One of my favourite ways to escape from the sometimes overwhelming cycles of university life is to visit St Fagans. Amongst its many reconstructed buildings is St Teilo’s Church, inside of which you can experience the highly visual nature of medieval faith. Looking above the rood screen you can see a reconstructed Doom Painting, which in an affronting and uncompromising way conveys the horror of apocalyptic damnation.
It is not an especially complex message, but the depiction of naked men and women being swallowed up by the mouth of hell is hard to misinterpret. It is tempting for us to relegate this kind of imagery to the past, and look down at any society that centred such primitive fear. But maybe we need this sometimes, and perhaps it can provide a reality check for our society when we don’t fully consider the danger of catastrophe.
This is why I was pleased at the recent re-broadcasting of Threads to mark forty years since its release. It is in many ways a Doom Painting for our nuclear age. (Yes, I might just be praising the BBC.) Set in Sheffield, the film is rooted in scenes of the everyday, which immerse the viewer into a world on the brink of nuclear war. Its cast of then little-known actors adds further to the realistic and relatable scenario, so that by the time Britain is attacked with nuclear weapons and the country begins to descend into chaos and barbarism, the viewer feels a greater sense of pain and loss at the devastation of nuclear war.
Surprisingly for a pre-CGI film, and one shot on a famously low budget, Threads can still horrify viewers with its scenes of people eating rats, rummaging through endless mounds of rubble, and shivering in rags. As a Doom Painting for our age (despite being forty years old) it confronts us with our own ability to destroy all that we take for granted. The stark warning at the heart of Threads is probably more relevant than ever before, with war erupting in the Middle East, perhaps escalating in Ukraine, and China threatening Taiwan.
The film shows us how a lack of restraint on the part of global leaders can have apocalyptic consequences for the world due to the enormous degree of raw power that comes with nuclear weapons. As a side note, there is a scene of panic-buying before the outbreak of war, which bears a startling similarity to what took place in many supermarkets in March 2020. It is claimed by some that Threads led to a move towards nuclear de-escalation when it was first broadcast.
I hope that if enough people look at this modern Doom Painting, then perhaps we might be more cautious in how we negotiate the current uncertainty. Maybe a re-awakened sense of the horror which accompanies nuclear war will lead our government to deal carefully with nuclear armed Russia, and soon to be nuclear Iran.