‘Remember! it's Only a Movie!’ Expectations and Receptions of The Day After (1983)

Abstract

Aired in the midst of the heated public debate over American nuclear-arms policy, The Day After (1983) attracted 100 million viewers and both praise and brickbats from nuclear freeze advocates and supporters of President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear deterrence strategy. This paper examines the political controversy the film engendered in the weeks before and after the film's air date. It focuses on the intent of the filmmakers to make an apolitical film that appealed to “ordinary Americans”; the campaign by the Nuclear Freeze movement to use the film in their political and fundraising campaigns; and the efforts of deterrence advocates to marginalize the film and its supporters as anti-American. The paper concludes with a consideration of how “ordinary Americans” actually received The Day After through the prisms of their own political attitudes.