CNN Moderator: What would you say was the single most influential film of the Cold War? Please explain.

Richard Schwartz: I would offer "Dr. Strangelove" because it captured everybody's imagination of its humor along with its expressing the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation. It's the quintessential work of black humor in that we find ourselves laughing at a very real and disturbing possibility. The story centers around a general who goes crazy and orders a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, even when there is no Soviet threat. Here the general was acting upon a position that was actually held by many people which was that nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable anyway so it made more sense for us to launch a preemptive strike before they were strong enough to hit us hard. This position is also argued by the Walter Matthau character in "Fail Safe," which came out the same year as "Dr. Strangelove" and also addresses an unintentional nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. In the long run, in "Dr. Strangelove," the nuclear war that breaks out actually realizes the fantasies of both American and Soviet leaders, as they anticipate a small body of survivors taking shelter in the mine shafts. These will include the military and political leaders themselves, as well as numerous women chosen for their sexual attractiveness, though they rationalize this as being necessary for the survival of the species. In fact, they've created their greatest dream. Ultimately then, "Dr. Strangelove" exposes the irrational, sexually driven underside of the Cold War. This never really received the analysis deserved except in literature and the arts. But it exposes the leadership as fundamentally irrational and passionate.

CNN Moderator: What was the immediate impact of "Dr. Strangelove" when it was released?

Richard Schwartz: Well, it created a sensation. People talked about it. It stood out because of the humor and because of its irreverent view of the leadership. I might add that Kubrick threatened to sue the makers of "Fail Safe" for plagiarism, but because the same distributor was handling both films, they agreed to release "Strangelove" first, and that appeased Kubrick, the director.

Chat Participant: What do you think was the significance of the Russians Boris and Natasha in the "Bullwinkle" cartoon?

Richard Schwartz: Well, they made a lot of children aware of the Soviets. I suppose maybe in the long run because they were cartoon characters and non-threatening and because they were always foiled by Rocky and Bullwinkle, maybe they were ultimately reassuring to the children. I do have a short entry on that in my book. That was a much more sophisticated cartoon than its children's designation would suggest. It plays off of bureaucracy and notions of history, so it was more sophisticated than first examination would suggest.

Chat Participant: Do you see any comparison today with the '50s-'60s bomb shelter culture and the recent rise of asteroid scares, i.e. "Armageddon" and "Deep Impact"?

Richard Schwartz: I see the differences as outweighing the similarities. In the '80s, critics coined a term called "panic culture" that points to certain political and economic advantages to making the public fear that they are continuously in a state of crisis. And I think that those Cold War-era crises and the current ones have an element of panic culture. But if I understand the question, you are asking about not just science fiction films from the '50s but apocalyptic films in general. The difference is, in the late '50s and early '60s especially, the threat of apocalypse was both real and imminent. In 1962, with the Cuban Missile Crisis, we came very close to a real nuclear showdown. And prior to that, from 1958-61, the Berlin crisis also threatened a serious nuclear showdown. So whether it was realized in the form of science fiction, where the alien often symbolizes the communist threat such as "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Them" and "The Thing," or in other more direct treatments of nuclear showdown, such as "Dr. Strangelove" or "The Bedford Incident," there was the real possibility of the annihilation of the entire world. While that possibility still exists in the 1990s, and the possibility of terrorists groups setting off individual nuclear devices is very real, the prospects for worldwide annihilation are nowhere near the same. Whatever threat exists from asteroids has presumably been more or less the same since recorded history. And the fact that we are focusing on it now is really more a result of our technological ability to do so and the upcoming millennium, as turns of centuries and turns of millennia traditionally stir doomsday concerns.

Chat Participant: Dr. Schwartz, do you believe that the U.S.S.R. could have survived the Internet and the complete democratization of information if the U.S.S.R. still existed?

Richard Schwartz: I think that's a very good question, because I think one of the profound qualities of the Internet is exactly its ability to bypass governments and other censoring agencies. And it would have caused significant problems for the Soviet Union. Whether they would have been able to survive it or not is another question. I suppose China will give us an interesting place to test that, as computers become more commonplace within China.

Chat Participant: Do you feel the use of cultural, sports, etc. exchanges by the superpowers in nuclear arms negotiations helped lead to the reduction of arms?

Richard Schwartz: Well typically, they became one of the better avenues for improved relations For instance, the breakthrough with China in 1972, was preceded by the U.S. pingpong team touring China in, I believe, 1971. It worked the other way too. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, the act that essentially put an end to détente, President Carter responded by forbidding U.S. participation in the upcoming Moscow Olympics of 1980. And Soviet and Eastern bloc countries countered in 1984 by boycotting the Olympics that, I believe, were held in Los Angeles that year. At other times, the Olympics and other international sports did provide an outlet for good feeling between the countries as well as bitterness and rivalry, such as when, according to the Americans anyway, the Soviets stole the basketball championship. But in one of the early Olympics in 1956, American Harold Connolly married [an Eastern bloc] discus champion, Olga Fikotova, and their courtship within the Olympic village was highly publicized in the occasion of good spirits.

Chat Participant: What social undertones were expressed in "The Twilight Zone"?

Richard Schwartz: I suppose the interest in other-worldliness actually expresses a kind of hope. Because there was a sense among many people that apart from some other-worldly kind of intervention, be it through God, or aliens from outer space, or other unknown, untapped forces, without such intervention nuclear war was inevitable. Apart from that, there were certain episodes of "The Twilight Zone" that dealt with the nuclear issue directly. The best known is about the bank teller who only wants to be left alone to read and seems to get his wish when he descends deep into the vault on his break and happens to be there when the nuclear attack wipes out everybody else. But with characteristic irony, writer-director Rod Serling has the man sit on his reading glasses.

Chat Participant: Can you speak to the effect that pop music had on political sensibilities during the Cold War in the '60s and '70s?

Richard Schwartz: Yes, some popular music dealt directly with politics and the nuclear threat. The song "Eve of Destruction," for instance, which was a best seller or a top 10 song by Barry McGuire in 1965, asked over and over again: Don't you know you're on the eve of destruction? Folk song writers like Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs discuss political situations. Ochs for instance wrote the "Ballad of the Cuban Invasion," about the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as "Talking Cuban Crisis," about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and "The Ballad of William Worthy," about a black journalist who ran afoul of the State Department when he traveled to Cuba without a passport. Dylan's "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" is also about the Cuban Missile Crisis. His "Talking World War III Blues" provides a black humor view of life after nuclear war. He also wrote several anti Vietnam War songs. The Vietnam War, which began as a classic case of Cold War containment, occasioned many protest songs whose overall effect probably was substantial. Perhaps the most powerful of these was "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag" by Country Joe McDonald. It has such lines as, "Well there ain't no time to wonder why/Whoopee! We're all gonna die/Come on mothers throughout the land/Pack your boys off to Vietnam/Come on fathers and don't hesitate/To send your sons off before it's too late/You can be the first one in your block/To have your boy come home in a box." Other notable anti-war singers include Dylan's former girlfriend, Joan Baez, as well as Tom Paxton, The Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and Peter, Paul and Mary. This music, as well as rock 'n' roll, whose anti-establishment attitude opposed militarism and the war even when the lyrics were less direct -- both of these forms reached a younger audience and had a very significant impact.

CNN Moderator: What about country music?

Richard Schwartz: There was some. I just have a few references in my book about them, but there's a 1982 film documentary called "The Atomic Cafe" that actually plays excerpts from country songs from the 1950s, including such works as "The Hydrogen Bomb," by Al Rogers and his Rocky Mountain Boys; "The Cold War With You," by Floyd Tilman; "I'm No Communist," by Carson Robinson; "Atom Bomb Baby," by The Five Stars; "When the Atom Bomb Falls," by Karl and Harty; "When They Drop the Atomic Bomb," by Jackie Doll and the Pickled Peppers.

Chat Participant: Wasn't a lot of country music pro-Vietnam, or at least more supportive of our troops and government?

Richard Schwartz: The country music tended to express more establishment values. It tended to be more patriotic, it tended to put down the protesters, and so some of the division within the country in terms of the war was indeed played out by the kinds of music one chose to identify with. For that matter, Frank Sinatra and, I guess, the Las Vegas kind of singer would be more likely to be associated with patriotic sentiments as well.

Chat Participant: I am doing a report on the Cold War for my history project (ninth grade), and I need some reference books. Could you give me some titles I could look for?

Richard Schwartz: I would recommend the "Cold War Reference Guide," which in fact I wrote for a general audience. Probably the "Cold War Culture" book as well, for history the first, but for aspects of culture, I recommend the second as well. Another very good book is Stephen Whitfield's "The Culture of the Cold War," though it only addresses the 1950s and early 1960s.

CNN Moderator: Have you noticed any distinct post-Cold War trends in the arts and media?

Richard Schwartz: Well what happens in the absence of a prominent enemy, such as the Soviets and their allies, is that other groups end up taking that place. So even before the end of the Cold War, in the 1980s for instance, Iranians became vilified after the taking of the hostages. And in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, sometimes Arabs and other Muslim groups are also vilified along with the Iranians. Earlier in the 1990s, when Japan was still a dominant economic force, the Japanese sometimes appeared as the new villains. This tendency to have villains in American movies and other popular stories be of a nationality of our political enemies goes back to World War II, when Germans were often villains. And then in the Cold War, [they] were supplanted by the Soviets. So it's always interesting to observe which group is being cast in the villainous role and whether simply being a member of that group is adequate to establish a character as a villain. Other issues to arise in the 1990s include environmental destruction, drug lords, diseases, AIDS-like diseases and other sorts of epidemics and government bureaucrats. So for example, in "The Living Daylights," a post-Cold War James Bond movie, the bad guys are drug lords.

Chat Participant: What role did James Bond play in the Cold War culture?

Richard Schwartz: The Bond stories themselves actually have surprisingly few direct Cold War scenarios. Some of the very earliest feature the KGB as the enemy. And in "Goldfinger," which appeared as a movie in 1964, the communist Chinese and North Koreans replace the Soviets at a time when China was more bellicose toward the U.S. Oh, I need to correct myself. ... I misspoke earlier. It's "License to Kill" that is about the drug lords. "The Living Daylights" is one of the few movies to deal with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In general, the spy genre flourished during the Cold War, largely because the Cold War was cold. And apart from the Vietnam and Korean wars within it, there was little military action to depict, and political maneuvering doesn't lend itself as readily to such visual media as the movies and television.

Chat Participant: Did the "Star Wars" series mirror the Cold War conflict?

Richard Schwartz: Yes, sure. I don't think it's any accident that Ronald Reagan borrows the term "evil empire" from "Star Wars." Or that the Strategic Defense Initiative that Reagan proposed was nicknamed "Star Wars" in the popular press. In fact, the movie plays out a scenario very similar to the view of the Cold War that was presented during the 1950s. It was a struggle between forces of good and evil. The forces of good, with which the U.S. identified, tended to be more humanistic, more open to individual fulfillment and to liberty. On the other hand, Darth Vader's evil side was militaristic, authoritarian and oppressive. Just like the view of the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

CNN Moderator: What do you think will be the Cold War's most lasting effect on culture?

Richard Schwartz: I think a few things; one is the undermining of authority. America has seen a transformation in attitude toward our leaders from the kind of reverence paid to President Eisenhower and even to George Marshall when he was secretary of state. These were the great World War II leaders who had been largely responsible for the defeat of Hitler and the Nazis, and so they were greeted with genuine respect. Especially since Watergate, but even before, with the credibility gap that was identified with the Johnson administration, there's a greater tendency to distrust our government, and the Cold War has a lot to do with that. This undermining of, and challenge to, authority is evident in all manner of popular culture, from novels to films to music videos. Another influence of the Cold War is a kind of despair that comes from the apparent inevitability of our own destruction of ourselves and the planet. Now the fact that the Cold War actually did end, much to my own personal surprise and apparently that of the CIA and others, may in fact be grounds for optimism. Arthur Kopit's play, "End of the World," presents a very revealing exploration of mutually assured destruction. In the long run it suggests our only hope is in the irrational and unexpected. And in fact, that's what happened. In retrospect, the collapse of the Soviet Union makes sense, but even as late as 1988, to have suggested it would have seemed absurd.

CNN Moderator: Any final comments?

Richard Schwartz: Thanks so much. I appreciate the opportunity to have chatted with you.