D.O.A. and Film Nior

This week in History class we watched the classic movie D.O.A. The movie is of the Film Nior genre, which was created in the fifties during the Cold War. Basically the movies are Cold War scare movies. D.O.A. is about a man who goes on vacation in San Francisco to escape his over-attached girlfriend. While he is in a bar, a stranger poors a poison, luminous, into his drink. Luminous is a special kind of poison because, as the protagonist finds out later, it has no antidote, and he will be dead within a few days. The movie goes on with the protagonist doing some detective work to figure out who killed him and why. The film relates to the fears Americans had during the Cold War because many believed that when the USSR would attack, it would be sudden and too late to do anything to respond. Like the protagonist, it was feared that America would be dead before there could be any action to reverse it. I found D.O.A. and the Film Nior genre in general interesting because that sort of fear really isn't prevalent anymore. While we are at conflict with Middle Eastern terrorism at the moment, Americans do not really have the fear of "dying," rather it seems like there is the feeling that we are in more control over what happens to us, and that we can defeat anything that comes to our opposition.