Torn between wonder and horror, I stand before a towering projector screen as a mushroom cloud erupts over and over—and over and over and over. The sheer violence of this moment is jarring. It feels so present within the confines of this dim museum screening room. I watch unsettled as the camera cuts from one black-and-white angle to the next, the grey cloud hanging in the air like a sculpture.
And yet, more than just dread haunts the air. Alongside audio recording of the explosion, glitzy synths and plucky harps drown out the din of rush hour Los Angeles traffic outside, an ethereal soundtrack standing in stark contrast to the repeated terror of the nuclear bomb. There is a palpable tension in the air, between composers Patrick Gleeson and Terry Riley’s celestial tunes, and the ceaseless destruction of the earth on display. The film dares us to sit with these discomforting twinges of beauty. The feeling lingers unresolved, even after I leave the room—and then the museum—having spent nearly an hour with the film. I see mushroom clouds in my mind the entire walk home.
Bruce Conner’s haunting short film CROSSROADS turns 50 this year. And it feels as relevant as ever. In CROSSROADS, Conner stitches together 23 video clips from declassified footage of a 1946 nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll. More than 700 cameras recorded the test explosion, named “Operation Crossroads,” making it one of the most documented events ever at the time. The videos are shot from various distances and angles, including the air and sea, leaving no place to hide from the gravity of this event. Even if the film does not directly depict the violence of flesh and bone evaporated, it asks us to dwell on the reality of nuclear violence and its aftermath.
Since my chance encounter with CROSSROADS three years ago, I’ve continued to research the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, and all the related violences that go unmentioned in Conner’s work: the forced displacement of nearby indigenous communities, and long-lasting medical and ecological damage. I think the reason I return to CROSSROADS is that it has offered me a means of making sense of the nonstop violence of this contemporary moment. Although the film’s nuclear peril may feel distant, its themes of technology, trauma, and representation remain incredibly present. Much like the nuclear arms race of the 1940s, rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence—and the threat experts say it poses—have led us to another crossroads of fear and uncertainty. Similarly, we are living at a time characterized by devastating wars, poverty, and racial injustice.
However, the means of documenting these daily violences have changed. Now, the proliferation of cameras—with cellphones, bodycams, and surveillance systems—make these horrors more apparent and accessible than ever. Graphic images of children missing limbs in Gaza, or videos of Black Americans being murdered by police, circulate on social media and in the nightly news. These violent images, like intrusive memories that haunt someone after a traumatic event, overwhelm our world, and can inspire trauma of their own. And yet as the violence becomes more accessible, and thus undeniable, researchers have also documented the desensitizing effects such daily exposures to violence can have (Batarse).
This is why CROSSROADS feels particularly illuminating to me today, despite being a half-century old. Engaging with Conner’s work at this present historical juncture challenges viewers to face mass violence head-on—to not look away or keep scrolling, even if the violence might feel far away depending on where you stand. His film demands we look and keep looking, even when the violence starts to overwhelm or be repetitive. It asks us to turn inwards and evaluate our own emotions, to meditate on how we perceive and grapple with violence represented in the media.
But what does that mean in a world where there aren’t just 700 cameras filming, but billions? What limits of understanding and empathy arise? For me, the film’s asymmetrical soundtrack particularly dramatizes the contemporary experience of scrolling on social media, of making sense of all these cameras. On the internet, a confusing swirl of affects emerges between the algorithm’s deluge of funny cat videos, friend’s vacation photos, and news clips of environmental destruction and police violence. How do we make sense of these incongruities, of this whiplash and the uneasy emotional terrain that emerges from it?
While some viewers might become desensitized seeing a violent event over and over, for others, such an event could be a real, traumatic lived experience. CROSSROADS’s repetition works to also illustrate this parallel reality. Specifically, the experience of images repeated over and over resonates with contemporary medical conceptions of post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers have described the intrusive memories that are often a key symptom of PTSD as “the spontaneous and repeated re-experiencing of the traumatic event [as] involuntary images” (Clark and Mackay). Examined through the lens of PTSD, Conner’s work reflects this central tenet of trauma—the vivid, fragmented image that interjects into daily life, endlessly unwanted, oftentimes in dissonance with the surrounding environment. Ultimately, the film works twofold: as both a meditation on desensitization, and a recognition of trauma as the unwanted images that persist. Where one lies on the spectrum will change depending where one stands in relation to the violent event.
Thinking about CROSSROADS in 2026, I find myself still wrestling with many of the same questions I had three years ago—questions I imagine have lingered since the film’s inception. What are the ethical and emotional stakes of recording violence, and then representing it on screen? In a world now inundated with video, when must we look closer, and when is acceptable to look away—if ever? What role does video have in furthering trauma, and how do we make sense of the complex feelings that arise in the face of catastrophe?
50 years on, these questions posed by Conner’s work still ring true. Though years have passed and angles shifted, the same subject remains: humanity’s violence and how we bear witness. What will another 50 years bring?
Works Cited
Batarse, Brandon. “The Empathy Crisis: How Social Media Algorithms Drive Emotional Numbing.” Psychiatric Times, February 16, 2026, https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/the-empathy-crisis-how-social-media-algorithms-drive-emotional-numbing.
Clark, Ian, and Clare Mackay. “Mental Imagery and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Neuroimaging and Experimental Psychopathology Approach to Intrusive Memories of Trauma.” Frontiers in Psychiatry, vol. 6, no. 104, July 22, 2015, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4510312/.
Cover image: Still from CROSSROADS (1976) by Bruce Conner
