The Iron Giant and the Cold War

    The film iron giant is one of the most daring and thought provoking films of its time. Starting with a generic young boy who stumbles upon a giant robotic monster, the story continues as the audience follows along on Hogarth and the iron giant's journey as he tries to take care of the monster and hide it from people who seek to destroy it. 

    In the climax of the film, the military have come in to destroy the monster and end up launching a nuke to destroy it and inadvertently the town. In a heart gripping end, the giant flies up and sacrifices himself to bring the bomb away from the town and from Hogarth. 

    The film has a very interesting take on the new development of weapons and AI technologie. As seen in most media and in the world today, AI is often characterized as something evil or vicious that will destroy our world. This film clearly stands apart from the rest and is even more significant for being released before a lot of the new AI technology had been revealed. Instead of it actually being a true monster, the iron giant is merely perceived as one. And more importantly, instead of letting what others perceive him as affect his decision making, he uses their anger and doubt to radically change their minds once he sacrifices himself to save the town. Despite all of the ridicule and threat, the iron giant held steadfast to its loyalty toward Hogarth and knew what was the right thing to do in this situation. The giant goes against all perceived notions of the vicious and murderous AI that we see in most films about the subject matter.

    Considering what was going on in the world around the time the film takes place in the 1950’s, it makes sense that people would assume the iron giant is meant for destruction and can’t be good. Erik writes in his article about the propaganda of the cold war period that “We should carefully avoid blind hatred towards the communists. What I see here – and what I saw in Canada – however, makes me more and more suspicious. The communists are just as dishonest as before – just as ruthless in their fight for power” (Sundvall). During the time of the cold war, tensions were very high and any outside weapon threat was a very big deal. Since the war seemed to be on the brink of mutually assured destruction, the US finding a 50 foot tall robot would have set off several alarms. What’s more, people in America clearly were having trust issues with the soviets. If you thought your neighbor could be one, you may have wanted to take action against them. The iron giant received similar mistrust. 

    Even though there is clear evidence to believe the iron giant could be a monster, Hogarth was able to meet him first and turn him into a hero. Near the end of the film, Hogarth tells the iron giant “It's bad to kill. Guns kill. And you don't have to be a gun. You are who you choose to be. You choose. Choose.” (The Iron Giant). Hogarth tells the monster he does not have to be monstrous, he can choose to be good. Since Hogarth gave someone who has reason to not be trusted a chance, the tensions between them decreased.

Work Cited

Cullen, Poppy. “‘Playing Cold War Politics’: The Cold War in Anglo-Kenyan Relations in the 1960s.” Cold War History, vol. 18, no. 1, Feb. 2018, pp. 37–54. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/14682745.2017.1387774. 

Shackelford, Philip. Review of To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction, by Edward Kaplan. Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 20 no. 4, 2018, p. 227-229. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/718205.

Sundvall, Erik. “Propaganda ‘Worth an Army’: The Norwegian Labour Party, Haakon Lie and the transnational dissemination of Cold War propaganda, 1945–55.” 05 June 2019. https://doi-org.ezp1.lib.umn.edu/10.1080/07075332.2019.1622586.