h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Vietnam War Through the Eyes of Hollywood - A771815
Author: Jimster - U292

A companion to the historical entries on the Vietnam war.

Jimster

>Vietnam veteral<
'I'm not sure what that means, sir, but it sounds pretty negative to me'

Which reminds me, where are Good Morning Vietnam and Air America? Both at least attempt to deal with the problems faced Americans involved in that dreadful war. Though neither are entirely sucessful, it must be said...

Am I the only person who thinks Full Metal Jacket is a better film than Platoon? Maybe i am, but i hated Platoon. It fell into the same trap as casualties of war, with it's ridiculous slogan 'The First casualty of war is innocence'. Well, I guess that'll be news to all them dead vietnamese, Sarge. I guess they don't count as victims on account of not being as photogenic as Mickey Fox, huh? To be honest, Stone bores me to death, so I'm proabaly not best qualified to discuss his movies.

I do think you are unfair to First Blood though. It may be ludicrous, it may be badly acted, directed and photographed, but it is a *crie de couer* for the vets that found themselves abandoned by a nation that was embarrassed by their involvement in a war that hadn't been won and took it out on the troops.
As Principal Skinner once remarked;
'There was no ticker tape parade for me when I came home. They spat on me in the street.'
Actually, the Simpson's frequent use of the imagery and myth of Vietnam would make an interesting entry in it's own right...

Typo 'veteral'" - spottedandcorrected, SIR!

'Good Morning Vietnam' is already in there, in the para above 'Heart of Stone', but 'Air America' is a grey area as it's a) not really about the war itself but CIA-backed entrepeneurs trying to take advantage of it, and b) it had a very limited release in the UK thanks to the outbreak of the Gulf War. I'm a fan of Gibson, but I think 'We Were Soldiers' has more to say than 'Air America' (even though 'AA' has the better soundtrack). There are plenty of other Vietnam movies I haven't mentioned, but I think the examples I give cover enough ground as it is

As for 'First Blood', I agree with you really, but it's more about what it led to - when an American President cites Rambo as a role model, you have to wonder if the original message got lost. And I'm not exactly Oliver Stone's biggest fan, but his work on this topic is significant. Whether or not it's the *best* work on the subject is another matter...

'I love the sight of h2g2 in the morning... smells like... victory...'

Maybe not...

Jims

OOps. You'll be pointing me at that piece on how to post to h2g2 then? Sorry about that, I must have missed Good Morning Vietnam.
I can see the point about Stone as well, and Air America.
I only know of one Vietnamese book about the war 'The Book With No Name' by a combat veteran whose names eludes me. I don't know if they've ever produced a film about it.
Bet it'd make interesting, if uncomfortable viewing, though...

@ Bluesshark.

Jims, just to prove I've read it, here are some typos. I know how incredibly grateful you are whenever I mention typos.

"But first" (as they say) - you've got 'pacifistic' in the first para and again under 'Coming Home'. And somewhere or other you've got 'humanistic'... However, you may be happy with that, in an editorialistic way.

And the typos are...

[Re: Apocalypse]
The film also looks at the frustration and isolation faced by the men. Coppola was keen to emphasise the youth of the soldiers and his use of black actors (including an early role for future Matrix star Lawrence Fishburne) acted as reference to the Army's practice of drafting black troops to the front lines. For these men, women exist only in lewd photographs and, in a moment of unconscious calousness
- callousness

At the climax of the film, as the river narrows and Kurtz nears, the men die by spear and bullet, and revert to barbarism. Willard finally finds Kurtz, reading TS Eliot's The Hollow Man.
- The Hollow Men

And the Cruise character starts out as Kovik then mutates to Kovic. My recollection is that it's Kovic. I think the name appears on a banner at the civic reception thang.



Bels

Thanks for them, Bels



Jims

Hi Jimster!

This is excellent. I was expecting to have to post something about Apocalypse Now (studied it at university), but you've got it covered very well indeed! Though I'm going to take this as an excuse for some geekery...

Harrison Ford is also in Apocalypse Now....

The surfer's name is Lance Johnson. At one point, he gets some post, addressed to Lance B Johnson, which gives him the same surname and initials as the US President....

Not worth mentioning - just gratuitous geekery...

Otto

>Safely back in the boat, Willard chants 'Never get out of the boat' to himself repeatedly.

I believe it was Chef that kept repeating that. Willard said something like, "Never get off of the God damned boat...” and then he goes off into another narrative.

I like the movie, but I rarely watch it much past the battle scenes. It's a classic watched and loved by many soldiers. When I was an infantryman, we used to quote the movie to check our radios: "Almighty, almighty this is PBR Street Gang, Radio check over." The movie is a rich source of quotes such as, "Charlie don't surf."

Full Metal Jacket was another favourite among the troops. It was full of humour and shared experiences that all soldiers are familiar with.

My interest in the infantry was very much sparked by the movies Kelly's Heroes and Platoon. Luckily, I was diverted into mechanized infantry.

I think you're right, 2bit...

Doesn't Willard see "getting out of the boat" as a metaphor for something - going mad, losing civilised values etc?

Otto

Hi Jimster,

interesting idea for an entry. Difficult, imo, because rather open. Hey, i'm not saying it's not *good* - just that the title leaves you under a kind of responsibility to deliver a lot. Best of luck with it.

About 'Coming Home' - i remember this as a film very much more about the home front than ground zero. It is a while since i saw it, so i may just have forgotten all the 'war' bits, but most of the action centred around the blossoming (adulterous) relationship between the soldier's wife and a convalescent vet (Jon Voight). It is an intriguing situation and imo insightful view of intimate relationships between men and women, and how they become entangled. The war is really a catalyst for this human dynamic, rather than the central theme. just a thought

besides, i watched it for the first time when i was about 14 and avidly devouring all kinds of vietnam war material (mags, movies, books... heck, i even bought the soundtrack to FMJ! ). Perhaps i was *just a little* disappointed at the time *not* to see guns'n'bombs!

One film you don't mention is the Richard Pryor 'Some Kind of Hero', which is another "Vet back in the Real World" job. Pryor plays down his trademark comedy persona and (although again, not really what i was after at the time) this turnaround of our preconceptions works well.

Not suggesting SKoH is 'some kind of' must_go_in_your_entry film. just seen a few 'nam films in my day and enjoyed a walk down memory lane thanks to this piece.

So, best of luck with this. For what it's worth, I personally am not sure something could not be done to improve it yet. Not sure *exactly* what...

One thing: The list of films seems to follow a logic other than release date, for some reason. Didn't pause to ponder what other logic was being followed, but was there one?



hopefully back later with something a bit more concrete and constructive (quick dry?)

spiff

Hi spiff,

There's a rough chronology here, in that it goes from the beginning of the war right through, and the film "movements" run chronologically too, in that you have the counter-culture reaction, then the first wave of "how we coped" movies in the late '70s - epitomised by 'Apocalypse Now', which was (I think) started first, but released after all the others. Then we get the glut of films in the 1980s, which can be summed up by looking at Stone's approaches, the last of which comes in the early 1990s, which shows a final understanding of tolerance and balance. But within these vague groupings I do dot around a bit

Any suggestions you have on how to make this better are appreciated though. As might be obvious, it's based on an essay I wrote at uni nearly eight years ago. I regenerated it to see just how my writing has changed (if at all). ironically, most of the typos people have pointed out are in the *new* sections... grrr...

Jimster

Yeah, sorry, didn't mean to say the *whole thing* was here there and everywhere!

It's just the 80s para, really. See what I mean?

and i agree that you are harsh on First Blood. Although the 'Rambo' one-man-army character has become a bloated caricature and has now almost entered the vocabulary as an eponym, , FB itself was not nearly so OTT or gratuitous as many assume.

There is a genuine story there. The plight of a man who has volunteered to become an efficient killer in the name of patriotism, struggling to re-adapt to the Real World. The opening scene where he trudges along a provincial highway in the teeming rain, visits the family-home of a war-buddy only to find that he died of cancer some time before. Something breaks in the man - this was the last on the list of his squad (not sure if we don't find this out later, when they get ol' colonel wossname in).

My point being, FB is not a gratuitous shoot 'em up. Even if Johnny B *does* get a bit carried away towards the end there! Perhaps with this in mind (unless you entirely disagree, of course) you could at least 'tone down' the 'farcical'...

I once read the book of First Blood and it bears only a passing resemblence to the film. I certainly enjoyed it at the time - don't know what i'd make of it these days. As you will have gathered, i was into all that 'guns, blood 'n' guts' stuff 'in my youth'.

seeya
spiff

>Doesn't Willard see "getting out of the boat" as a metaphor for something - going mad, losing civilised values etc?

I think he was reflecting on how silly it was to get off the boat to look for mangoes. The boat is safe; off the boat isn't.

I feel there's more to say about the late 80's Vietnam movies. They're practically folklore in the military. So many movies are pacifistic anti-military that when you have something that gives a more neutral or sympathetic view of service, it's very meaningful to veterans and service members.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan, Courage Under Fire, Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and the first half of Apocolypse Now, are important to us. Those mid 80's movies were the first positive portrayal of the military, with the exception of The Green Berets since Korea.

Exactly in what way is Full Metal Jacket (a film based around Kubrick's central idea about men becoming machine-like or machine dominated in their behavior), showing the crushing of a bright intelligent, rebellious spirit (Joker) and the destruction of the slow and stupid (Private Pyle), pro-military?

Central idea of movie-The army takes individuals with spark and ideas and moulds them into a mass killing unit that is incapable of independant thought and can no longer distinguish between the agonizing death of a teen-age girl and a Disney movie.

Besides, wasn't this another of those famous movies that the US Army withheld support from because they felt it was anti-military?

Don't know if the US military actually *withheld* support when it was solicited, but I *do* know that British TA units were used as extras in many of the Hué scenes (kind of like 'Hué days', but shorter).

This is coz I have one of those, 'I know someone whose brother ran past the camera in the foreground in Full Metal Jacket' type claims to fame!

I read the book, 'The Short Timers', on which FMJ was based (though the battle section is *very* different - ie in the jungle!). At the time I certainly took both film and book as being anti-war, but at the same time you can see how soldiers themselves might appreciate this. ie the author/director is concentrating on the individuals rather than portraying them as mindless cannon fodder.

Notwithstanding the brainwashing aspect of the training scenes, even the film has a sense of respect for the necessarily brutal process of changing men from civilians into soldiers.

There is also a strong sense of the barrier-breaking camaradarie that develops between people who would otherwise have hated each others' guts 'back in the Real World'. I think Joker also represents a middle-class element struggling to be accepted in the GI melting-pot.

just random thoughts really
spiff

The reason the British TA was used though was that FMJ was filmed in London's docklands. A mate of mine was an extra on it, a bit hard to consider, knowing what he's like.

I'm still thinking over ways to reconsider First Blood. Maybe make reference to the fact that it's one of a number of attempts by filmmakers to strive for *some* kind of victory to come from Vietnam after the fact? I think the problem with it is that the seed concept - viet-vet has trouble readjusting - is handled in a *slightly* more credible way in Taxi Driver, Coming Home and others. Plus, well, when you've seen Gismo from Gremlins doing his Stallone impression it's really difficult to take seriously.

Jimster

Sure, but there's not bow-and-arrow in FB.

Rambo is the film that really made the cliché. Well, i don't want to get into partisan mode. Nonetheless, First Blood is much misjudged and not nearly as silly as most people assume. There is no sense of 'victory' in FB. A VV who has been following up all his old special forces buddies back in the US comes to the end of his list to find that he is the only survivor from his unit.

In this state of mind he is hassled by a small town cop who likes to keep vagrants away. The cop doesn't like the look of him so he runs him out of town, out of whatever bloodimindedness (or maybe just coz it's raining), the vet turns around and heads back into town, so the sherrif arrests him, figuring he's dealing with a vagrant nobody.

In police HQ they have a little fun with him, taking the p**s but don't like it when he doesn't react. In particular the sherrif doesn't like the look in his eyes.

Meanwhile the vet is more or less flipping out, associating his incarceration with an earlier period spent in a camp in Vietnam. (scars etc.)

He flips out completely when the barber turns up to shaving him with an cut-throat razor, breaking out of the police station and making good his escape on a m-bike.

From there on it is the well known story of a former special-forces man on the run protecting himself with the methods taught to him by the US army.

Maybe everyone just remembers the one or two explosions and the dodgy breakdown scene at the end... I dunno. I think there's more two it than that.

And having said all that, I also think that the action sequences are technically pretty impressive as well, for what was not a predicted box-office hit.

Why am I coming to the defence of First Blood? I don't know.

Do I expect you necessarily to take anything from this for your piece? at your convenience.

"They drew first blood, sir. Not me."

spiff

An excellent idea for an article - I like it

I certainly agree that even the most negative films about Vietnam seemed still to treat the Vietnamese as somehow subhuman in comparison to the gallant but flawed Americans. It's something that's continued in film-making - in 'Three Kings', for instance, even though it was critical of the Gulf War, the Iraqi soldiers were still either objects of fun or just plain nasty

>Central idea of movie-The army takes individuals with spark and ideas and moulds them into a mass killing unit that is incapable of independant thought and can no longer distinguish between the agonizing death of a teen-age girl and a Disney movie.

Humor is a constant of the human condition. It's around you all the time, even in war. There are times when you take a break and you appreciate what's funny about the situation. I liked to take a break and take in the beauty of where we were for a moment here and there.

Basic training is a process of tearing down, building pride, desensitizing you to violence, making you part of something larger than yourself, and generally enabling you to survive combat. Part of your survival will depend on your ability to take orders. However, western armies do not stamp out independent thought. Being able to think on your feet is critical on the modern battlefield. Situations are much more fluid, and critical decisions can be made at any level. Privates have to make decisions too. Where to I go next? Where should I lay down fire? Which object provides the best cover?

Basic training is a stress inoculation. It makes you familiar with stress, so that you can still function when a civilian would be overwhelmed. That's probably one of the central roles of basic, and I guarantee you that it's a life saver.

In war the enemy is dehumanized. They're objects to be killed or captured. In the eyes of those marines, (they weren't portraying soldiers) she deserved death. She killed their buddy. She was a combatant. She took the risk, and died. As deaths go, it wasn't all that horrible.

Dehumanizing the enemy is one way you deal with it. I didn't care all that much about Iraqi's. When I met Iraqi soldiers I didn't think either good nor ill of them. They just seemed to be confused (they were too close to our positions, so we turned them around and sent them away before they got themselves killed by someone more high strung than me). On the other hand, I didn't really care that much about the dead ones. They were the enemy. They died. That's what our enemies generally do.

I remember one who had a picture of his family in his pocket. As I recall we took his personal effects so that they could be returned to his family. I felt worse for the dogs that I had shot when they were trying to eat him.

War is another reality that I don't think many people here have any kind of a clue about. I sense an utter lack of respect for those who commit themselves to combat for the benefit of those at home.

Is it dehumanizing, to an extent yes, but show some respect for the men and the process.