Film representations of the Vietnam War have been marked by distortion and evasion. Discuss with close reference to at least two movies.

Born on the Fourth of July spends less time in combat and more time depicting the life of the veteran after his return home. Because Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July was one man’s story of his experience in Vietnam, it could be a little generalised. He will only remember certain things he chooses to remember, so the viewer will yet again get a biased view of the war in Vietnam. Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic were both eventually anti Vietnam so this again would of distorted the outcome of both Platoon and Born on the fourth of July. They are both Anti Vietnam war veterans. “Both of them were gung-ho patriots who were eager to answer their country's call to arms. When they came back home, they were still patriots, hurt and offended by the hostility they experienced from the anti-war movement. Eventually, both men turned against the war, Kovic most dramatically.”(Ebert, R) 

Full Metal Jacket is formed round the experiences of young men in 'boot camp', and when they're sent off to war in Vietnam. Kubrick in Full Metal Jacket chooses to portray genuine events from the war. He focuses his action on the Tet Offensive 1968, directed by the enemy divisions in the South towards the United States. They wished to weaken American confidence in the Saigon government, strengthening American anti-war protest and ultimately bring America to some agreement. In order to asset Viet Cong influence and undermine Saigon authority, the North Vietnamese captured the city of Hue. Kubrick concentrates on the battle, which resulted from the marines dispatched to Hue. He manages to capture the vast destruction caused by the intense violent fighting in the houses and the streets. The tet offensive was an important event in the war because “the offensive marked a military victory for the Viet Cong. For many Americans who had believed that the war was being won, the sight of Viet Cong troops holding the US embassy is a rude awakening, and forces them to question the US "true" position.” 

The film has an almost documentary-like feel, as if this is real footage of the battles. In the first half of the film, Kubrick focuses on the marine training. Again it feels like one is right there amidst the recruits preparing for war.

Lee Ermey who played the drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, was actually a former drill instructor. Kubrick allowed him to improvise as he relied on his personal experience to guide the film. Most of the outrageous insults that he hurls at the recruits were Ermey’s own creations, derived from his former position. The way in which Kubrick utilizes humour could be seen as an attempt at portraying reality.  Through the use of humour in the film, Kubrick is able to distance the audience from any emotional responsiveness.

The viewer is led to believe that Full Metal Jacket is based around the truth; however Susan White's (Inventing Vietnam) critique of Stanley Kubrick's film, points out that this film, like many others, is laced with Hollywood stereotyping Orientals and is too concerned with the conception of male bonding. "Kubrick is an ironic version of the already ironic Crane text, both film and novel achieve a peculiar impersonality of tone despite their close recounting of a young man's experience in a war whose political implications are dealt with almost not at all"(White). The screenplay for this film was co-authored by Michal Herr, a Vietnam War correspondent, it seems that films involving veterans in their production would stand up to criticisms and add a substantial validity to them. The critics deemed the film a disappointment and claimed that the integrity was undermined due to the filming taking place in England; it was a failure on all counts. Full Metal Jacket looks at truth versus fiction in the media and Kubrick uses his political and cultural sensibility to capture his audience through cinematic story telling and to a lesser degree shows the realities of basic training, the tet offensive and not much else.

The Green Berets, the first of the Vietnam War films, directed and stared in by the very American John Wayne depicts pre-1965 Vietnam with a World War II feel about it. The film kicks off with a press conference hosted by the Green Berets, who attempt to answer difficult questions from the so called sceptical reporters as to why they are fighting in Vietnam. The emphasis is put on sympathy for the Green Berets as the 'rude-radical' journalists bombard them with questions. The whole film resembles a press conference trying to assure the sceptical public who are in need of some answers. John Wayne (director and star) propagandises the military throughout the entire film and top government officials oversaw the filming. “The film, of course, is an unintentionally humorous, thin and messy shell for anti- communist sentiments” 

The film came across as a government message, with all its pro-war and anti- communist opinions and excessive violence was exactly what the government wanted it to be, as they undeniably had a hand in production. In Katherine Kinney book Friendly Fire: American Images of the Vietnam War, she says that "The Green Berets can be seen as the final act in Wayne's personal audition to play the mythic embodiment of the American ideologies that went to Vietnam: anticommunism, racism, and imperialism masked by the rhetoric of manifest destiny and mission.” 

They were wise to choose Wayne as their messenger, because according to Gary Wills "The Green Berets was a commercial success despite all critical ridicule”. Green Berets was purely a political tool distorted to gain public approval of the Vietnam War “Sadly, though predictably, Wayne offers a very biased and politically naïve view of the issues of US involvement in the war.” 

Green Berets was supported by the American government from funding to the lending of equipment and men.

Despite this obstruction of reality, the main priority of any Hollywood director is the industry itself. Hollywood is a business with profit goals and consumerist ideals. In order to guarantee that the films satisfy the needs of this money making corporation, a mass audience must be reached. In the films under analysis, these Hollywood demands cannot be ignored. They must ensure success by targeting a large spectatorship and to do this certain formulas must be granted. Although the films looked at do not overtly symbolize conventional stylized Hollywood, there are aspects that are included to make sure that a wide audience will recognize them as Vietnam War films. The helicopter image, the war-torn landscape, the elimination of the women and the misrepresentations of the enemy as the other are some such devices in which the films can be distorted and evasive.

How confident can we be when watching these films that we are seeing the truth about Vietnam? This is important because, many people will watch a film as though it’s the truth instead of reading a historical book on the Vietnam War, thus the directors of Vietnam films had the biggest say in what people depicted in the war. Directors should make more of an effort of sticking to the truth when it comes to making a Vietnam movie instead of evading and distorting the truth. The choice then, is how we the viewers accept these films, and do we accept them as the truth or with scepticism. There is no simple solution, because each film is different and conveys a different message to the audience that it tries to reach. But if an audience can take in a film, any film with history or cultural changing implications, with some perspective of the past, either through personal experience or learned experience from others, then that audience can view the film with knowledgeable scepticism. And knowledge is the best filter for gaining the truth. Oscar Wilde, made as good an observation that can be made for the Vietnam War genre in American film; "when art develops a purpose it becomes propaganda".

Even modern day films such as We Were Soldiers don’t show Vietnam in its full, just the parts the Americans won, even though eventually they lost the war in Vietnam. It just leaves you wondering, how Hollywood will depict the present on going war in Iraq.

Bibliography

http://www.multied.com/Vietnam/Tet.html.

Rowe, J.C and R.Berg. The Vietnam War and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. (1991)

Martin, A. Receptions of War: Vietnam in American Culture. University of Oklahoma. (1994)

Anderegg, M. Inventing Vietnam: The War in Film and Television. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (1991)

Katherine Kinney, Friendly Fire : American Images of the Vietnam War, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2000), 15.

Wills, Garry. John Wayne's America. New York: Touchstone, 1998.

http://www.ichiban1.org/html/stories/story_18.htm

Filmography

Stone, Oliver. Platoon. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, 1986.
Wayne, John. The Green Berets. Warner Brothers, 1968.

Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket. 1987, USA

Oliver Stone, Born on the Fourth of July, 1989

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