Vietnam and Hollywood: A Popular Culture Examination of 1980s Vietnam War Films
The Vietnam War had a range of consequences in American popular culture. Not only has Vietnam cemented itself in the collective American consciousness, but it has had and continues to have wide-ranging consequences for foreign policy, art and literature, and class- and race-consciousness. The cultural significance of the Vietnam War is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in the Hollywood portrayals that have spanned the recent decades. Many directors took significantly different approaches to the subject matter. The earliest films were explicitly pro-war, designed to sell the conflict to the American people. These early films were steeped in anti-communist rhetoric and the glorification of American involvement in south east Asia. During the war, Hollywood consciously avoided the conflict, which was largely presented to the American public by the news media and the new embedded journalism of the mid 1960s. In the immediate post-war period, Hollywood began to examine the conflict; some early films like the Rambo series took a fantastical approach to Vietnam, offering redemption for America’s defeat. Other films took more serious approaches to the war; however, only a select few films from the late 1980s accurately captured the difficult nature of combat operations, and presented honest portrayals of the successes and failures of American combat soldiers. Although Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket, and Gardens of Stone took significantly divergent approaches to presenting the war, they all showed the war in hyper-realistic ways. Furthermore, while these films did not attempt to apologize for the war nor for the conduct of soldiers, each represented for the American people the first genuine collective acknowledgement of the sacrifice by veterans, and presented the first opportunity for collective social and psychological recovery for the American people.
In the ten years between 1967 and 1977, the United States fought, lost, and began a difficult social recovery from the Vietnam War. The United States lost over 57,000 servicemen, with over 150,000 more wounded. Early portrayals of the Vietnam War experience, such as The Green Berets (1868) were very much in the spirit of cowboy-indian stories, which presented the war as another noble crusade for the United States. Furthermore, The Green Berets and Ted Post’s Go Tell the Spartans released ten years later both deal with the period before heavy military commitment. These movies were therefore less relevant portrayals of the Vietnam experienced, necessarily removed from the massive losses during the latter half of the conflict. The films of the late 1970s, most notably Coming Home (1978) and Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979)5 suffered from similar shortcomings; although they took their subject matter far more seriously than previous films, were still not altogether honest portrayals of the Vietnam experience. Coming Home has widely been viewed as a feminist approach to the war; however, much of the story focuses on a love story that is not grounded in the war. Although Apocalypse Now is set at some point after the Tet Offensive in 1968, the “missing in action” narrative means that the film achieves a mythical victory that is altogether removed from its Vietnam War context. Perhaps by recognition of the less than whole portrayals of the Vietnam War in these films (or perhaps because of feared box office unpopularity) Hollywood billed Coming Home as “an epic love story” and Apocalypse Now as “high epic adventure”. Interestingly, in the early 1980s, Vietnam War films took a decided turn toward the fantastic. Films like the Rambo series, besides being highly theatrical in its portrayal of combat, attempted to achieve the victory that the United States military had failed to achieve.
Unlike many of the films produced between the mid 1960s and the early 1980s, the Vietnam War films of the late 1980s are notable for Hollywood’s retrospective and unapologetic examination of the conflict from the point of view of (genuine) American combat soldiers. Furthermore, the presentation of combat in films of the late 1980s was starkly contrasted with conventional portrayals of combat in previous war films. Traditional combat films like John Wayne’s The Green Berets (1968) celebrated American combat heroism, bravery, and victory. Furthermore, Wayne’s The Green Berets was produced as an overt attempt to sell the Vietnam War to the American public. Not only was his and other early films mired in 1950s anticommunist rhetoric, but they were also filmed in the more traditional style of 1940s films about World War II.11 Films made during the war were not considered to be honestly representations of the conflict by veterans. In stark contrast, the post-Vietnam films of the late 1980s focused primarily on grief, moral decay, and suffering among soldiers in combat. The films of this era, including Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986) and John Irvin’s Hamburger Hill (1987) focused almost exclusively on war from the GIs’ point of view; both films retreated, to some degree, from the macrosocietal and political commentary in favour of intimate, realistic, and graphic depictions of the war experience from the eyes of America’s grunts. For many veterans, they represented the first genuine depictions of the war. Arguably, this limited and focused portrayal was a necessary step in the national healing process. While earlier films had attempted to recreate the war in a way more palatable to the American public, the films of the late 1980s, within the confines of their realistic portrayals, helped the American public to first acknowledge the war, then to understand it, and finally to accept it.
The importance of Stone’s Academy Award winning Platoon was difficult to escape; many considered it a necessary rite of passage in the national healing process. Set during the Communist Tet Offensive, Stone’s Platoon focuses on the war at a time when the notion of winning the war had largely evaporated. By following Pvt. Chris (Charlie Sheen), American audiences were, for the first time, given a particularly realistic window into the day-to-day existence of young combat soldiers. While the average age of soldiers in World War II was twenty-five, the average age of soldiers in Vietnam was only nineteen. As casualties robbed the military of experienced veterans, the number of American draftees in Vietnam increased; many of these young soldiers were from low socio-economic backgrounds. More importantly, inexperienced draftees were killed at nearly double the rate of non-draftees. This notion is explored in some detail in Platoon, which shows Chris an outsider for the first part of the film; as he explains, the rest of the platoon does not want to become emotionally attached to a young soldier that will most likely die in combat. For many soldiers in Platoon, survival is their primary (if not their only) concern. The notion of “doing your time” and “saving your own ass” rather than idealistic and unrealistic notions of winning the war or fighting on behalf of the people came to predominate the mind of American combat soldiers. Stone’s more honest presentation – based on his own experiences as a college dropout turned soldier in Vietnam – ran contrary to much of the news media commentary during the late 1960s.
The carnage of combat was perhaps never better portrayed than in Irvin’s Hamburger Hill; ironically, its documentary-style realism reflected the typical narrative structure of most World War II epics filmed prior to the Vietnam War. Hamburger Hill largely focuses on the losses sustained by 3rd squad 1st platoon Bravo Company, 101st Airborne Division in the Ashau Valley in Vietnam, which were substantial. As an extension of American search-and-destroy drives into the Vietnamese hinterland, hundreds of GIs clashed with North Vietnamese forces one of the fiercest battles in the War in order to take Hill 937, so named because of the grisly combat conditions and substantial casualties sustained. However, besides the grisly portrayal of combat, the film demonstrates the contempt felt by the soldiers toward the news media, which they feel has betrayed the war by falsely presenting it to the public. Although President Johnson made a concerted effort to work with the media to portray the war to the public in a positive light, by 1966 his best efforts had failed. For most soldiers, the media represented a betrayal not only of their courage and honour, but also of the good work they were doing for the South Vietnamese people. In many cases, individual journalists and entire news organizations distorted reports (in some cases outright falsifying them) in order to suit either their political biases or to sway public opinion. For many combat soldiers, this represented a fundamental betrayal; however, it was indicative of widespread sentiments by the American public that would have wide ranging consequences post-war for veterans trying to reconcile their memories of the war and reintegrate into American life.
In Hamburger Hill, the contempt felt by the soldiers toward the news media originates in the soldiers’ contempt for the anti-war movement; the imaginary hippies who throw “shit” at returning soldiers and harass grieving parents. In fact, while it was not explicitly stated, much of the frustration by the soldiers in Hamburger Hill was equally attributed to the tactics employed by the military. As Vietnam reporter David Halberstam aptly observed, Vietnam was essentially a captains’ war, insofar as the army leadership operated largely without taking into consideration information from combat soldiers on the ground. For many combat soldiers, the futility of missions had a dramatic effect on their morale; combat platoons often sustained heavy casualties for strategic positions that were either insignificant or readily abandoned. Such was the case for the “hamburger hill”, which was of little strategic significance for the United States. On a larger scale, the discipline integral to the military had deteriorated; toward the latter half of the 1960s, communication within the chain of command had broken down. Although soldiers often fought bravely, as Hamburger Hill vividly depicted, those who planned and financed the war, who armed and equipped the soldiers, and who dispatched forces to the far-reaches of south east Asia seemed to operate largely without concern for the safety of the boots on the ground. Many soldiers were convinced that their lives meant nothing to the military nor to the government; many soldiers proudly displayed F.T.A – “fuck the army” – across their flak jackets. According to Charles Figley, the morale, discipline, and battle-readiness of American combat forces in Vietnam was lower than at any time in the century, possibly in the history of the nation.
Already by 1965 the United States had fully adopted search-and-destroy tactics, designed to strike at enemy troops and seize tactical initiatives; however, the results were altogether counterproductive. Besides being relatively ineffective at rooting out communist sympathizers or fighters, the destruction wrought by American troops had the effect of disenchanting (as well as disenfranchising) thousands of Vietnamese peasants. In many cases, American GIs were ordered to destroy entire villages suspected of supporting the Viet Cong; in August 1965 CBS news crews recorded infamous footage of Americans burning a hamlet with Zippo lighters. The devastating results of search-and-destroy tactics toward the end of the 1960s, which largely defined the war from a tactical standpoint, were powerfully showcased in Platoon. When the GIs reach a village suspected of harbouring enemy combatants and weapon caches, the effects of search-and-destroy tactics are vividly depicted. Despite the villagers’ insistence that they are innocent, Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) is convinced they are aiding Viet Cong soldiers; he shoots a defiant woman in order to try to force her husband, the village chief, to confess to aiding the Viet Cong. When the daughter runs to the aid of her dead mother, Barnes takers her hostage at gun point and seems poised the shoot the child. Elias stops Barnes from shooting the child, but the village is still burned to the ground and the local population is evacuated. The American “war of attrition” (or the “body count” war) had devastating consequences for civilian populations across South Vietnam, and frustrated the military planners, the press, and the public - no more evident than at My Lai.
Evidence seems to suggest that massacre like My Lai was due to a combination of dehumanizing tactics, and poor military leadership and strategy; however, it also had much to do with the inherent danger and unpredictability of search-and-destroy tactics. The massacre at My Lai – a hamlet of the Son My village in Vietnam – was carried out by Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division, led by Lt. William Calley, who ordered the mass murder of nearly 540 villagers. Before being killed, many villagers were raped, beaten, tortured, maimed or mutilated. After its revelation by way of CBS-TV interviews, the massacre produced outrage across America. Those who had protested the war on moral grounds felt vindicated, while those who were previous silent or compliant began to express their criticism more verbally. More damaging than My Lai, however, was the revelation that massacres of civilian hamlet populations was not uncommon. In many ways, tragedies like My Lai were inevitable; the result of sending heavily armed, emotionally unstable, and altogether immature young men into a guerrilla war where distinguishing civilians from combatants was often nearly impossible. In terms of the massacre at My Lai, army intelligence was also to blame: Charlie Company had been briefed that Vietcong Battalions and their families were encamped in the hamlet, and the elevated action Charlie Company experienced in the weeks prior to the attack on My Lai seemed to confirm this claim. In general, it was the result of this confusion between tactical intelligence and realities on the ground that resulted in many civilian deaths. Although Platoon only briefly explored the results of search-and-destroy tactics, the devastating effects of these tactics were all too common an occurrence into the 1970s.
The nature of search-and-destroy tactics and general combat conditions had a devastating effect on the morale of combat soldiers. Many soldiers were forced to kill women and children (some of whom were legitimate enemy combatants); in response, soldiers were taught not to regard combatants not as human beings but as “gooks and dinks” that needed to be “wasted”. For many soldiers, the prosecution of Calley was emblematic of soldiers being made the scapegoat for an official policy that encouraged brutality. Stanley Kubrick spends the first half of Full Metal Jacket (1987) analyzing the ways that American Marines were trained to kill without remorse. Kubrick introduces audiences to the molding process that recruits are subjected to in the opening credits; young recruits have their hair cut in order to remove their individual identities. Thereafter, they are taught absolute loyalty to the military by way of marching, intensive instructional drills, and even being ordered to sleep with their rifles. Much of the abuse levied upon the recruits is the result of the failings of private Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio), who Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) singles out early on and who levies a devastating degree of abuse against Pyle. Gunnery Sgt. Hartman belittles, devalues, and physically and emotionally abuses Pyle. Generally, the recruits are treated like and referred to as maggots and given abusive and degrading nicknames. Ultimately, Pyle cracks and kills Hartman and then himself; however, these dehumanizing tactics proved effective, and many soldiers became disconnected from the often atrocious acts they were ordered to commit, or committed by free will.46 When private Joker (Matthew Modine) is sent to Vietnam, he is virtually desensitized to grotesque acts of violence committed by the platoon he embeds with while working as a military journalist for Stars and Stripes.
The contempt for military authority often manifested itself in acts of mutiny among combat soldiers. Most notably, many soldiers committed acts known as “fragging”, whereby officers or other soldiers will killed by members of their own platoon or company. Reports indicate that “fragging” – so named because of the common use of fragmentation grenades as the weapon of choice – resulted in at least six hundred, perhaps has many as one thousand murders of career enlisted men and officers in Vietnam. Furthermore, most of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam were draftees and they had significantly less incentive to go out on patrol if they could avoid it. Much of Platoon is spent examining the complex internal politics of the platoon. Ultimately, the platoon becomes split between the dope-smoking but saintly Sgt. Elias (Willem Defoe) and the war-loving Sgt. Barnes. In the aftermath of unsanctioned killings in a small hamlet, Barnes determines that the only way to protect himself from military justice is to kill Elias, “water-walker”. In a fierce battle with enemy forces, Elias shoots Elias; although he survives the attack, he is left to die as the helicopter evacuate the rest of the platoon, leaving Elias behind. Interestingly, later in the film Charlie and the other’s from Elias’ camp debate the merits of “fragging” Barnes as retribution. Although the “fragging” that occurred in Platoon represented the good-evil paradigm of combat, it was also emblematic of many incidents that occurred throughout the 1970s.
As American withdrawal from Vietnam became more likely, “fraggings” occurred with more frequency, as combat soldiers refused to go out on futile search-and-destroy missions. Perhaps less extreme were numerous instances of mutiny among platoons or companies that refused to follow orders from superiors. Platoon also explored the complexities of race-relations in the army. Many historians have debated whether casualty rates were disproportionately higher among African American soldiers over their Caucasian comrades. Presuming this was the case, African American soldiers would have significantly less incentive to follow orders from superiors; it is by no coincidence that African American anti-war activists encouraged black soldiers to explicitly defy orders. However, evidence of casualty rates among African American soldiers does not seem to be notably different than those of Caucasian soldiers. Furthermore, there is little evidence to suggest that there was any notable degree of mistreatment of blacks by the military hierarchy. Although Platoon did demonstrate racism among the soldiers, it did not translate into explicit mistreatment. Furthermore, films like Hamburger Hill showed blacks and whites fighting side-by-side. In Full Metal Jacket, Hartman informs his recruits that they are all the same subhuman waste, implying that he does not consider race to be a factor in the military. In Platoon the camp is divided among de-facto ethnic lines. The blacks are aligned with Elias, and wax philosophical about the war and their place in it. By contrast, the more aggressive white soldiers in the platoon are aligned with Barnes. Interestingly, in Platoon, racial division is most evident among drug usage by the soldiers. Many soldiers also resorted to elicit drug use as a means of escaping the difficulties of the war. In Platoon, the black soldiers, and Chris and Elias explore drug use throughout the film; for many of the soldiers in the platoon, drug use is a means of escaping the horrors of the conflict and the crimes committed by other members of the platoon (as well as their inability or unwillingness to intervene).
As early as 1968, most Americans disapproved of then President Johnson’s handling of the war. This widespread disapproval manifested itself in different forms, from quiet disapproval among every class of American citizens to active anti-war demonstrations by college students on campuses across the country. Films such as Alice’s Restaurant (1969) portrayed declining public support for war amid the climate of popular protest (especially in opposition to draft policies) and the New Left culture. However, these films focused on the rise of the anti-war climate, but largely ignored the real implications for veterans coming home. In Oliver Stone’s critically acclaimed Born on the Forth of July (1989), recently returned and permanently paralyzed veteran Ron Kovics (a real-life veteran played by Tom Cruise) struggles to understanding the widespread anti-war sentiment in the country, which he associates with general anti-American sentiment (especially by acts of flag-burning in protest demonstrations). In the film, Kovic joins the marines out of high school, eager to fight the communists. Many young American soldiers believed they were fighting for a good cause. Although the film glosses over most of his experiences in Vietnam, Stone’s short presentation of combat encompasses the chaos and difficulties of war, as well as the ineffectiveness of military tactics. Kovic is shown to take part in a massacre and a fatal friendly-fire incident before he is hit by enemy fire. The scene is demonstrative of the madness of war; however, most of the film is focused on his attempt to rehabilitate his body and his largely unsuccessful attempt to reintegrate into American life. As popular support for the war fell into sharp decline in the late 1960s, many returning American combat soldiers felt like a scapegoat for criticism of the politics of the war. According to Myra MacPherson, as combat soldiers returned home from difficult tours of duty they were subjected to the full force of anti-war sentiment.
Small argues that contempt for student protest was a sentiment shared among many combat veterans who felt their sacrifice was not adequately acknowledged by those who enjoyed the relative safety of the home front. Many soldiers despised what they understood as privileged, middle-class condemnation, especially prevalent on university campuses across the country.60 According to Joseph A. Fry, anti-war students were more likely to be of middle-class and upper-class backgrounds; however, he also points out that most were not ardent anti-capitalists who associated Vietnam with the decline of America.61 Most evidence suggests that anti-war protest was primarily aimed at reversing American policy in Vietnam, as well as to discourage popular support for the war in order to restore American values. College-based protest and anti-war activism was focused on moral objections to the exercise of American military power in Vietnam. Through the news media, many Americans became increasingly aware of the mounting civilian casualties. For anti-war activists, these unsanctioned killings were evidence in support of the belief that the Vietnam War was not a good war. By the end of the 1960s, Vietnam was increasingly understood as separate from the good-and-evil conflict of World War II. Although the majority of anti-war protestors did not regard all American GIs as “baby killers”, these sentiments did affect combat soldiers in Vietnam as well as returning veterans. In Born on the Forth of July, Kovic argues with Charlie, another disgruntled veteran, about who was really responsible for killing babies in Vietnam.
However, many soldiers were deeply affected not by popular anti-war protest but by the mass indifference toward the war and their sacrifice. Although the decline in the war’s popularity occurred among the American population during the late 1960s, according to William Berkowitz, the anti-war movement itself played a comparatively small role in influencing the war’s declining favour. The pain of social indifference is illustrated in Born on the Forth of July, when Kovic’s friend coldly admits that no one at home cares about Vietnam, that the United States is losing the war, and that no one believes in fighting communism. Although it is subtle, the film portrays the decline in Kovic’s convictions as he vainly attempts to defend the war against the indifference of those in his community as well as general American sentiments. By 1969 newly elected Richard Nixon had inherent the lengthy south east Asian conflict determined to end the war in short order. In the buildup to the withdrawal, emotional problems like post-Vietnam Syndrome were dismissed, while the upward social mobility of veterans was argued to demonstrate that, on the whole, veterans were able to successfully re-assimilated into American society. This was the focus of Francis Coppola’s second venture into the Vietnam genre: Gardens of Stone (1987). The film looked at Vietnam as a military great tragedy – certainly a more honest portrayal than Coppola’s Apocalypse Now – focusing exclusively on veterans on the home front; however, the film does not focus on the wider implications of the war for society. Arguably, through its necessarily limited treatment of post-war America that the film is able to reveal the wider implications of the post-war climate.
The Vietnam War was intimately tied to American popular culture; not only was the war part of the collective American consciousness, but it had a number of consequences in the policy sphere, in art and literature, and in class- and race-consciousness. From a cultural standpoint, the Vietnam War is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than in Hollywood portrayals of the war since the fall of Saigon in 1975. Several directors have taken significantly different approaches to the subject matter. The earliest Vietnam War films such as The Green Berets were explicitly anti-communist, appealing to the early sentiments of the American public. During the war-years, the war was covered by the news media; Hollywood did little to address the conflict. In the post-war years, however, Hollywood made concerted attempts to examine the war. While early films like the Rambo series attempted to rewrite the Americans as victorious, other films like Apocalypse Now took more serious, but ultimately equally dishonest approaches to the war. Honest portrayals of the war were limited to films of the late 1980s, which presented both combat operations and the activities of combat soldiers with unapologetic honesty. While Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket, and Gardens of Stone all took divergent approaches to portraying the Vietnam War, each presented the war in realistic ways and historically accurate ways. Although each of these films did not apologize for the war nor for the conduct of soldiers, they all represented the first genuine examinations of the conflict. The result was not only collective social acknowledgment of the unique sacrifices that Vietnam War soldiers made, but also the first step toward real social and psychological recovery for the American people.
