by Lia Warner
Phillipe Aries, a seminal historian on death, writes that the Western world’s attitudes towards death have evolved in distinct ways over the last millennium.[1] Beginning with the period of “Tamed Death,” Aries traces the history of death from an understood, accepted, and natural event to a more individualized one (“One’s Own Death”). “Thy Death” marks an 18th century turn to a dramatic, terrifying, sublime death accompanied by new, performative mourning practices. Finally, “Forbidden Death” defines the attitude towards death that arose in the late 19th century and has endured until the present day. Aries argues that “Forbidden Death” represents an “interdict” against death and grief, especially in public.[2] The period of “Forbidden Death” coincides with the rise of modern warfare. From these wars, specific developments in societies’ and peoples’ perceptions of death and grief unfolded. Specific to the era of “Forbidden Death” is that of engineered mass death. In this era, death is possible on a new, expanding, enormous scale thanks to destructive technologies and new understandings of warfare. In this paper I discuss two American films, Above and Beyond (1952) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), in order to compare representations and imaginings of mass modern death. I situate these films within Aries’ framework, not necessarily because it is entirely correct, but because it is helpful in thinking through what these movies mean in the context of American attitudes towards death, dying, and grief.
Above and Beyond, starring Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker, tells the story of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot responsible for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, and his wife, Lucy Tibbets. A love story and docudrama, Above and Beyond uses Paul and Lucy’s turbulent relationship during the war as a canvas for the aesthetics and anxieties of total war, mass death, and nuclear destruction .[3]Avengers: Endgame, the conclusion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) 22-film arc, boasts a massive celebrity cast and a three-hour run time. Endgame is the second part in the epic “most ambitious crossover event in history ” following the wildly popular Avengers: Infinity Wars. Almost all the major heroes from the MCU are represented in the final showdown between good and evil. In Endgame, the mighty Thanos, an alien from the planet Titan, unlocks the power of the Infinity Stones and promptly “snaps” away half of all life. The Avengers, a group of intergalactic superheroes based in America, struggle to undo the chaos and destruction Thanos has wrought. Although fictional, Endgame, and the MCU in general, is highly symbolic, socially conscious, and politically salient.[4]
I argue that both films overlay nationalistic themes and symbolism, romance, and humor in order to avoid a direct confrontation with death and grief. Further, both films indicate an American deficiency or inability to mourn, process, or accept mass death—even when America is directly responsible for said deaths. In line with Aries’ ideas on the interdict of “Forbidden Death,” I will finally contextualize both films’ representations of death as destabilizing and unseemly. Particularly, both films demonstrate this belief by representing mass death as a threat to the nuclear family and traditional values.[5] Through this exercise, I hope to stimulate further conversation on contemporary attitudes towards death and draw attention to America’s specific contributions to a larger discourse.
Above and Beyond is narrated by Lucy in a series of flashbacks beginning in 1943 and ending in 1945. In the first scene, Paul, a handsome and capable pilot, is stationed in Africa where he is handpicked by General Brandt for a special mission. We soon find out that he is to play a leading role in the development of the Boeing B-29 bomber, a plane that would later prove instrumental in the war. Paul greets his wife Lucy and young son Paul Jr. at the airport after being flown to the United States, although he cannot stay for long. Lucy waits anxiously with other civilians until she sees Paul, in his uniform, disembark from the military transport. She bursts forward, running into his arms and kissing him deeply. After a brief but touching reunion, Paul is whisked onto another transport and behind a veil of thick secrecy and security. In their parting embrace, Lucy tearfully begs Paul to “Promise me, darling, promise me you’ll be careful…” to which he responds, “Stop worrying, sugar, it’s just another airplane.”[6] The ominous irony and the pressures of a nation at war set the tone for the major tension of the rest of the film: The conflicting interests of a patriotic hero who must fulfill his duty to his country and a kindhearted woman who feels increasingly alienated from the man she loves.
Larger, faster, and capable of soaring to new heights, the dangerous B-29 is ultimately a success. Paul returns home triumphantly to a perfect domestic environment. Lucy is now pregnant with their second child (though you’d never know by looking at Eleanor Parker’s enduringly petite form) and is positively radiant since her husband is finally home from war. The gender politics of this depiction are not subtle. Surrounded by middle class household amenities and comforts, Lucy appears safe, poised, and happy as the perfect wife. However, this domestic bliss cannot last. Paul receives a call from General Brandt with the order to report to Colorado Springs the following morning. Lucy collapses on the bed in distress.
Paul arrives in Colorado Springs and is surprised when he is lead through a series of intense security checkpoints. General Brandt meets him and quickly gets to the matter at hand: “Paul,” he says, “we’re looking for a man for a job.” He opens his desk drawer and removes a mechanical buzzer with a short wire and hands it to Paul: “Suppose I told you that if you pressed that little buzzer you might stop the war tomorrow. That you’d save half a million American lives and probably as many of the enemy. But by pressing that buzzer you’d have to kill 100,000 people in one flash. What would you do? Take your time…” Paul deliberates for twenty seconds before looking back and the General and firmly pressing the buzzer.[7]
From here on, Paul is immersed into a new role of leadership and secrecy as he begins to assemble a crew and strategy for Operation Silverplate. The fear of failure, technical or human, is ubiquitous in the film. In order to prevent “woman talk” and the release of military secrets, Major Uanna recommends that Paul have all of the pilots’ wives come out to Wendover Air Force Base to live alongside their husbands. Uanna recommends that everyone but Lucy be invited to the base, telling Paul that he can’t afford to have any distractions. Nevertheless, after Lucy delivers her son alone (despite Paul’s promise that he would be there) Paul relents to her wishes and invites his whole family out to Wendover. While at first Lucy tries to make the best of the situation, the constant secrecy, poor conditions, and her husband’s emotional distance begin to take their toll. Simultaneously, Paul’s work on the atomic bomb is becoming more demanding. The dual escalations of explosive and potentially destructive force—that of the atom and that of the scorned wife and mother—neatly capture the parallel tensions of the film.
While an escelating current of anxiety sets the tone for much of the film, there are moments where humor or passionate romance relieve the audience of their anticipatory stress. One instance of this is when Lucy enlists a man in a white jumpsuit to help fix her leaky kitchen sink. Earlier in the film Paul informs Lucy that the group of workers to which the man in the white jumpsuit belongs are sanitary engineers. In fact, the man fixing the Tibbets’ sink is a Manhattan Project engineer. This humorous aside lightens the mood while serving as a reminder of the inherently destructive nature of Wendover Fields.
Ultimately, Paul’s harsh treatment of Lucy and the children drives Lucy to lash out. She accuses Paul of “kill[ing] every ounce of love or affection [she] ever had for [him],” and says that she “want[s] out!”[8] Although she later reverses her stance, Paul makes up his mind to send her and the children back home. Shortly after this, Operation Silverplate receives the “blue light.” The message here is clear: Mass death is man’s work and Paul can only realize his goals once Lucy has been relegated back to the home.
Paul is told has been told that the decision to move forward will be his and his alone. He is conflicted, scared, anxious, and tired. In the few hours before he is set to take off with the bomb to Japan, he paces alone in his room with only a picture of his family to remind him of what he is fighting for. The following flight sequence to Japanese airspace is rife with tension. The crew on the Enola Gay are only told the true purpose of their mission en route. As weather reports come in from the four potential targets, Paul comments that the clear weather over Hiroshima means that today “Hiroshima draws the short straw.”[9] In a totally historically inaccurate but incredibly dramatic scene, the atomic bomb is actually armed and loaded while in the air, just minutes away from its target. A bout of turbulence adds to the horrific anticipation and morbid excitation the audience feels as the watch on Paul’s wrist counts down the minutes until the inevitable drop. Do we want Paul to succeed? Of course––he’s our hero.
The clouds break theatrically over Hiroshima as the second-hand races around the timepiece. Paul remains composed, giving orders and making preparations for drop, though his anxiety is palpable. A verbal countdown begins: “15…14…13…” We see the bomb hatch gape open and the city sprawl below. Then suddenly, the bomb drops and twinkles out of eyesight, hurtling towards the ground until its programmed mid-air detonation. Tibbets and the crew jerk the plane up into the sky to avoid the explosion but still watch as a blinding flash and towering mushroom cloud mark it. For a few moments, they just stare. The camera shows the fields below smoking and burning, but no human life. The mushroom cloud billows higher and higher. This is another point of departure from historical accuracy, as the real detonation of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima did not produce such an effect, and Tibbets and his crew were miles away when the bomb finally detonated.[10] A shock wave from the explosion rattles the B-29 and startles the viewers from their shock as the destruction and reality of what had just transpired sinks in. Paul can only utter one word: “God…”[11] As the plane flies back to Tinian, Paul radios in a strike report: “results good,” then, to himself, ruefully, “results good…”[12]
At home, Lucy’s neighbor rushes into her home. Urging her to turn on the radio, she shouts, “Lucy, Lucy, turn on the radio, it’s Paul! They just wiped out a Japanese city! They may end the war!”[13] As a flock of male reporters rush into her house uninvited and start taking pictures of her, Lucy kneels, pressing her cheek to the speaker as she hears the news. Colonel Tibbets has been decorated with honors for the historic achievement of dropping the first nuclear bomb. Stunned, Lucy gets up as if in a trance. She doesn’t even seem to hear the reporters or the rest of the radio report as she walks into her bedroom and closes the door behind her. She reaches her desk, where a framed picture of Paul sits. Here, she breaks down in tears, whispering his name and covering her mouth with her hand. Her grief here is ambiguous. What is she crying for? Who is she crying for? Paul or the dead? The act that ended the war or the end of the war?
We quickly pan to a familiar tarmac, where Lucy stands alone, waiting. Other officers disembark and happily greet wives and friends. Paul emerges, instantly finding Lucy in the crowd. This time, they both hesitate. The unspoken uncertainty about how they will receive each other is clear. Then, Paul reveals his gift for Lucy: a bottle of her favorite perfume. At the sight of this symbol of their love, Lucy rushes forward and embraces him in a kiss. There is no more dialogue. There is no more bomb. They walk off the runway arm in arm, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes.
In my analysis of Above and Beyond it is first important to emphasize how Hiroshima became “the epicenter of the nuclear age.”[14] By this I mean that Hiroshima and Nagasaki “have been a synecdoche for the destructive capability of nuclear weapons” and thus, their representations can be read as the dominant discourse on nuclear mass death.[15] Above and Beyond not only portrays the dominant immediate reactions to the nuclear bomb, the film itself has an active role in determining them. One way we can see this is in the filmography of the bomb drop. Hiroshima scholars argue that “the lack of detailed visual evidence of the bomb’s effects reinforced this initial positive response.”[16] Further, the iconic mushroom cloud associated with nuclear detonation renders the bomb “as a new but natural event, free of human agency,” rather than a new zenith of man-made destruction.[17]
Both arguments can be seen in Above and Beyond, a war movie without a single dead body. The closest the audience gets to seeing death is when Paul seeks council at General Brandt’s hospital bed hours after Brandt is injured during routine flight tests. As Paul and his crew look over the razed fields of Japan minutes after dropping the bomb, the audience is only shown fire and smoke. There are no shots of buildings or human life, only farms and desolate fields. The sheer knowledge of mass death is enough to titillate the audience. There is no need, no political gain, from showing the audience human destruction.
The efficacy and extent of the bomb’s destruction is alluded to in the closing minutes of the film, though in service of its broader message that the sacrifice of all of those off-screen Japanese lives was worth it. Why? Because if the bomb hadn’t worked and ended the war, perhaps Paul and Lucy, the beautiful couple, might have been separated forever. The portrayal of Paul’s individual judgement that this sacrifice had to be made in order to end the war is a reductive simplification of the Truman Administration’s war calculus. In this representation of the work of mass death, Above and Beyond de-politicizes and sanitizes the horrific bombing of Hiroshima. One World War II historian refers to this sanitization as “Disneyfication, the tendency to view Hiroshima as a dramatic spectacle, an exercise in special effects: the ticking clock, the rolling kettledrums, and the image of the mushroom cloud produce an emotional frisson, and little more than that.”[18]
Americans have worked hard to forget or misremember the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a scale that mirrors the extent of the bombs’ destruction. While other horrific events have evoked a sort of “amnesia” in our collective memory, I argue that the atomic bomb has produced one of the most enduring sentiments towards death where amnesia and intolerance coalesce. Not only do Americans not want to remember the real genocide the United States is responsible for, they also refuse to bear witness to new ones, even in the realm of fiction. Here, we turn to Avengers: Endgame for a closer look into the long-lasting effects of Hiroshima’s depiction and memory of mass death.
The origins of the conflict concluded in Avengers: Endgame began years earlier in the franchise. Joss Whedon said in 2012 that the Avengers is a saga in which “the war for Earth has been won for us. And specifically, for America.”[19] In this way, many parallels, especially ideological ones, can be made to other American conflicts such as World War II. Like World War II, the war in Endgame is fought between multiple factions over broad geographic (and now intergalactic) theaters. And, just like the atom bomb, the Infinity Gauntlet poses a destructive threat to humanity like no other weapon seen before. Endgame picks up just a few weeks after “the Snap,” the moment where Thanos fulfilled his mission to eliminate half of all living things in the universe. During the Snap, multiple heroes and loved ones known to the Avengers disintegrated to dust on screen and were carried away in the breeze. Tony Stark (Iron Man) miraculously makes it back from space where he had been fighting Thanos’s allies at the time of the Snap.[20] The Avengers quickly assemble with the help of the otherworldly Captain Marvel, who informs them that Thanos has used the Stones again. Within the first thirty minutes of the film, the Avengers find a solitary Thanos in the wilderness of a distant planet. Having completed his mission, he destroyed the Infinity Stones: the Avengers’ one hope of undoing the Snap. An enraged and impulsive Thor, the Asgardian god of Thunder, summarily executes Thanos. This act, although unsatisfactory in the long run, is Thor’s outlet for dispensing intense grief. Defeated, the Avengers return home.
From this bleak and frustrating scene, the movie jumps five years into the future. We know nothing about the rebuilding efforts of Earth or where our heroes have gone after the Snap. This blank space in our mental timelines signals the impossibility of life in the immediate aftermath of such a massive destruction of life. The filmmakers have nothing to show us because nothing mattered. Five years in the future, the filmmakers employ a deus ex machina. Scott Lang (Ant Man) is ejected from his time-and-space-traveling minivan where he has been trapped. He staggers out onto the street only to find desolate, dilapidated neighborhoods and silent, haunted faces. In San Francisco, Scott runs to the coast overlooking the bay and sees a monument to the “Vanishing.” Tall, bronzed slabs bear the inscriptions of the names of the Vanished, arranged in fragmented rows that slope down the hill towards the bay. Groups of mourners stand around each piece of the memorial reading names. The solemn atmosphere of grief and reflection is interrupted by Scott’s frantic entrance. He runs from wall to wall frantically searching for the names of his family members and partner. With mounting trepidation, he scans the alphabetized lists until he finds where his daughter’s name would be. She is not listed. She is alive.
This scene is particularly potent because it incorporates familiar motifs of grief and memorialization in order to construct an imagined future monument. It is hard to miss its resemblance Maya Lim’s Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Washington D.C. The Vietnam memorial is not a testament to the triumph of American military might, but a response to “a painfully mired, drawn-out defeat that called into question the most fundamental tenets of American patriotism.”[21] In deciding to only display names, Maya Lim “gave form not to the event that cause the deaths but to the names of the dead, to the fact of the deaths.”[22] The profundity of the Vietnam memorial and the memorial to the Vanished, therefore, have the same origin. There is no possible spin to the Snap that could suggest anything other than defeat. There is no memorial to the mighty Avengers and their intergalactic war against Thanos. The people in a post-Snap world focus on remembering those Vanished souls who they must continue to exist without.
The writers of Endgame put extensive thought into this post-Snap mourning culture. In an interview with the New York Times, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely explain how they “used to have beats in the script where there are those [the memorial slabs] in every city. Millions of names […] it’s that sense of collective trauma and the fact that if you weren’t killed, you wake up the next day — the trauma happened and I’m still here. How do we deal with this?”[23] This sort of guilt ties the survivors of the Snap to the war veteran subject, again explaining part of the filmmakers’ design choice for the Vanished. However, compared to a traditional war the crucial difference in the material aftermath of the Snap is the lack of bodies. The only events that exist in our real historical memory that verge on similar, immaterial terrain include those like the bombing of Hiroshima.
The dramatic scenes in which Peter Parker disintegrates in Tony Stark’s arms don’t just move the audience to tears. It invokes a deeper trauma. Mass death without bodies has always been a traumatic circumstance for grieving families during war, partially due to the idea that they are “lost.” Many still hold hope of recovery years after the war is over. In Endgame, Thanos’ method of obliterating life denies Western survivors their traditional vernation of a body. I argue that, in the context of Aries’ theory about the endurance of American funerary practices even during the interdict, this denial of proper burial on a mass scale is a major source of the world’s trauma and a reason the Avengers cannot accept the outcome of the Snap.
Evidence of this trauma can be seen in one of the first shots of Captain America after the snap. The shot begins with the iconic New York skyline, although it looks haunted and apocalyptic. Inside a shabby, dimly lit community center, Steve Rodgers guides a support group meeting for survivors. A sign on the wall reads “Where do we go, now that they’re gone?” Not only does this scene act as a reminder of Captain America’s enduring supportive and civic nature, it attempts to convey the devastation of mass death through an ordinary medium: an Alcoholics Anonymous-esque support group. One member talks about his attempts to move on after the Snap, recounting a date he went on where he and his date both started crying halfway through dinner. These individuals, including Steve, have not yet been able to work through or come to terms with the loss of half of the population, though some have clearly tried. This destabilizing melancholy is another factor that motivates the Avengers to not accept the Snap as the end.
Scott Lang finds his way to the Avengers’ rundown headquarters. He tells them about a possible solution he has devised based on his experiences in the Quantum Realm. This complicated and never-before-seen strategy would involve time travel to different moments in the past in order to obtain the six Infinity Stones before Thanos can assemble them himself. Despite the uncertainty, most of the idealistic Avengers quickly get on board. During the deliberation, Steve references the support group meetings he runs, contrasting the civilian population with the Avengers: “I keep telling everybody they should move on and grow. Some do. But not us.”[24] Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) captures the spirit of the Avengers, saying “Even if there’s a small chance that we can undo this […] we owe it to everyone not in this room to try.”[25] The heroic language of duty and potential sacrifice parallels the dialogue in Above and Beyond. Both Paul Tibbets and the Avengers are prepared to die in order to fulfill their cause. However, in order for the Avengers to succeed, they realize they need the help of Tony Stark. Tony has been notably absent from the scenes shot five years after the Snap. We cut to his remote cabin where he plays outside with his adorable young daughter. Pepper Pots, Tony’s wife and fellow hero, dotes lovingly on Tony in a perfect picture of domesticity, a sharp juxtaposition to the ravaged cities and heroes who are still active in the field.
When the Avengers come to ask Tony to try and help them create the time travel device, he refuses, arguing that his family is too precious to lose after already experiencing so much loss. This mirrors Above and Beyond in the tension between duty and family, as well as the dangers death poses to the nuclear family. However, instead of reacting with the uninformed, over-protective tendencies Lucy is critiqued for, Pepper encourages Tony to go, reminding him “We got really lucky […] a lot of people didn’t.”[26] Duty and honor prevail and Tony goes to work on the time travel device.
Miraculously, the plan works and all the Infinity Stones are brought together once again in order to undo the Snap. However, this brings Thanos and his armies back through the time portal for one final battle. Confronting the Avengers on the battlefield, Thanos states, “You could not live with your own failure. Where did that lead you? Back to me.”[27] Thano’s explicit goal is to improve the universe for all remaining living life after removing the burden of overpopulation. The Avengers’ inability to accept and process death, and to move on in a satisfactory way indeed, as Thanos points out, prevents them from progressing or improving their lives—lives that were theoretically capable of improvement, due to the increase in resources available to them. The Avengers’ resistance, however, is not portrayed in a negative way despite the unhealthy implications of prolonged melancholy; it is instead venerated as heroic and moral. In the final battle, the original Avengers attempt to overwhelm Thanos but appear to be on the brink of defeat. Then, all of the Vanished heroes and soldiers of Wakanda and Asgard pour out of the sky. Thanos and the Avengers struggle for a few more dramatic scenes, but Tony Stark, the star of the franchise, outfoxes Thanos with his characteristic wit and bravado. After placing the stones into the hand of his Iron Man suit, he snaps. Thanos, along with countless of his unnamed, identical, CGI-generated soldiers, turns into dust. This is a mass death of the Avengers’ making, but we do not care. It is how “the war for Earth” is won.[28]
While the Avengers have triumphed over time, space, and the Snap, the film ends on a bitter note. Tony dies dramatically on the battlefield, surrounded by heroes, friends, and loved ones. He dies with the aesthetics and drama of a soldier, his death immortalized as part of the resistance against evil.
By the final scene of Endgame, viewers are satisfied that the unimaginable tragedy of the Snap has been undone. This is representative of the American resistance to mass death that I point to in Above and Beyond. America does not resist causing mass death, but rather, America resists experiencing or viewing mass death because it requires reckoning with reality and the ensuing guilt of the act. America was not forced to mourn for nameless, faceless Hiroshima residents who had their world destroyed beyond Thanos-level proportions. The representation of death in Above and Beyond is a representation of mass death without dead people, and similarly, Endgame tells the fantasy of universal destruction without lasting consequences. After the Snap is undone, it is implied that normalcy can return and the uncomfortable, unbearable bereavement can end.
In her review of science fiction movies in the post-war era, Susan Sontag argues that “Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster […] thus, science fiction film is concerned with the aesthetics of destruction.”[29] This is evident in Endgame where destruction imbues the film with intense emotional and storytelling value. However, it comes into conflict with the deep discomfort modern audiences feel when they see death and destruction on such a massive scale. If the death of an individual is unacceptable in “Forbidden Death,” the death of half the population is unthinkable. There must be a way to undo it. As implied by the five years of silence incorporated into the events of the film, if there was no way to undo the Snap, the story would have ceased. There would be no further representation of death because we, the audience, literally cannot bring ourselves to extensively imagine a universe with that many killed. Never for a moment did the Avengers, a “piece of American propaganda in which the technocratic, post 9/11 America is melded with the mythologized spirit of sacrifice and unity of America in World War II,” deviate from their outward denial of what should be a permanent act. [30]
In Endgame, many of the anxieties of the mass death of the nuclear age can be seen, for societies and individuals alike. Sontag comments that in post-bomb science fiction “a mass trauma exists over the use of nuclear weapons and the possibility of future nuclear wars. Most of the science fiction films bear witness to this trauma, and, in a way, attempt to exorcise it.”[31] Endgame continues this film tradition. Whereas Above and Beyond fascinated and horrified viewers with the power of the atom bomb, Endgame threatens humanity with mighty cosmic power and alien invasion. To obscure this destructive, forbidden death, Above and Beyond avoids displaying any bodies or evidence of the devastation of Hiroshima. Endgame doesn’t even provide bodies to mourn. With the success of the mission, Paul, both as a character and as a US citizen, rises triumphantly. He knows now that the future is safe for his family and that the war will soon end. The Avengers refuse to accept the new reality they are living in, one with 50% less life, and use godlike magic to literally undo the events of the Snap. The Avengers effectively teach the audience that we need not be afraid of nuclear war, alien invasion, or cosmic destruction because death is unacceptable and therefore we will not be forced to view or experience it. Real humans whose bodies were burnt away into nothing in the initial blast of Little Boy are not lucky enough to become un-Vanished. Americans in the years following the atomic bomb drop worked hard to forget or misremember the events that ended the war. Still motivated by this trauma decades later, Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame gives the audience hope and assurance that the future does not hold such a fate for all of us. Even if powerful forces from beyond the galaxy come to Earth, or half of all life becomes extinct, there will be heroes who will not let us remain dead for long.
***
[1] Philippe Aries, Western Attitudes towards Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).
[2] Ibid., 92.
[3] Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker in Above and Beyond, dir. Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1953.
[4] Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johansson in Avengers: Endgame, dir. Anthony Russo ad Joe Russo, produced by Marvel Studios and Walt Disney Pictures, 2019.
[5] Michael Pressler, “Atomic Warfare and the Nuclear Family: Domestic Resistance in Hollywood Films About the A-Bomb,” Film Criticism 27, no. 3 (2003): 45.
[6] Eleanor Parker in Above and Beyond, 16:20-16:25.
[7] Robert Taylor in Above and Beyond, 25:32-26:32.
[8] Eleanor Parker in Above and Beyond, 1:25:00-1:25:27.
[9] Robert Taylor in Above and Beyond, 1:52:33.
[10] “Super-Fortress Crew Tell Their Story,” The Guardian, August 8, 1945. https://www.theguardian.com/century/1940-1949/Story/0,,127716,00.html.
[11] Robert Taylor in Above and Beyond, 1:56:14.
[12] Ibid., 1:57:27-1:57:32.
[13] Above and Beyond, 1:59:00-1:59:08.
[14] Paul Boyer, “Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (1995): 318.
[15] Ibid., 298.
[16] Ibid., 299.
[17] James Farrell quoted in “Exotic Resonances.” 299.
[18] Peter Schwenger and John Whittier Treat, “America’s Hiroshima, Hiroshima’s America,” Boundary 221, no. 1 (1994): 233-253.
[19] Ensley F. Guffey, “Joss Whedon Throws His Mighty Shield: Marvel’s The Avengers as War Movie,” in Reading Joss Whedon, edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox et al., (Syracuse University Press, 2014). 288.
[20] Robert Downey Jr. in Avengers Endgame. NB: due to the inaccessibility of a legal copy of Avengers Endgame, the author cannot provide specific timestamps for events or quotes from the movie.
[21] Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), in the section “Design.”
[22] Ibid.
[23] Dave Itzkoff, “’Avengers Endgame’: The Screenwriters Answer Every Question You Might Have,” The New York Times, May 3, 2019, sec. Movies. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/movies/avengers-endgame-questions-and-answers.html.
[24] Chris Evans in Avengers: Endgame.
[25] Scarlett Johansson in Avengers: Endgame.
[26] Gwyneth Paltrow in Avengers: Endgame.
[27] Josh Brolin in Avengers: Endgame.
[28] Guffey, “Marvel’s The Avengers as War Movie,” 288.
[29] Susan Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Picador, 1965), 213.
[30] Guffey, “Marvel’s The Avengers as War Movie,” 288.
[31] Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” 218.