[en] Film Studies ; Kulturelles Gedächtnis ; Hollywood
[en] Military exploits in the Cold War often differed from conventional acts of war particularly in that they were, by necessity, invisible: In order to prevent nuclear conflict, crises needed to be kept secret, and were therefore not inscribed into cultural memory. Nuclear submarines are paradigmatic of this dynamic: As mobile nuclear missile silos, they played a central role in the balance of terror during the Cold War, effective because they remained passive and invisible. Cold War era submarine films, however, followed old genre traditions by conceiv-ing the submarine as a tactical, mostly explorative and active weapon. It was not until the 1990s that a reboot of the genre emerged, which sought to make the depths of the ocean vis-ible and memorable as a strategic location of the Cold War. Rather than portraying pure military actions, these movies tell stories of intercultural negotiation which, to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war, had to remain hidden under the surface of the sea.
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