. At first, Floyd approaches the truth-telling process warily. He haggles over the time limit (they settle on one minute, forty-five seconds), and, as they talk, pointedly reminds Moisevich how much of it is left. Soon, however, Floyd has let his defenses down and speaks to Moisevich honestly and at length. A Soviet deep space research vessel, the Alexei Leonov, will soon depart for Jupiter, the destination of the ill-fated American mission chronicled in 2007. The crew of the Leonov is to investigate both the American ship. Discovery, and a mysterious alien artifact that it discovered. The Americans are planning a similar mission, but the Leotwv will beat them to Jupiter by a year or more. Both sides, Moisevich argues, want access to the secrets of Discovery and the alien artifact. Neither side, however, is capable of achieving such access on their own. The Americans cannot beat the Soviets to Jupiter: the Soviets cannot easily reactivate Discoveiy's systems or restart its onboard computer without American help. Moisevich proposes a cooperative venture. The Leonov will carry a team of American scientists and engineers to Jupiter, the Americans will reactivate Discovery, and both sides will gain access to the knowledge that they want. The scene soon shifts to a park bench outside the White House. There, Floyd makes the same pitch to Victor Milsona mediator, as Floyd was in 2001, between the worlds of science and politics. Superpower relations in the fictional world of 2070 are, like those in the real world of 1984, tense and highly polarized.

48 I Film & History

A. Bowdoin Van Riper | Special In-Depth Section Unspecified events in Central America have, as the story begins, driven the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of armed confrontation. Floyd, Moisevich, and Milson are all intimately familiar with the political realities of their time, but all three view them with a sense of ironic detachment, Moise\ ich says he can persuade his govemment to allow Americans on the Leonov by presenting it as a propaganda coup: ""Helping out the poor Americans." When Milson asks Floyd how he can sell the mission to the President, Floyd suggests raising the specter of unsupervised Soviets aboard Discover)'. Neither bureaucrat Moisevich or Milsonshows much respect for his political masters. Milson describes the President as ""reactionary"' and critiques his choice of lunch menus. Moisevich, when Floyd asks him why the Soviet ship's name was changed from Titov to Leonov. shrugs and says ""people fall out of favor."* Cold War politics is not. for these men. the deadly serious matter it w as in 2001: it is a childish game played for mortal stakes. In the world of 2001. scientists are compelled by political leaders to decei\ e and manipulate the ""enemy," In the w orld of 20/0, it is pohtical leaders w ho are the enemy, nurturing discord when they should seek common ground. Scientists must deceive and manipulate them in order to cooperate with fellow scientists. Floyd, a resolute deceiver of the Soviet ""enemy"" in 2007, remains standoffish in the first moments of 2070. Moisevich soon wins him over, however, pointing out that: ""We are scientists: our govemments hate each other, not us." Later, aboard the Leonov. Floyd uses a similar argument on the initially frosty Soviet crew: ""Just because our govemments are acting like asses, doesn't mean we have to!" Cold War. Messages from home, w ith their inevitable reminders of the deepening Central American crisis, are infrequent. Traditional political authorities are inaccessible, and thus unable to disturb the idyll of cooperation and friendship unfolding aboard the Leonov. Ultimately. howe\er, the Cold War proves capable of reaching even to the orbit of Jupiter, Messages from Earth report that the United States and the Soviet Union are poised on the brink of nuclear w ar over events in Central America. The Jupiter mission is to be terminated, and the tw o crew s must separate. The So\ iets w ill retum home aboard the Leonov. the Americans aboard the now -re\ ived Discovery. Significantly, earlier complications have made it impossible for either ship to break free of Jupiter's gravity by itself The only way home is to link the two ships physically for the initial acceleration tow ard Earth. The departure from Jupiter thus underlines what 2070 sees as the tragic absurdit\ of the Cold \\'ar, Tlie Soviet and American crew s must join in order to fulfill their leaders' orders to separate. Their last, most challenging cooperative endeavor w ill place them on separate, parallel courses toward a world that competition may w ell render desolate b\ the time the\ arri\ e.

2070 ends, like 2007. with the intervention of a mysterious, powerful alien species in the affairs of the human race. In 2070. the aliens" actions so stun the leaders of Earth that they defuse the Central American crisis, end the Cold War. and inaugurate a new era in human history. The film thus has a happy ending, but one whose fairy tale quality feels incongruous in a film w hose visual hallmark is its scrupulously detailed realism." 2070 thus offers a deeply ambi\ alent view of the future. It suggests that Soviet-American hostility can be dissolved (as on the Leonov) by trust and friendship, but also that quasi-divine interThroughout 2070, Soviet and American characters are \ention may be required to break the Cold War's spell. This driven to form bonds that transcend (and belie) the ""us-andmixed messagehope warring with despairseems, in retrothem" rhetoric of their leaders. Milson and Moisevich join spect, a ver> apt one for closing months of 1984. forces (off-screen) because neither can circumvent his own The fifteen \ ears betw een Marooned and 2070 saw both a govemment's political restrictions on science without the waning (in the 1970s) and a renewal (in the early 1980s) of the other's help. Floyd and Soviet scientist Irina Yakunina. both Cold War. The fourteen \ears between 2070 and the summer terrified as the Leonov's pilots use an untested maneuver called blockbuster .4n<7^<'^<7o7! (1998) saw its sudden, unexpected ""aerobraking" to enter Jovian orbit, hold each other tightly for conclusion. Armageddon, like most summer action mo\ies. was mutual comfort. Soviet crewman Maxim Brailovsky and made for an audience composed primarily of teenagers and young American engineer Walter Cumow become friends after Max helps the acrophobic Walter adults. It w as. in other w ords, through a crucial space walk. a space epic for a generation Eventually, as the mission prowith few if any memories of the ceeds, the o n c e - s e p a r a t e Cold \\'ar. The typical ticketAmerican and Soviet continbuyer toT.Armageddon was not gents merge into a single, uniyet born when the Apollo fied crew. They realize flights of 1968-69 effectively collectively what Max and ended the Soviet-.American Walter have already leamed in""space race."^ Russians and dividuallythat completing Americans had. throughout his the mission means learning to conscious lifetime, followed tmst the ""enemy." different courses in space: the Russians w ith their Mir space The Leonov's physical station, the Americans with isolation from Earth speeds this their tleet of shuttles. The improcess by distancing the crew of future Soviet-.^mencan relations, mediate future of space travel from the political realities of the 2010 (1984offers a deepl> anibi\ alent V iew

Vol. 51.2 (2001) I 49

Van Riper | From Gagarin to Armageddort. Soviet-American Relations in the Cold War Space Epic

would, for him, have always involved Russians and Americans cooperating to build an Intemational Space Station. Interactions between Russian and American space travelers are integral to, but not the point of, Armageddon. The film concems Harry Stamper's oil-drilling crew, a colorful band of rogues called on by NASA to land on, bore into, and destroy a Texas-sized asteroid headed for the Earth. The ships carrying Stamper and his men stop at ""the Russian space station" to refuel, but in the process an accident destroys the station, forcing its lone inhabitant tojoin the mission. Loud, fast, and awash in testosterone, Armageddon is by far the least subtle of the five films discussed here. It is also, with 2001. the most finely crafted. The film's plot, characters, and tone all appear to have been carefully, consciously designed to appeal to its target audience.'' Its portrayal of Russian cosmonaut Lev Andropov is, presumably, designed with equal care. When the audience first encounters Andropov, aboard the Russian space station, he has been there alone for eighteen months. He looks like a street person and speaks in long, fast, rambling sentences that teeter on the edge of dementia but never quite fall in. The station itself is in even worse shape. As soon as the refueling process begins, a crucial valve fails, causing volatile fuel to spray from leaking pipe joints. The emergency shutoff lever and the intercom both fail and, in moments, a fuel explosion begins to tear the station apart. Andropov barely escapes with his life, pulling away on one of the American shuttles as the station literally disintegrates beneath him. Freed from the station and safe aboard the shuttle, Andropov undergoes a striking transformation. He becomes more lucid, more aware of his surroundings, and more cooperative. He remains pessimistic to the point of absurdity but this, in the context of Armageddon, is evidence not of psychosis but of characterization. Each of the characters in the film is defined by a single character trait, and Andropov's is pessimism. He quickly becomes part of the team, and twice saves his new comrades' lives by repairing damaged machines at crucial moments. To complete the first repair he must cling to the outside of a vehicle hurtling across the asteroid's surface; to complete the second, he pushes aside a by-the-checklist American pilot and revives the balky machine by banging on it with a wrench. He thus exhibits, in tum, physical bravery, a gift for improvisation, and a healthy disregard for established procedure: precisely those character traits that Armageddon's heroes exhibit, and that the film celebrates as definitively ""American." Lev (as the American characters all come to call him) retums to Earth with the other survivors of the mission. He sets foot on American soil for what is presumably the first time in his life and is greeted as ecstatically as his American comrades. These scenes complete Lev's personal transformation. Freed from the "Russian" world of the space station (dark, aimless, decaying) and placed in the ""American" world of the shuttles, he has been saved not just physically but spiritually. He has become not just a collaborator (as in Marooned) or a member of the team (as in 2070) but ""one of the guys"an American in all but birth and accent.

Earlier films suggest (Marooned obliquely and 2070 directly) that Americans and Russians can find common bonds beneath their superficial differences. Armageddon seems to suggest that Russians are Americans, or would transform themselves into Americans if given (as Lev was) the opportunity and means to do so. It is a message fully consistent with the belief that America "'won" the Cold War, and that the wages of victory would be the worldwide spread of democracy and capitalism. It is also a message fully consistent with Armageddon's spectacular displays of American iconography and unapologetic celebration of what it sees as ""American" values. The thirty years between 1968 and 1998 brought the United States from deep intemal division to deep self-satisfaction. They brought the Soviet Union from superpower status to oblivion and, consequently, the Cold War from a defining feature of world affairs to a fading memory. They brought the American and Soviet (now Russian) space programs from direct competition to fruitful, if sometimes exasperating, cooperation. The space epics of the era, taken as a group, reflect something of each of those joumeys. Countdown and Armageddon are both stories about the triumph of Amedcan bravery and ingenuity and the failure of the Soviet system. They are not, however, the same story. The jubilant flag-waving of Armageddon is as far from the tense, hushed secrecy of Countdown as the reunification of Germany is from the Prague Spring.

Notes
1. The history of the science fiction film has been ably surveyed by Baxter (through the late 1960s) and Sobchack (through the mid1970s. with a brief survey of later films added for the revised edition). The films of the 1950s are discussed e.xhaustively by Warren, and those of the 1970s by Anderson. No similar works yet cover the post-1980 era, Biskind (ch. 3) explores the impact of the Cold War on a variety of science fiction films, as does Newman: neither deals, except in passing, with space procedurals. Prominent writers of space procedurals include Robert A. Heinlein. Arthur C, Clarke. Allen Steele. Ben Bova, and Stephen Baxter Space procedural films include: Destination Moon (1950). The Conquest of Space (1955). Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964). The Right Stuff (1983). Space Camp (1986), Apollo 13 (1995), and the five discussed in this essay. Discussions of the sub-genre or the films that make it up are virtually non-existent, Sobchack, for example, deals with Marooned in a few paragraphs and Countdown in a few sentences. The notable exception is 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose procedural aspects are. generally speaking, treated as symbolic rather than realistic. Prominent examples of the comic-book style (all from 1967) include the Jerry Lewis vehicle Way. Way Out. the James Bond adventure You Only Live Twice, and the James Bond spoof In Like Flint. The history of Project Apollo receives comprehensive treaunent in Chaikin, while Zimmerman focuses on the Apollo 8 mission and its impact. Oberg tells the Soviet side of the story. Heppenheimer and Crouch's histories of the space age treat the U. S. and Soviet space programs in parallel. A. Bertram Chandler, Poul Anderson, and Andre Norton are among the many authors who used the sea-space parallel in written science fiction during the 1950s and 1960s. It is also the basis of the ongoing Star Trek saga, whose ""Starfleet"" makes extensive use of naval protocol, organization, and language, The name change is, for those familiar with Soviet space program, a subtle in-joke, Alexei Leonov was the commander of the Soviet

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

50 I Film & History

A. Bowdoin Van Riper | Special In-Depth Section

spacecraft that docked with an American ship during the ApoUoSoyuz rendezvous mission of 1975. His was the Soviet hand in that mission's widely publicized "handshake in space."' 2010. made only a few years after Voyager I and Voyager 2 rtinmeA the first close-up photographs of Jupiter and its moons, made excellent use of then-current scientific data. One example: the fine sulfur dust, ejected from recently discovered \ olcanoes on the Jo\ ian moon Io, covering the surface of the derelict Discovery. The typical ticket-buyer is, moreover, overwhelmingly likely to be male. Subsequent use of the male pronoun is. for this reason, completely intentional. This judgement is, to some extent, a matter of conjecture, but director Michael Bay"s inclusion of virtually every stock character and plot device found in action-adventure movies strongly supports it. The challenge of coherently working exotic dancers, automatic weapons, and a car chase into a story about blowing up an asteroid should not be taken lightly. Armageddon's conscious play for a young, male audience becomes even clearer when it is viewed alongside Deep Impact, a more conventional extraterrestrial-impact film released a few months earher.

A. Bowdoin Van Riper received his PhD in the history of science from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1990. He currently teaches in the Social and International Studies Program at Soudiem Polytechnic State University, a branch ofthe University System of Georgia, His research focuses on the public understanding of science and, increasingly, on representations of science and technology in popular culture. His publications include Men Among the Mammoths (University of Chicago Press. 1993) and the forthcoming Science in Popular Culture (Greenwood Press, 2002),

Works Cited
Anderson, Craig W. Science Fiction Films ofthe Seventies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1985. Baxter, John. Science Fiction in the Cinema. London: Zwemmer/Bames, 1970. Biskind, Peter. Seeing is Believing: How HoUytvood Taught Us TuM IM OM THESE BOOKS To Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties. New York: Pantheon, 1983. AVAILABLE THROUGH Caidin, Martin. Marooned. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964. Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: Tlie Voyages of the Apollo ?O?UU\R fftESS, Astronauts. New York: Penguin, 1994. Crouch, Tom D. Reaching for the Stars: The Dreamers and Doers ofthe Space Age. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1999. Coming After Oprah: Heinlein, Robert A. "Making Destination Moon."" 1950. In Cultural Fallout in the Age Focus on the Science Fiction Film. ed. William Johnson. of the TV Taik Show i Englewood CUffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. AVicki Abt & Leonard Mustazza / Coming After Oprat^. Cultural Fallout in the Heppenheimer, T A. Countdown: A History of Space Travel. Age ofthe TV Talk Show is the first book-length New York: John Wiley, 1997. study assessing a decade of (toxic) talkshows-tslk that makes the quiz-show scanNewman, Kim. Apocalypse Movies: End ofthe World Cinema. dals of the 1950s look innocuous by compansoh. New York: St. Martin"s, 1999. More than just a commentary on the aesthetics of the genre, this book looks at the evglution and Oberg, James. Red Star In Orbit. New York: Random House. cultural significance of these programs, disputing 1981. claims that they are nothing more than harmless entertainment. Searls, Hank. Tlie Pilgrim Project. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 205 pp., index 1964. 75i-7 SiO.9S paper 751-9 S+8.95 cloth Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: The American Science Fic* V tion Film. 2"'^ ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UniverIn the Eye of the Beholder: sity Press, 1987. Critical Perspectives Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies.': American Science Ficin Popular Film and Television tion Movies of the Fifties. 2 vol. Jefferson, NC: Editors: Gary R. Edgerton, Michael T Marsden a Jack Mechbar McFarland. 1982. A rich assortment of sociocultural perspectives Zimmerman, Robert. Genesis: The Story ofApollo 8. New York: in popular film and television, highl ghtmg their heterogeneity, critical strategies, ard ma n a-eas Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1998.
of interest. Focuses on the popular tradition, the contemporary cultural landscape, and includes bibliographic surveys. Clues to ourselves over the nations motion picture and TV screens i 7 4 pp.. photos .95 paper 753-5 f+9.95 cloth

Vision / Re-Vision: Adapting Contemporary American Fiction by Women to Film

Editor: Bc-rbara Tepa Lupack A collectKsn of essays freshly assessing the most imrrSsdiate and complex ofthe concerns in conveying the integrity of women's voices and appropriate representation of the female point of view . i n t h e f i l m adaptations of contemporary Ameri^ij^ fiction by women, finding much to praise and much to fault. 250 pp 714-4 S24 95 paper. 713-6 S45.95 cloth

; Hollywood's World War i: Motion Picture Images

Editors: Peter C Rollins & John E- O'Connor In this study of feature films and documentaries, Hollywood's World War I traces America's changing views over five (J^ades, as filmmakers have focused on a<risis that still reverberates in our CIVIC and spiritual lives. 304. pp., photos, index 756-x J19.95 paper . 755-1 J49.95 cloth

Beyond the Stars 5: Themes and Ideoiogies in American Popular Film

JljrEditors: Paul Loukides &Unda K. Fuller The f i ^ h volume in this series of sctwiarship on American movie conventions examirStfamily, social class, gender roles, politics, war?^orts, hedonism, and the 1960s in an exploration of many of our most basic cultural assumption? their expression in Amencan f 301 pp. 702-0 J19.95 paper 701-2 S35.95 cloth

To Order: i.8oo5i55i''8 PoDplar Press, Bowling Green State U(tfi/ersity Bowling Green, Ohio 43403

Vol. 31.2 (2001) I 51