Vietnam War Lit.(1): In Country

Surviving the War in the Popular Culture

Outline

Backgrounds: 1) Vietnam War; 2) Vietnam War Discourse; 3) the South

In Country: The Author and the Director ; Characters Starting Questions Vietnam: Experience and Responses Emmett’s and Sam’s Identity Crises –in and through

popular culture Different Kinds of Solution

Vietnam War

History in Brief: the country divided into North and South in 1954; the U.S.’s involvement (the last frontier) since around 1955; support forces arriving since 1961, intense bombing since 1965, withdrawal since 1969, and the total withdrawal in 1973, a few months after a ceasefire was signed in Jan. The fall of Saigon in May 1975.

Whose war? Variously seen as an imperialist war (US vs. Vietnam), revolution (Communist), a civil war for reunification, a guerrilla war, a media war, and an American civil war

Vietnam War (2)

reasons: 1. World savior, Manifest Destiny, the myth of the

(last) frontier e.g. Why Are We in Vietnam? (Norman Mailer: Texas AlaskaVietnam) (Star Wars (another frontier)

domino theory ( 骨牌效應 ) conservatism in the 60’s; optimism and nationalism

inspired by JFK in the babyboomer generation Strategies used: helicopter bombing, attrition ( 消耗

戰 the repeated taking and abandoning of the same territory in pursuit of a high enemy ‘body count’), pacification (involving intrusion into villages for enemy caches of documents and supplies)

Vietnam War (3) — Immediate Consequences Atrocities: A. American side: 58,148 dead, 270,000

injured Post Traumatic Stress

Disorder, Agent Orange consequences in the U.S.:

another civil war—the anti-war movement

Vietnamese side dead: (from both sides)

more than 4,000,000 civilians and soldiers—10% of the entire population

displaced: 9,000 out of 15,000 villages

destroyed: farmland, forest, farm animals; all six of the industrial cities in the North

affected: 200,000 prostitutes, 879,000 orphans, 181,000 disabled people, 1 million widows

Vietnam War (4) —Long-Term consequences

1. Displacement: the displaced Vietnamese Amerasians, Vietnamese refugees

2. cultural representations of Vietnam war -- national denial at first, then burst of interest in Vietnam in late 70’s—e.g. memoirs, fiction and films on “Vietnam war”

the vets as misfits—suicidal, criminal, (e.g. Stuntman 1980, Taxi Driver 1976, Deer Hunter 1978, In Country 1989)

Superhero (re-masculinization of U.S. culture): First Blood, Rambo; musical: Ms Saigon

killing and other forms of brutality—Platoon; Born on the Fourth of July

memoir: Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic (dir. Oliver Stone Platoon, JFK, Heaven and Earth, …

Vietnam War (5) —Gender and War

“ Awright, ladies!…There are eighty of you, eighty young warm bodies, eighty sweet little ladies, eighty sweetpeas. . .Grab your trousers!” shouted the sergeant. “These are trousers…not pants! Pants are for little girls! Trousers are for marines! Put your trousers on!”

--“THIS IS YOUR RIFLE LADIES I WANT YOU TO KNOW IT ALL EVERY PART OF IT!” (76, 82) (from Born on the Fourth of July )

Vietnam War Films --FYI War experience: The Deer Hunter (1978)–American POW; Russian

roulette --controversial Apocalypse Now (1979) -- Based on Joseph

Conrad's Heart of Darkness. First Blood (1982) Rambo II, Rambo III Missing in Action (1984) Platoon ( 前進高棉 1986 – Oliver Stone 1st) Good Morning, Vietnam (1995) –radio DJ; * a

comic version Forrest Gump (1994)

Vietnam War Films --FYI

Post-War experience: Born on the Fourth of July (1989) (Oliver

Stone 2nd)

Also from Vietnamese perspective: Heaven and Earth (Oliver Stone 3rd) Surname Viet Last Name Nam

Famous Vietnam Literature

Background: The South –Related works

The South – W. Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery

O’Connor, Bobbie Ann Mason, etc.,etc. Stereotypes of backwardness, country-style,

etc.-- 美麗蹺家人 Sweet Home Alabama.

The Author and the Director

Bobbie Ann Mason (1940-)

Born and now lives in Kentucky

A contemporary Southern writer

Norman Jewison Moonstruck Jesus Christ

Superstar Other People’s Money

The Characters

Sam –Samantha Emmett – her uncle, for whom she serves as

caretaker Irene—her mother Lonnie – her boyfriend Dawn's – her friend who gets pregnant

Starting Questions

How do the veterans and the other characters in this film describe the Vietnam war?

And how do the vets adjust to the life after it? How does Sam try to understand it?

Culture of the South – with clear sexual and racial divisions Hopewell -- One of the

veterans says of HBO, "`I wouldn't let my wife watch it.'

Lonnie: for the stag party, gets panties from Sam.

At the grandpa’s – ham, fried chicken, mashed potato, etc.

The Blacks –one glimpse Dawn – pregnant and

married young.

Vietnam Experience A bunch of kids out in the country; Souvenirs (Ears, tattoo); “We could have won.” (52:33) Earl lives in the

future “It’s all a mistake.”

Vietnam Experience --selective

Egret -- “That beautiful bird just going about its business with all that crazy stuff going on. Whole flocks of them would fly over. ... Once a grenade hit close to some trees and there were these birds taking off like quail, ever' which way. We thought it was snowing up instead of down. ”

Survivors’ Different Responses -- MauMau

1. MawMaw says, "They wrote and told what a help he was to his country. I take comfort in that."

Sam replies, "What good did he do for the country? Everybody knows it was a stupid war, but fifty-eight thousand guys died. Emmett says they all died for nothing."

MawMaw: "Well, Emmett can talk. He didn't die. Dwayne was fighting for a cause...."

Got only an closed casket or a body bag—without having a chance to ‘prepare the body’ and go through the mourning ritual.

Different Responses --Irene

1. Leaves the past behind and gets on with her life.

2. New life

Post-Vietnam Experience -- Emmette

1. Social misfit—refuses to work; watches TV (M*A*S*H reruns ), plays video games, feed rabbits and does birdwatching.

2. Haunted by the past – physical symptoms (rashes, insomnia), emotional outburst; (29:00)

3. Re-enact the past: Dug “trenches” to find a leak, set flea bombs. (31:40)

4. Emasculated-- dressed in a "long, thin Indian-print skirt with elephants and peacocks on it." cooks dinner for Sam

Post-Vietnam Experience – Emmette (2)

1. By the swamp (1:35): “They’re still alive. …There's something wrong with me. I'm damaged. It's like something in the center of my heart is gone and I can't get it back."

2. Sam replies, "But you cared enough about me to come out here." . . . Sam says, "I wish that bird would come."

3. Emmett explains, "If you can think about something like birds, you can get outside of yourself, and it doesn't hurt as much. That's the whole idea. That's the whole challenge for the human race."

guilt feelings of the survivors

Sam: Her Life at a Turning Point

Lost her father before she was born;

Her life: graduated from high school

–choice between working and going to college;

Style -- Ear-piercing, jogging with a walkerman;

Consumer culture: car, work in Disneyworld

Mass media: the mall, movies (E.T., Ghost Buster, Body-Snatchers, etc.).

Sam and Popular Culture (2): Her life marked by big events and names in popular

culture: 1. Springsteen -- “It was the summer of the Michael Jackson Victory tour and Bruce Springsteen Born in the U.S.A. tour” (novel 23).

Sam and Popular Culture (3): In Tom’s room, (filmic techniques in her mind) “She dried her face . . . And pushed her hair back

behind her ears, exposing her earrings. She was aware that something was about to happen, like a familiar scene in a movie, the slow-motion sequence with the couple rolling in the sheets and time passing. She hoped there wouldn’t be jump cuts. . . . ” (126).

Sam and Popular Culture: “Sam would drive her VW to Disney World and get

a job there . . . And somewhere, out there on the road, in some big city, she would find a Bruce Springsteen concert. And he would pull her out of the front row and dance with her in the dark” (190).

Sam: Her mediated experience of the Vietnam War part of her identity Tries to ask questions about the

war but never get direct answers.

Emmett: "women weren't over there. ... So they can't really understand" (107)

Gap between her and her father 38:37

Read the letters; look at the photos (20:28; 24:20)

Read the diary Find vicarious experience in

making love to Tom Leaving the veterans' dance

with Tom

Reading the Diary

She has to go to Paducah mall (the film, by the pond) to read the diary.

As she reads it (burn hootches, teeth as sourvenir, shooting a soldier at the skull from the back), she feels ‘sick,’ ‘humiliated and disgusted.’

After reading it, she wonders: “What would make people want to kill? If the U.S.A.

sent her to a foreign country, with a rifle and a heavy backpack, could she root around in the jungle, sleep in the mud, and shoot at strangers? How did the army get boys to do that? Why was there war? “ (208)

Humping the boonies (serving as the point man 把風 for his platoon ) －－ experienced as a film

Thought of the war as horror films;

now at the swamp -- “rice paddies weren’t real to her . . . She tried to remember the descriptions she had read. It was like fireworks. And the soundtrack was different from bugs and frogs: the whoosh-beat of choppers, the scream of jets, the thunder-boom . . . “

11 the war scene 2:10 –2:48, sandwiched by two nationalists speeches

11 1:24

Solutions (1)

get outside of yourself; "'If you can think about something like birds, you can get outside of yourself, and it doesn't hurt as much'" (226).

Solutions (2, 3)

watching lives – Mawmaw The memorial is black like death; Up close, she sees carnations growing

trying to understand death, (p. 245) Sam "SAM A HUGHES. It is the first on a line....

She touches her own name. How odd it feels, as though all the names in America have been used to decorate this wall."

Emmett – ‘his face bursts into a smile like flames.’

What the film does not show:

Sam first sees the Washington Monument, rising "up out of the earth, proud and tall. She remembers Tom's bitter comment about it--a big white prick. She once heard someone say the U.S.A. goes around fucking the world."

In Country (Vietnam//US)

In Country (Vietnam//US)

Literature on War--FYI

WWI—Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, The Sun also Rises”Time Passes” in To the Lighthouse

WWII—Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-V, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead

Vietnam War—Norman Mailer’s Why Are We in Vietnam?, The Armies of the Night, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, Tim O’Brien’s Going After Cacciato, Robert Stone’s Dog Soldiers, Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country, Joan Didion’s Democracy