The Plot Podcast - Episode 17 - Enola Gay

The Winter Palace Podcast

On the 78th anniversary of the Atomic Bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, we look at some of the popular culture around that event.

We start by discussing the 1980 song “Enola Gay,” by the 1980s British band Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD). We look at a brief history of the band, the success of the song both at the time and its historical legacy and a not-necessarily-obvious resonance it had in popular culture.

After that, given the box office success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” we look some other films that take on the creation of the bomb in 1945. That includes the 1989 films “Day One” starring David Strathairn as Oppenheimer and “Fat Man and Little Boy,” starring Paul Newman and Dwight Schultz (who you may remember from “The A-Team” or “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) as Oppenheimer. We also briefly discuss the 1980 BBC mini-series “Oppenheimer” with Sam Waterston in the title role.

We end with a brief mention of two other foreign language films related to the events: Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour” from 1959 and Akira Kurosawa’s “Rhapsody in August” from 1991.