The Televised War

When I hear someone mention Viet Nam I think of those turbulent days of protest, the Draft, sit-ins, Berkley, kids getting high, Haight - Ashbury, Twiggy, The Beatles, Timothy Leary, long hair and bell bottoms, “free love,” Star Trek, bra burning, flag burning, HAIR, “trust no one over thirty,” the Black Panthers, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby, Mai Lai, Kent State, 1968 Republican Convention, the TET Offensive, the Summer of Love, Agent Orange, a little girl, naked running down a road, should the shape of the table be oval, round, square, rectangle or triangle?, and the daily death toll every evening on the six o’clock news.

For me the Viet Nam conflict was just something that was happening somewhere else. I would watch it on TV or read something about it in the “Long Island Press.” Most people supported the war in the beginning but as the conflict escaladed, the regular army troops were not enough, so a decision was made to start the draft; this is when public opinion started to turn against the war and after the TET Offensive I didn’t know anyone who supported it.

Many boys, evaded the draft by going to Canada, enrolling in college programs that such as education to get a number that would keep them from being called and some even registered themselves as conscious objectors when they signed up, facing ridicule from everyone.

I don’t remember any movies about Viet Nam during the conflict except for one, The Green Berets. John Wayne created a propaganda film to increase or maintain support for our involvement in the war just like he did during and after WWII. I guess Hollywood realized that we would not want to go the movies to see something we were watching in very graphic detail on our televisions daily.

Many years after the war I had boyfriends who served in the Army and Marines and they would never discuss what happened in ‘Nam or what they did there. I would look at their photographs, their young smiling faces, standing or sitting with their buddies, Blacks and Whites together in uniforms that showed they were well worn from being in the jungle. But these men had sadness that hung over them like a shroud. They were never really happy about anything; cynicism was their constant companion.

I agree with the author of the essay “Where Trouble Comes,” when he/she says, “for better or worse, with more accuracy or less, far more Americans have come by their understanding of the war by viewing dramatic films than by reading scholarly histories” (403). For me my understanding of came from watching the films The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket all movies about the conflict in Viet Nam that were released some years after the war ended; but I never understood what my friends endured until I saw Platoon. I didn’t know if I should believe what I was seeing. Oliver Stone was a Viet Vet himself but the media will tell/sell you anything just to make a buck, so I invited a friend to see the movie with me on my second viewing.

There is a scene in the movie where this platoon raids a village looking for VC. When the soldiers started shooting the villagers, my friend jumped up and bolted out of the theater. In the lobby he told me he was not going back inside, he had seen enough and what he saw brought him back, “in country.” Since that time, many men that I know who have seen this movie have agreed, it is disturbingly real.

Dien Bien Phu; Viet Nam now Iraq; “those who fail to learn from history are doom to repeat it.”


In Response To Jason:
Jason, I’m going to answer your question as to why critics make a big deal regarding a controversial movie. More often than not, these critics either believe that the government’s POV is valid or they have been hired or pressured by the government to support the government’s position. The government and critics know that the medium of film can reach and influence more people over the world and time than any newspaper, magazine or newscast can.