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Abstract: This essay conducts a case study of the 1979 thriller The China Syndrome (James Bridges). It explores the motives of the film's architects, notably Jane Fonda, and examines the role that The China Syndrome played in framing both the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the notion of an energy-media complex for the public in the United States and abroad.
Scholars have long been fascinated by Hollywood's treatment of the issue of nuclear weapons. Particular attention has been paid to the early 1960s and early 1980s, when movies such as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) and WarGames ( John Badham, 1983) reflected and projected heightened fears of an East-West Armageddon.1 This essay focuses on the period sandwiched between these two classic eras of Cold War nuclear dissent, and it concentrates not on nuclear weapons but on the comparatively neglected subject of Hollywood's handling of the issue of commercial nuclear energy. The essay identifies the 1970s as the high point of American filmic representations of skepticism regarding nuclear energy and connects this skepticism with other movies of the decade that challenged corporate power elites, especially those in the mass media. It examines the origins and nature of Hollywood's concerns during the 1970s about the existence of a so-called energymedia complex-a phrase which attracted comparisons with the military-industrial complex famously identified by President Dwight Eisenhower more than a decade earlier-principally through the eyes of a small but influential set of progressive filmmakers.2
After an overview of Hollywood's relatively limited treatment of nuclear energy and media power in the decades immediately following World War II, the article conducts a case study of The China Syndrome, a Jane Fonda vehicle directed by James Bridges and released in 1979. The China Syndrome was Hollywood's most direct challenge to nuclear energy during the 1970s and the only movie to offer such a detailed portrait of the energy-media complex of that or any other decade. It also ranks, arguably, as the most timely and prophetic American message picture of the era. A thriller that centered on the near-disastrous consequences of safety cover-ups at a fictional California nuclear power plant, The China Syndrome opened in mid-March 1979, less than a...