Here the girlhood parallels move beyond the facetious to acquire a darker quality, as shame begins to erode Oppenheimer’s sense of self. The great Oppenheimer realizes that no amount of personal brilliance can counter the force of the state. Near the film’s end, Oppenheimer silently reckons with visions of what his brilliance has wrought: unimaginable suffering and fire as the invention he fathered wipes out civilization itself. For a Great Man like him, it took the twin shames of the bomb’s destruction and public disgrace to have this life-altering yet basic realization about his own powerlessness. This is a rule and a warning that life has drilled into girls from age 13, if not sooner.

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Persons: callow, Murray Kempton, Oppenheimer, discontents, Lewis Strauss, he’s, Annie Ernaux’s “, Barbie ”, Iva Dixit, Sean Paul Organizations: Communist, U.S .