On 8 June 1987, Aotearoa New Zealand passed the Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act into law.
The Act was passed in the aftermath of the mid-1980s nuclear ships stand-off between New Zealand and the United States. The nuclear-free movement had its roots in ideas that emerged in the 1960s: a push for an independent, ethical foreign policy which grew out of opposition to the Vietnam War; and environmentalism, which sought to preserve New Zealand as a green unspoilt land.
Next year, it will have been forty years of Nuclear Free New Zealand, and with the topic back in media headlines right now, it felt like a good time to reflect on the vast cultural contributions to our understanding of nuclear both locally and internationally. Different forms of nuclear media have developed across the globe in tandem with specific cultural experiences of, and reaction to, nuclear power and disaster.
Oppenheimer (2023) — directed by Christopher Nolan
An obvious place to start, this arguably didactic biopic on the creator of the atomic bomb was a significant commercial success in Aotearoa New Zealand coming in at third on the overall box office for 2023. The film is notable for its exclusion of actual atomic bomb detonations — the audience sees the Trinity test, but we never witness a bomb go off in conflict. What is portrayed instead gives us a sense of existential guilt, shown most visibly through surreal images of Oppenheimer’s imagining of his audience at Los Alamos suffering the effects of radiation. Removing the spectacle of an explosion and the ensuing destruction forces the audience to remain focused on the actions of those involved in creating and dropping the first atomic bomb.
The Quiet Earth (1985) — Directed by Geoff Murphy
Released amongst a tranche of nuclear-related local non-fiction media, The Quiet Earth is possibly Aotearoa’s only explicit nuclear-disaster narrative film. The film follows a scientist who awakens after a catastrophic event, seemingly caused by work he was involved in before the disaster. Although the film itself does not name this energy disaster as nuclear, it has nonethless been described as “reflecting New Zealand’s growing 1980s anti-nuclear feeling” (by Bruce Babington in A History of the New Zealand Fiction Feature Film).
The Horror of Party Beach (1964) — Directed by Del Tenney
Wikipedia tells us that this film has been characterised as one of the worst films of all time, but it carries another ostentatious honour - it was the first nuclear disaster film produced in Hollywood in which the audience, too, encountered the disaster. The film follows the impacts of dumped radioactive waste off the East Coast of the United States.
Akira (1988) — Directed by Katsuhiro Otomo
Japanese outputs relating to nuclear disaster come from an entirely different cultural experience than films produced here or in America — they have long lived with the impacts of being bombed. Pramod Nayar introduces the idea of “specific forms of nuclear cultures in which the human, non-human but also the non-living exist under the constant condition of nuclear threat, harm, and possible extinction”. Akira strongly displays the specific Japanese culture towards nuclear weaponry, informed by survivor and eyewitness accounts.
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) — Showrunner David Lynch
If the other examples listed help the audience to understand what it was like to live through nuclear war and it’s makings, this television shows helps the audience to understand how nuclear events have been memorialised through spectacle and destruction. The narrative of Twin Peaks assigns the Trinity Test as the birth of all evil — literally, the method by which the character who encapsulates evil arrives on Earth. It does so through a detailed recreation of the event, and it supports this narrative with references to the infamous mushroom clouds throughout, including in the FBI offices depicted.
Mad on Radium: New Zealand in the Atomic Age — by Rebecca Priestley
Rounding out the list with a book, in Mad on Radium Rebecca Priestley unfolds the story of “nuclear New Zealand” and the surprising variety of ways in which nuclear energy and radioactivity were used in the country up until the 1970s where the shift towards nuclear-free started to gain momentum. By uncovering the forgotten world of nuclear New Zealand, and the origins of our nuclear-free identity, Priestley’s fascinating book reveals much about the culture’s evolving attitudes to science, technology and the world beyond New Zealand’s shores.