Duck And Cover Essay

In the beginning of the Cold War the United States began several campaigns to educate the American people of their new communist enemy. Many campaigns focused on the detection of communist spies, sympathizers and addressed the communist tactical threat of nuclear war. With the identification of the enemy’s weapon capability the United States needed to control the fear it created within the American people to retain confidence in the Government’s ability to protect them. The short film Duck and Cover conveyed both the reality of danger the new enemy possessed and security that American people could protect themselves from this threat. Duck and Cover provided the American people, particularly children, with a sense of security and safety even

The turtle is identified as Bert and that he is so alert that when danger was around he never gets hurt. The scene pans out and a mischievous monkey is holding a firecracker near Bert, which was lit and almost ready to explode. Bert ducks and hides/takes cover in his shell for protection from the exploding firecracker. The female narrators then explain what Bert does to avoid being hurt by the explosion and repeats “Duck and Cover”. A male narrator then continues on to state that Bert’s actions are a lesson to be learned and to be copied when presented with similar situation and that the rest of the film will cover the very topic of “Duck and

The film establishes that the government has established several layers of protection such as military radar and civil defense networks for early detection of any threat to the United States and its people. Even with the defense networks in place the threat can still hit at any time and places the audience responsible for being a part of its own safety. After establishing in the first five minutes of the film what is expected of the audience to do if an explosion occurs, the last four minutes of the film is utilized to visually review and demonstrate several different situations in which “Duck and Cover” is