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The Vietnam War on Film
Vietnam War on Film illustrates how to employ film as a teaching tool. It also stands on its own as an account of the war and the major films that have depicted it.
Even for many people who experienced the Vietnam War first hand, memories of that conflict have often been shaped by the popular films that depicted The Quiet American , The Green Berets , The Deer Hunter , Coming Home , Platoon , Full Metal Jacket , and Apocalypse Now , among others. Vietnam War on Film examines how the war is portrayed through a selection of ten iconic films that represent the war through dramatization and storytelling as opposed to through documentary footage.
The book includes an introduction to the war's history and a timeline of events, followed by ten chapters, each of which focuses on a specific Vietnam War movie. Chapters offer a uniquely detailed level of historical context for the films, weighing their depiction of events against the historical record and evaluating how well or how poorly those films reflected the truth and shaped public memory and discourse over the war. A final section of "Resources" provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography of print and electronic sources to aid students and teachers in further research.
Even for many people who experienced the Vietnam War first hand, memories of that conflict have often been shaped by the popular films that depicted The Quiet American , The Green Berets , The Deer Hunter , Coming Home , Platoon , Full Metal Jacket , and Apocalypse Now , among others. Vietnam War on Film examines how the war is portrayed through a selection of ten iconic films that represent the war through dramatization and storytelling as opposed to through documentary footage.
The book includes an introduction to the war's history and a timeline of events, followed by ten chapters, each of which focuses on a specific Vietnam War movie. Chapters offer a uniquely detailed level of historical context for the films, weighing their depiction of events against the historical record and evaluating how well or how poorly those films reflected the truth and shaped public memory and discourse over the war. A final section of "Resources" provides a comprehensive annotated bibliography of print and electronic sources to aid students and teachers in further research.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published May 10, 2019
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April 8, 2025
Useful, in that it's got a TON of very specific references that ground these famous Vietnam movies in the reality of what happened--dates, tactics, background, you name it. A lot of it is interesting in the general sense of "how realistic was this bit?," and the movies are pretty canonical. For this independent study, I've watched The Green Berets, the legendarily anachronistic John Wayne movie from 1968, and the most famous pro-Vietnam war film ever (screamingly dull, in addition to its political problems, though it features what I would guess is one of the earliest deployments of the right-wing trope of the combative lefty journalist who, to be salvaged, learns that the fight against Godless Communism demands that every red-blooded American grab a gun); Platoon, which somehow I'd never managed to sit down and watch before now (less schematic than I'd imagined; Willem Dafoe's Good Guy introduces Charlie Sheen to weed); we also watched Mrs. Miniver for the comparative WWII portion, for which I read the Doherty book (stirring and square, in the best ways). Also need to see Good Morning, Vietnam, which I've not watched.
Rewatches: Full Metal Jacket (less resonant the second time through, perhaps in part because the first time I showed it, in spring 2016, one of the students just lost it, terrified that her brother was going to join ROTC and endure all the mental torture we see; it feels weirdly ungainly between the hallucinatory first 40%, at Parris Island--that opening monologue by R. Lee Ermey still makes you squirm, laugh, and gasp all at once--and the longer Vietnam section, which feels oddly episodic and directionless in construction); Apocalypse Now (a bravura gesture whose uncontrollable baroque overstatement I appreciate all the more in the light of contemporary film's cynicism and resolutely middlebrow ambition); will also have to rewatch Rambo, which I recall as ramshackle even by the standards of mid-tier 80s action flicks. To prep, watched First Blood last night, which contains, somehow, both more and less posturing than I expected, and some truly horrific scene-chewing by Richard Crenna. I then watched Rambo itself, which, ecchh--just as dumb and fetishistic as I remembered, with the usual anti-bureaucratic populism and, which somehow I'd forgotten, an anti-computer bit. At the end, Rambo guns down a roomful of tech, I guess to substitute for the violent retribution he denies us against the conniving bureaucrat. Should re-listen to that Vietnam-film podcast to hear Julia Nickson talk about her role, which is essentially a noble savage speaking pidgin English: "Rambo...you not expendable." And now I know where that franchise name comes from, which, uh, yay? (Consumer advisory: Rambo series not included.)
Anyway, it would be great if I were writing a paper and did actual research instead of asking an AI to find me stuff. The drawback is that the contextualization and discussion of the films' role in the larger culture is rigidly structured and ploddingly literal in its desire to inform; each chapter just stops one a fairly small factual point. I could imagine telling someone to check out an individual chapter to compare the film version with the facts, and to learn about its reception, but that's about it; you'd have to do pretty much all the thinking yourself. Reading the whole thing felt like a chore, even at only 159pp that includes bibliographies for each chapter.
Rewatches: Full Metal Jacket (less resonant the second time through, perhaps in part because the first time I showed it, in spring 2016, one of the students just lost it, terrified that her brother was going to join ROTC and endure all the mental torture we see; it feels weirdly ungainly between the hallucinatory first 40%, at Parris Island--that opening monologue by R. Lee Ermey still makes you squirm, laugh, and gasp all at once--and the longer Vietnam section, which feels oddly episodic and directionless in construction); Apocalypse Now (a bravura gesture whose uncontrollable baroque overstatement I appreciate all the more in the light of contemporary film's cynicism and resolutely middlebrow ambition); will also have to rewatch Rambo, which I recall as ramshackle even by the standards of mid-tier 80s action flicks. To prep, watched First Blood last night, which contains, somehow, both more and less posturing than I expected, and some truly horrific scene-chewing by Richard Crenna. I then watched Rambo itself, which, ecchh--just as dumb and fetishistic as I remembered, with the usual anti-bureaucratic populism and, which somehow I'd forgotten, an anti-computer bit. At the end, Rambo guns down a roomful of tech, I guess to substitute for the violent retribution he denies us against the conniving bureaucrat. Should re-listen to that Vietnam-film podcast to hear Julia Nickson talk about her role, which is essentially a noble savage speaking pidgin English: "Rambo...you not expendable." And now I know where that franchise name comes from, which, uh, yay? (Consumer advisory: Rambo series not included.)
Anyway, it would be great if I were writing a paper and did actual research instead of asking an AI to find me stuff. The drawback is that the contextualization and discussion of the films' role in the larger culture is rigidly structured and ploddingly literal in its desire to inform; each chapter just stops one a fairly small factual point. I could imagine telling someone to check out an individual chapter to compare the film version with the facts, and to learn about its reception, but that's about it; you'd have to do pretty much all the thinking yourself. Reading the whole thing felt like a chore, even at only 159pp that includes bibliographies for each chapter.
Displaying 1 of 1 review