Melbourne

Why would it? That’s not what the film is about.

Look, I get the point you’re trying to make here, Seagoon, but that’s not what I’m getting at. My work, my research, the organisations and individuals I work for and with are about making known the human consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. Not just the victims in japan, but the Marshallese from Bikini Atoll, the First Nations displaced because of British testing in Maralinga and Emu Fields, the downwinders of Utah, the Kazakh of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. The people who, if they survived the bombing or the test, are still living with the consequences. Nuclear weapons are created and wielded by those countries with money and power and they’re the ones who control the narratives around it, the stories were told about them, not the survivors, even though it’s their story to tell. They’re the only ones who truely understand it. My worries about the film were that it was going to be a bunch of nuclear propaganda, that fed the false narrative that nuclear deterrence is the only way forward, and I was pleasantly wrong. Forgive me if I’m touchy on the subject but at 90 seconds til midnight I don’t find these kinds of comments helpful.

Everyone do yourselves a favour and go and watch this, read through this site and watch this interview with my good friend Mary talking about how the American government let her, her family and her community down after exposing them to massive amounts of radiation from all of the testing they did. Did you know that the brunt of radiation affects are born disproportionately by women? Or that it’s inherently linked to colonialism? Or that just the use of one bomb can and will cause a nuclear famine that will mean 1/3 of the worlds population will starve to death?

This is what people need to be aware of when going to see Oppenheimer.