Vietnam And Other American Fantasies

Written by a cultural historian, this text offers a wide-ranging exploration of the causes, meaning and continuing significance of the American war in Vietnam, arguing that the war was not a mistake, or a quagmire but a defining event in global history.

Discusses the origins and legacy of the Vietnam War and its impact on the United States.

This book explores the impact of media representations of violence during the Vietnam War on people in the U.S., specifically how images of violence done to and by the Vietnamese were traumatic in ways that deeply affected the American psyche.

The Vietnam War has been depicted by every available medium, each presenting a message, an agenda, of what the filmmakers and producers choose to project about America's involvement in Southeast Asia. This collection of essays, most of which are previously unpublished, analyzes the themes, modes, and stylistic strategies seen in a broad range of films and television programs. From diverse perspectives, the contributors comprehensively examine early documentary and fiction films, postwar films of the 1970s such as The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, and the reformulated postwar films of the 1980s--Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July. They also address made-for-television movies and serial dramas like China Beach and Tour of Duty. The authors show how the earliest film responses to America's involvement in Vietnam employ myth and metaphor and are at times unable to escape glamorized Hollywood. Later films strive to portray a more realistic Vietnam experience, often creating images that are an attempt to memorialize or to manufacture different kinds of myths. As they consider direct and indirect representations of the war, the contributors also examine the power or powerlessness of individual soldiers, the racial views presented, and inscriptions of gender roles. Also included in this volume is a chapter that discusses teaching Vietnam films and helping students discern and understand film rhetoric, what the movies say, and who they chose to communicate those messages. Excerpt Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 (pdf). Contents Acknowledgments Introduction - Michael Anderegg 1. Hollywood and Vietnam: John Wayne and Jane Fonda as Discourse - Michael Anderegg 2. "All the Animals Come Out at Night": Vietnam Meets Noir in Taxi Driver - Cynthia J. Fuchs 3. Vietnam and the Hollywood Genre Film: Inversions of American Mythology in The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now - John Hellmann 4. "Charlie Don't Surf": Race and Culture in the Vietnam War Films - David Desser 5. Finding a Language for Vietnam in the Action-Adventure Genre - Ellen Draper 6. Narrative Patterns and Mythic Trajectories in Mid-1980s Vietnam Movies - Tony Williams 7. Rambo's Vietnam and Kennedy's New Frontier - John Hellmann 8. Gardens of Stone, Platoon, and Hamburger Hill: Ritual and Remembrance - Judy Lee Kinney 9. Primetime Television's Tour of Duty - Daniel Miller 10. Women Next Door to War: China Beach - Carolyn Reed Vartanian 11. Male Bonding, Hollywood Orientalism, and the Repression of the Feminine in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket - Susan White 12. Vietnam, Chaos, and the Dark Art of Improvisation - Owen W. Gilman, Jr. 13. Witness to War: Oliver Stone, Ron Kovic, and Born on the Fourth of July - Thomas Doherty 14. Teaching Vietnam: The Politics of Documentary - Thomas J. Slater Selected Bibliography Selected Filmography and Videography The Contributors Index About the Author(s) Michael Anderegg is Professor of English at the University of North Dakota, and author of two other books: William Wyler and David Lean. Contributors: Cynthia J. Fuchs, John Hellman, David Desser, Ellen Draper, Tony Williams, Judy Lee Kinney, Daniel Miller, Carolyn Reed Vartanian, Susan White, Owen W. Gilman, Jr., Thomas Doherty, Thomas J. Slater, and the editor.

A provocative analysis of how and why Jane Fonda the person became Hanoi Jane the myth

In this new and expanded edition of an already classic work, H. Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon -- guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals -- has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.

One of the most acclaimed books of our time—the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and self-deception, a charismatic soldier who put his life and career on the line in an attempt to convince his superiors that the war should be fought another way. By the time he died in 1972, Vann had embraced the follies he once decried. He died believing that the war had been won. In this magisterial book, a monument of history and biography that was awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, a renowned journalist tells the story of John Vann—"the one irreplaceable American in Vietnam"—and of the tragedy that destroyed a country and squandered so much of America's young manhood and resources.

Moving to America turns H&à's life inside out. For all the 10 years of her life, H&à has only known Saigon: the thrills of its markets, the joy of its traditions, the warmth of her friends close by, and the beauty of her very own papaya tree. But now the Vietnam War has reached her home. H&à and her family are forced to flee as Saigon falls, and they board a ship headed toward hope. In America, H&à discovers the foreign world of Alabama: the coldness of its strangers, the dullness of its food, the strange shape of its landscape, and the strength of her very own family. This is the moving story of one girl's year of change, dreams, grief, and healing as she journeys from one country to another, one life to the next.

Explores how Cold War men's magazines idealized warrior-heroes and sexual-conquerors and normalized conceptions of martial masculinity.

For a half century following the end of World War II, the seemingly permanent cold war provided the United States with an organizing logic that governed nearly every aspect of American society and culture, giving rise to an unwavering belief in the nation's exceptionalism in global affairs and world history. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this cold war paradigm was replaced by a series of new ideological narratives that ultimately resulted in the establishment of another potentially endless war: the global war on terror. In The New American Exceptionalism, pioneering scholar Donald E. Pease traces the evolution of these state fantasies and shows how they have shaped U.S. national identity since the end of the cold war, uncovering the ideological and cultural work required to convince Americans to surrender their civil liberties in exchange for the illusion of security. His argument follows the chronology of the transitions between paradigms from the inauguration of the New World Order under George H. W. Bush to the homeland security state that George W. Bush's administration installed in the wake of 9/11. Providing clear and convincing arguments about how the concept of American exceptionalism was reformulated and redeployed in this era, Pease examines a wide range of cultural works and political spectacles, including the exorcism of the Vietnam syndrome through victory in the Persian Gulf War and the creation of Islamic extremism as an official state enemy. At the same time, Pease notes that state fantasies cannot altogether conceal the inconsistencies they mask, showing how such events as the revelations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and the exposure of government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina opened fissures in the myth of exceptionalism, allowing Barack Obama to challenge the homeland security paradigm with an alternative state fantasy that privileges fairness, inclusion, and justice.