Title: Vietnam War Lit.(1): In Country
1Vietnam War Lit.(1) In Country
- Surviving the War in the Popular Culture
2Outline
- 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
- Emmetts and Sams Identity Crises in and
through popular culture - Different Kinds of Solution
3Vietnam 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
4Vietnam War (2)
- reasons
- 1. World savior, Manifest Destiny, the myth of
the (last) frontier e.g. Why Are We in Vietnam?
(Norman Mailer Texas? Alaska?Vietnam) (Star Wars
(another frontier) - domino theory (????)
- conservatism in the 60s optimism and
nationalism inspired by JFK in the babyboomer
generation - Strategies used helicopter bombing, attrition
(???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)
5Vietnam 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 warthe
anti-war movement
- Vietnamese side
- dead (from both sides) more than 4,000,000
civilians and soldiers10 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
6Vietnam 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 70se.g. memoirs, fiction and
films on Vietnam war - the vets as misfitssuicidal, 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 brutalityPlatoon
Born on the Fourth of July - memoir Born on the Fourth of July by Ron Kovic
(dir. Oliver Stone ? Platoon, JFK, Heaven and
Earth,
7Vietnam 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
trousersnot 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 )
8Vietnam 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 (???? 1986 Oliver Stone 1st)
- Good Morning, Vietnam (1995) radio DJ a
comic version - Forrest Gump (1994)
9Vietnam 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
10Background The South Related works
- The South
- W. Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Flannery
OConnor, Bobbie Ann Mason, etc.,etc. - Stereotypes of backwardness, country-style,
etc.--????? Sweet Home Alabama. -
11The 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 Peoples Money
-
12The Characters
- Sam Samantha
- Emmett her uncle, for whom she serves as
caretaker - Ireneher mother
- Lonnie her boyfriend
- Dawn's her friend who gets pregnant
13Starting 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?
14Culture 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 grandpas ham, fried chicken, mashed
potato, etc. - The Blacks one glimpse
- Dawn pregnant and married young.
15Vietnam Experience
- A bunch of kids out in the country
- Souvenirs (Ears, tattoo)
- We could have won. (5233)? Earl lives in the
future - Its all a mistake.
16Vietnam 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.
17Survivors 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 bagwithout
having a chance to prepare the body and go
through the mourning ritual.
18Different Responses --Irene
- Leaves the past behind and gets on with her life.
- New life
19Post-Vietnam Experience -- Emmette
- Social misfitrefuses to work watches TV
(MASH reruns ), plays video games, feed
rabbits and does birdwatching. - Haunted by the past physical symptoms (rashes,
insomnia), emotional outburst (2900) - Re-enact the past Dug trenches to find a leak,
set flea bombs. (3140) - Emasculated-- dressed in a "long, thin
Indian-print skirt with elephants and peacocks on
it." cooks dinner for Sam
20Post-Vietnam Experience Emmette (2)
- By the swamp (135) Theyre 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." - Sam replies, "But you cared enough about me to
come out here." . . . Sam says, "I wish that bird
would come." - 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
21Sam 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.).
22Sam 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).
23Sam and Popular Culture (3)
- In Toms 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 wouldnt be
jump cuts. . . . (126).
24Sam 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).
25Sam 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 3837
- Read the letters look at the photos (2028
2420) - Read the diary
- Find vicarious experience in
- making love to Tom
- Leaving the veterans' dance with Tom
26Reading 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)
27Humping the boonies (serving as the point man ??
for his platoon ) --experienced as a film
- ? the war scene 210 248, sandwiched by two
nationalists speeches - ? 124
- Thought of the war as horror films
- now at the swamp -- rice paddies werent 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 . . .
28Solutions (1)
- "'If you can think about something like birds,
you can get outside of yourself, and it doesn't
hurt as much'" (226).
29Solutions (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.
30What 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)
31Literature on War--FYI
- WWIHemingways Farewell to Arms, The Sun also
Rises?Time Passes in To the Lighthouse - WWIIKurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse-V, Joseph
Hellers Catch-22, Norman Mailers The Naked and
the Dead - Vietnam WarNorman Mailers Why Are We in
Vietnam?, The Armies of the Night, Michael Herrs
Dispatches, Tim OBriens Going After Cacciato,
Robert Stones Dog Soldiers, Bobbie Ann Masons
In Country, Joan Didions Democracy