Filming The Vietnam War: The Hollywood Chronicles

“Even in Vietnam - wasn't the intent to restrain forces of incivility? The intent. Wasn't it to impede tyranny, aggression, repression? To promote some vision of goodness? Oh something had gone terribly wrong. but the aims, the purposes, the ends - weren't they right?” “Going After Cacciato” Tim O'Brien. “Do we get to win this time?” John Rambo. “When the legend becomes fact print the legend.” (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) Hollywood always had its own way of chronicling history, this pictorial chronicle portrays a mystic world where myth and reality are tightly twined, neither easily separated. Hollywood's chronicle of the Vietnam War was no different. However unlike Hollywood's plethora of WWII war films, only one film "The Green Berets" starring Producer, Director John Wayne, was produced by Hollywood during the Vietnam War. Ten years later, two years after the fall of Saigon, the Vietnam War filled the silver screen with gore, bloodshed and angst. This tells us something about the American people's turbulent divisive opinions on the war. With the unexpected defeat of a technologically superior nation state by a technologically inferior, smaller nation state, the American psyche suffered distressing wounds leaving behind unsightly scars as a harsh reminders of those jolting dark days. Hollywood's Vietnam War Films chronicle the psychological traumatizing affects of the war both on the "home front" and "in country." The purpose of this course is to critically view Vietnam War films in order for the students to analyze Hollywood's discourse on the war. In conjunction with uncovering the underlying meaning of the Vietnam War films, the students will study the physical geography of Vietnam and survey the historical memory of the Vietnam War and compare the two war chronicles for the purpose of seeing more clearly the legacies of a lost war. Since the course is a seminar, students will share their findings and thoughts with one another formulating an oral analytical text of the Vietnam War. Students will be evaluated on discussions and several short position papers.