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| Alternate chronological arrangement (through July 2003) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Compiled by John K. McAskill, Systems Librarian, La Salle University
[A British critic discusses the reasons why American feature filmmakers have avoided asking hard questions about the Vietnam War and analyzes the second wave of Vietnam War films]
[In the past six years the military image and its attendant mythology has rebounded from the negative effects of the Vietnam War. Star wars began a wave of films romanticizing the military, overcoming "the futility films of Apocalypse now, The Deer hunter, and Coming home. In these the heroes lost their legs, lost their wives, lost their hearts, minds, and lives." (p. 10)]
[Reviews the films touring the U.S. under the auspices of the Vietnam Film Project. "While America has slipped into self-obsession over its part in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese have been reviewing their own wounds, national trauma and precarious recovery from a war that devastated their economy and culture" (p. 33)]
[Describes the Hawaii International Film Festival where the Vietnam Film Project brought together Vietnamese filmmakers and American veterans]
[Unpublished paper read at the Popular Culture Association. Discusses Otto Dix, Oliver Stone, Jim Carabatsos, Gustav Hasford, Patrick Sheane Duncan and Michael Herr and the depiction of drug use in Vietnam and by veterans]
[Outline for a course on the film and television representations of the Vietnam War in ten units. "Since we think the representation of politics always involves the politics of representation, we have attempted to relate the films to the social interests they serve, to relate form to function" (p. 60). Bibliographical references]
Reprinted in his Power misses : essays across (un)popular culture London : Verso, 1996. (p. 99-121)
[Marxist analysis of the crisis which the defeat of the invasion of Vietnam generated for American politics and culture industries. During the invasion, resistance to it could only be figured in marginal cultural forms. It was unassimilable by industrial culture except in television news coverage. After the war, mass-market literary and filmic treatments rewrote genocide as rock and roll. "The invasion and rock and roll are intertwined so thoroughly that their interdependence is an exemplary instance of the operationality of modern culture" (p. 80). Bibliographical references]
[A collection of previously published essays by various authors with a new introduction by Jason. Though primarily literary in focus some of the essays do make reference to Apocalypse now, The deer hunter, Full metal jacket, The Green Berets, and Platoon]
[Describes French documentary films as well as some pre-1950 fiction films]
[Debriding is a medical procedure to remove foreign material or contaminated tissue from a wound. "The image of the Vietnam veteran in the United States can be said to have undergone a process of cultural debriding … [whose principal goal] … is the display and regeneration of a victimized American masculinity, a display and regeneration that aim both to respond to recent feminist challenges to patriarchal structures, and, at the same time, to reinforce these structures through a reassertion of values, definitions, and relations upon which the patriarchy depends" (p. 525). Bibliographical references]
Reprinted in Film genre reader II (edited by Barry Keith Grant) Austin : Univ. of Texas Press, 1995. (p. 428-40)
[Hollywood films on Vietnam sought to "feminize" their audiences and thus diffuse dissent. Apocalypse now, Coming home and First blood have repressive social effects, dilluting veterans anger and showing the severe consequences of challenging authority. Bibliographical references]
[Includes analysis of 9 Vietnam veteran films of the 1980s. Bibliography and index]
Reprinted in Feminisms : an anthology of literary theory and criticism [2nd ed.] (edited by Robyn R. Warhol and Diane Price Herndl) New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers Univ. Press, 1997. (p. 1046-67)
["American filmic representations of the Vietnam War narrate the exchange, transference, or continuation of power between father and son, the defining parameters for the definitions and determination of the masculine subject in American social relations." The intention of the father/son relation is to define and determine power as existing only through this exchange and "to insure that alternative sources and forms of power - in Vietnam films, women Vietnamese, and blacks; feminism, communism, and revolution - are denied and defeated" (p. 487). Bibliographical references]
[See also the 'response' of Claudia Springer in "Rebellious sons in Vietnam combat films…" (1988)]
[New Vietnam War films reaffirm the American male and the values of the masculine war experience. Bibliographical references]
[Examines depictions of Vietnamese women as combatants in Vietnam War fiction and film, noting an essential brutality in dealing with lone female combatants. Bibliographical references]
[The 1971 Winter Soldier testimonies are filled with reports of crimes committed against Vietnamese women. The author finds that 'winter soldier' characters have since been used to commit war crimes in the second wave of Vietnam War films]
[Studies how gender is represented in the personal narratives, literature, and film of the Vietnam War and the effects these representations had on American male sexuality and masculinity. Refers to more than a dozen films and television programs. Bibliography and index]
[Reprinted in Cultural legacies of Vietnam (1990) (p. 124-41)
[Portions originally appeared in The remasculinization of America. In accounts of the Vietnam War, women are associated with life (birth) and men with death. Maternity is interpreted as a biological role while paternity is a social one. This article explores how male characters appropriate the role of reproduction (social, familial and historical) in order to derogate women to a limited biological role and protect the male's crucial warrior identity. Bibliographical references]
[Discusses the six films touring the US under the auspices of the Vietnam Film Project]
Reprinted in Historical memory and representations of the Vietnam War (edited by Walter L. Hixson) New York : Garland, 2000 (p. 89-96)
[Examines the representation of women in Vietnam War literature and films within the context of gender constructions in American society. Accounts of the war try to "change the gender of women involved in the Vietnam War and its cultural effects by subsuming their experiences under those of men, by treating women as if they did not participate in the war, or by representing their experiences in stereotypically 'feminine' terms" (p. 83). Attention needs to be focused on masculinity and its relation to warfare. Bibliography]
[On the second wave of Vietnam War films]
[Reacts to the claim of Hal Moore and Joseph Galloway in their book We were soldiers… that "Hollywood got it wrong every damn time…" by discussing more than a dozen prior films that capture the Vietnam War and/or its effects at home]
[Survey of Australian representations of the Vietnam War in literature, film, art and music. The film section mentions documentary, dramatic and television productions. Bibliographical references]
[Analysis of seven films, four of which (Made in U.S.A., The model shop, Taking off, and Zabriskie point) have Vietnam War references. Filmography and bibliographical references]
[The success of Platoon has led "Hollywood to rush four other films on Vietnam themes down the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the marketplace this year." The passing of time and guilt over the treatment of Vietnam veterans have also contributed to renewed interest in the war]
Reprinted in Historical memory and representations of the Vietnam War (edited by Walter L. Hixson) New York : Garland, 2000 (p. 219-231)
[Historically, the U.S. has feared returned soldiers. Early movies depicting Vietnam veterans (i.e Born losers) exhibit this fear but a change in the political and social climate in the 1980s led to depictions of veterans as sympathetic characters (Born on the Fourth of July)]
[On the second wave of Vietnam War films. "America's least popular war has becomeAmerica's most popular movie genre." Vietnam has not been romanticized, instead the films have discovered the romance of masochism]
[For the French observor of American cinema, Vietnam has become as much an obsession for filmmakers as for the public.. The Americans are looking for catharsis, but analysis of the brief history of Vietnam War films will show that they will not find catharsis there now or in the future. In French]
[Our cultural vision of the Vietnam wartime experience is fragmented and flawed. Media coverage created a series of disconnected but powerful symbols in the public mind without providing insight. The most troubling enigma for the post-war American psyche was that America lost the war without losing a battle. This paper examines the transformation of traditional social myths to justify America's participation and conduct of the war as expressed in a popular series of films: the MIA-POW/avenger-vigilante sub-genre. Bibliographical references]
[Portrayal of Vietnam in recent American films and consideration of problems raised by critical approaches adopted at a recent Manchester SEPT weekend school]
[Difficulties of filmmaking in Vietnam in time of war and current handicaps. In French]
[On the second wave of Vietnam films and the planning for China beach]
[Hollywood's loss of interest in the Vietnam War after The Green Berets]
[The author first surveys public opinion about the Vietnam War since 1975 (finding an attitude of complacency and a desire to forget). He then examines the rhetorical elements of Platoon and Hamburger Hill, arguing that the second wave of Vietnam War films and television programs have served to overcome public complacency about the war. Bibliography]
[Discusses spectacle and frontier mythology in such films as Apocalypse now, Platoon and Independence day. Bibliographical references]
[Contrasts the major films of the second wave of Vietnam War films with those of the first. The former include dramatizations of combat, but lack strong images of dislocation and disjunction. The sense of the war's political contradictions and dilemmas is lost and tough questions about Vietnam are evaded. Bibliographical references]
[Analyzes Apocalypse now, Who'll stop the rain and The Deer hunter. Describes their avoidance of political or historical issues raised by the war, their mythical/ heroic qualities, and the contradiction of heroes who fail while the communities and values they defend survive. Bibliographical references]
[Lists mainly 16mm documentary films relating to the Vietnam War, made by left and right, also involving civil rights and other issues]
[Recent writing about the 1960s and the Vietnam era shows a revisionism similar to that which took place during the Cold War concerning the radical history of the 1930s and the 1941-45 alliance with the Soviet Union: the history of progressive ('people's') movements was marginalized; and the history of wars, that were comprehended in moral and political terms in their own time, was retold as tales of military adventure and a young man's rite of intiation. The debate on the definition of the Vietnam era touches on one's sense of the US social system and culture and its role in the world. It influences and is influenced by popular culture. "The popular imagination about Vietnam has often been shaped by the media" (p. 8). Since the end of the war Hollywood has reconstructed Vietnam "as a setting within which ideological fantasies are explored and contested. A genre has been created" (p. 9). Bibliographical references]
[The production of American films about the Vietnam War follows a historical pattern established during the Civil War. Political and social divisions during the Vietnam War were evident in films of the period. In the 1980s, however, Vietnam War films reflect the efforts of conservatives and revisionists to reestablish the prewar national consensus. Bibliographical references]
[Discusses Hollywood's reluctance to produce films about an unpopular war and reviews laserdisc releases of Apocalypse now, The deer hunter, and Go tell the Spartans]
[On the first wave of Vietnam War films (The Deer hunter, Coming home); television dramas (Friendly fire); and stage plays (G.R. Point)]
[Political films from "apolitical" Hollywood, several relating to the Vietnam War]
["Although both films evoke the superficial horrors of Viet Nam, they obscure the very realities most crucial to understanding it. The war in Viet Nam is hidden behind a filmic style that finally reinforces the futility of any attempt to understand or prevent war." (p. 18)]
[US cinema returns to the Vietnam War as a theme. Francis Ford Coppola is making Gardens of stone]
[Survey of the state of cinema in Vietnam and an interview with director Le Hoang Hoa about filmmaking there. In German]
[Survey history of Vietnamese cinema]
[Discusses eleven films with Vietnam veteran characters. Bibliographical references]
[Comment on the beginning of the first wave of Vietnam War films]
["Movies about Vietnam are the latest phase in Hollywood's nonstop assault on the American spirit." The "cultural termites" in Hollywood have misrepresented the American soldier in Vietnam as racist, neurotic, drug crazed, feral and hopeless pawns. Vietnam veterans are stereotyped as neurotic blubberers. Most vets do not fit either image]
Reprinted in condensed form as: "Vietnam vets: Ambushed in Hollywood" Reader's digest 133 (Dec 1988), p. 118-20.
[Described 49 Vietnam War films (including 8 documentaries) dating from 1964-1989]
[Reviews movies about the Vietnam War and its veterans to provide analysis of acting, plot and production values. The author found there were many more films that touch on Vietnam than he anticipated and that, in part, they systematically vilify the warrior as well as the war]
[Survey of South Vietnamese film history from 1900-75]
[A comparison of the treatment of Trojan War and Vietnam War veterans in fictional media. Investigates the similarities between ancient Greek stories of homecoming from the Trojan War (nostoi) and American films chronicling the reception of Vietnam veterans. The imaginative representations of the veterans and their fates may be divided in four distinct groups: "those who arrived home safely only to meet disaster; those who commited suicided; those who wandered for years before returning home; and those who were physically and emotionally rehabilitated away from society" (p. v). Bibliography]
[Compares the second wave of Vietnam War films with preceding efforts]
[Effects of the Vietnam War reflected directly and indirectly in American film]
[Starting with an analysis of the inversion of imagery in Coming home, the author studies the depiction of Vietnam veterans in pre- and post-1978 films since "almost all Vietnam War films are about veterans and their coming home experiences." (p. 148) Bibliographical references and filmography]
[Describes the influence of the Vietnam War on western films of the late 1960s]
[Report on the second annual Vietnam Veterans' Film Festival with brief descriptions of 10 films to be shown]
[Comment on the beginning of the first wave of Vietnam War films with a quotes from the producers of Heroes]
[Comment on the first wave of Vietnam War films]
[Describes a shift in American perceptions of the nature of the war and the symbol of the warrior. Traditional martial imagery of righteousness and honor has been turned upside down by the Vietnam War. Bibliographical references]
[General survey of American Vietnam War films with a focus on seven. Criticizes their avoidance of political inquiry and their "outraged realism" which becomes "absurd and surrealistic." The 70s films show an antiwar outlook while the 80s films show a childish conservatism, but all are apolitical, concentrate on the experience of the American soldier and ignore Vietnamese suffering. Bibliographical references]
[Includes a brief examination of the genre of the war film, with concentration placed on the influence of John Wayne on the medium. The Green Berets is examined closely as an example of one of the few films to be released during the years of the war. The deer hunter and Apocalypse now are then examined as examples of works derived from prior literary antecedents. Also addresses the filmic treatments of veteran memoirs using the work of Oliver Stone in Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July. Bibliography]
[While the spring 1989 issue of Vietnam generation suggested that popular culture materials on the Vietnam War overlook black soldiers or depict them negatively, the author believes positive images of blacks are ubiquitous. Discusses several novels and the films Apocalypse now, The boys in Company C and Platoon. Bibliographical references]
[Some of the reaction to the second wave of Vietnam War films suggests a genuine effort to come to grips with the war, but there are a number of dilemmas and limitations with some of the most powerful and well-received commentaries about the war over the past decade. This includes the revision of history and the denigration of the opponents of the war. Bibliographical references]