8
Popular Culture Review
W ars program, employing satellites and lasers to guarantee that the United
States would never be vulnerable to assault by nuclear warheads.
Those in the nuclear freeze movement who were opposed to Reagan’s
vision were galvanized by Jonathan Schell’s best-selling The F a te o f the E a r th ,
denouncing the deterrence doctrine as suicidal. From the halls of Congress to
New England town meetings and streets of major American and Western
European cities, activists, citizens, and politicians opposed expanding the
nuclear stockpile and installing American missiles in Europe. These critics
perceived the Cold War rhetoric and policies of the Reagan administration as
dangerous and reckless, raising the specter of nuclear war and planetary
destruction.7
Following in the wake of Schell’s book and the burgeoning nuclear freeze
movement, political controversy and media hoopla greeted the November 20,
1983, ABC television production The D a y A fter, depicting the impact of nuclear
war upon the inhabitants of Lawrence, Kansas. Even before the film’s airing,
conservative critics such as Reverend Jerry Falwell were calling upon
advertisers to withdraw their support for a film characterized by the political
right as supporting unilateral disarmament. Responding to these allegations,
ABC executives championed The D a y A fte r as a medium for an intelligent
exchange of opinions on the arms race, scheduling pundits from various political
perspectives for a post show synopsis entitled “Viewpoint.” The film aired to
approximately 100 million viewers, raking second to the record 106 million
people screening the final episode of M*A *S*H on CBS. However, due to the
squeamishness of many advertisers, ABC earned more prestige than profit.8
In many ways The D a y A fte r was simply another disaster epic to which
Americans had become accustomed because of past Hollywood films such as
The P o s e ido n A d v e n tu r e , The T o w e r in g Inferno, A ir po rt, E a r th q u a k e , and
M e te o r . The formulaic approach of The D a y A f te r , pioneered by producer Irwin
Allen in the disaster genre, was challenged by a more sophisticated depiction of
nuclear holocaust in T estam ent. The film was directed by documentary
filmmaker Lynn Littman and written by John Sacret Young based on a short
story by Carol Amen in Ms. M a g a zin e. The film was originally made for public
television’s American Playhouse, but Paramount picked up the film for a limited
theatrical release. While hardly a blockbuster, T esta m en t, which was made on a
small television budget of S500,000, earned SI,500,000 in its theatrical release.
Its star Jane Alexander was also honored with an Academy Award nomination
for Best Actress.9
The film pares down the subject of nuclear war to its impact upon one
suburban community and family. Carol Wetherly (Jane Alexander) and her
family live in the small northern California community of Hamlin. Carol’s
husband Tom (William Devane) is in San Francisco on a business trip when the
bombs begin to fall. The responsibility of caring for their children, Brad (Ross
Harris), Mary Liz (Roxana Zal), and Scottie (Lukas Haas), in the aftermath of
the nuclear catastrophe falls upon Carol. Hamlin is not a target for the attack,