This dissertation examines how 1980s antinuclear activists utilized popular culture to criticize the Reagan administration's arms buildup. The 1970s and the era of détente marked a decade-long nadir for American antinuclear activism. Ronald Reagan's rise to the presidency in 1981 helped to usher in the "Second Cold War," a period of reignited Cold War animosities that rekindled atomic anxiety. As the arms race escalated, antinuclear activism surged. Alongside grassroots movements, such as the nuclear freeze campaign, a unique group of antinuclear activists--including publishers, authors, directors, musicians, scientists, and celebrities--challenged Reagan's military buildup in American mass media and popular culture. These activists included Fate of the Earth author Jonathan Schell, Day After director Nicholas Meyer, and "nuclear winter" scientific-spokesperson Carl Sagan. Through popular media, these figures spread criticisms of Reagan's Cold War initiatives, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or "Star Wars") and the American nuclear missile deployment in Europe, to millions of Americans. Their efforts not only popularized the nuclear freeze campaign, but also influenced leaders in Australia, New Zealand, and in the Vatican, to question and even reject U.S. policies. In short, antinuclear cultural activism posed a serious threat to Reagan's Cold War initiatives.
This dissertation utilizes research from presidential libraries, television news archives, and special collections, as well as cultural analysis and contemporary interviews, to reassert cultural activism's importance in Cold War history. In the 1980s, American mass media became a contested space in which the Reagan administration battled antinuclear cultural activists for American hearts and minds. Archival research reveals that this cultural activism alarmed the White House. Angered at antinuclear activists ability to permeate popular culture, the White House developed public affairs strategies to repackage its foreign policy and rebrand Reagan as a peacekeeper. Still, the Reagan administration's refusal to side publicly with pro-arms buildup groups--such as Daniel Graham's pro-SDI group "High Frontier"--shows that the White House took these antinuclear warnings seriously. If activists' efforts ultimately failed to sway a majority of Americans' views on Reagan, they only failed in the face of a considerable and coordinated White House response. By 1985, the White House had won the media battle, but not before shifting its rhetoric and reconsidering its policies. In 1981, the Reagan administration boasted about prevailing in a nuclear war. In the wake of antinuclear cultural activism, they expressed activists' belief that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.