When thinking about Vietnam I, like most, have my own narrative engrained in my heat of what the war means and represents. For me on one side, I see everything I have ever learned about the war from history classes and from you tube videos. But on the other hand I have my grandfathers narrative. My grandfather was a marine in the Vietnam War. He told me about it once when I asked. He said that he was stationed in California. His base and the base in Hawaii played “war games” for practice. The person in charge of their base told them this was what was happening. They boarded a ship and headed to what they thought was Hawaii. During the day the traveled towards Hawaii and at night they turned the ship towards Vietnam. He said when they got there his commanders told him that they would only be there for three weeks to help the Vietnamese people build a city. He also told me that he arrived at Vietnam two months before it was publicly announced that we were in war. He was one of the first to arrive and the last to leave. This concept of government deception really make me think about how screwed up the war could have looked to many. It’s really interesting to think of the time and although I was not there, I can imagine the frustration and distrust people were having and experiencing with the government. But then again, as we talked about in class, the older generation coming of WWII really wanted to “do the right thing.” And with the thoughts of WWII, older Americans inhibited a very romanticized feeling like we were the hero’s of it, when in retrospect the Russians were essentially the ones really combat fighting the Germans.
Another big thing I wanted to talk about which we talked about in class and that the reading brought up was the idea of the Vietnam War, and even the movie, perhaps being representative of European Colonialism and Imperialism. I don’t know everything there is to know about this subject and I am not going to pretend to, but from what I do know, especially from Britain, imperialism was an evil thing in a lot of ways. For the British at least, I do know that they based their ideals of imperialism off the idea that the white man was morally inclined to spread they technology they were blessed with and that they were superior to others. When Cecil Rhodes, from Britain, a businessman, went to Africa for instance, he pretty much deceived natives into singing over their land to him, and forced them to work for him. In this, Cecil Rhodes looked like a hero, and all of Britain’s “media” at the time made Britain out to be hero’s embarking on enlightening the underprivileged. In this, and especially in the diamond trading of the time, we see the first kind of concentration work camps come out, even before the ones from Germany. People were treated like Animals, stripped of their profession and made to work on their own land . . . sound familiar?
I also wanted to talk about the movie in reference to the music. I thought it was interesting that music, which basically defined the Vietnam generation, was incorporated into the movie almost with a satirical purpose. When they first storm the beach and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” comes on, its almost as if the Americanization and dramatics are displayed. Bombs are going off, men are dying, and this very fun and upbeat song that is playing. As an audience we really have to question how disturbed we are by the actually scene and if we are at all? How did Americans at this time make their own narrative of the war? I think the movie all along did a wonderful job of inviting the audience to question their own beliefs and narrative. I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it did a great job of illustrating the images of the “true war.” As I mentioned before, sometimes we as Americans have a very romanticized image of what America looks like in a war, ex WWII, but then we see an image perhaps of a concentration camp, and it doesn’t matter what a country looked like, only the disturbing image that is produced. A seventy-pound grown man holding his hands out for help doesn’t let the human mind romanticize anything.
As the reading says, “Willard is therefore aware that he is telling a story; he is conscious of his narration and how it lets us see beyond the story itself into his perception and reaction to it [ . . . ] the journey of darkness is then ours as well.” To me the movie is asking us to form our own narrative, but base it on the real images, the one the movie is presenting. It almost seems like the movie itself asks us to “play God.” We almost begin to become numb to death happening in almost every scene. We become numb almost to the senseless shooting into jungles. We almost begin to justify death and decided who lives and who dies and why they deserve it, especially in the movie, but then we realize this kind of thing really happened. It such an eerie scene when Kurtz is in a conversation hearing about the people being vaccinated with the polio vaccine. And the strength of a man to cut off a person arm is talked about, the strength to decide who lives and dies; that in war there is no room for emotion. This also ties a lot into the idea of how these soldiers were returning after the war; the idea of PTSD. People were coming home numb, not able to talk about what they experienced. I can’t even imagine the scenes that play in veterans heads. I can’t imagine what they had to endure, and how they became numb to killing. War is never a good thing. The way a person become strong is by becoming numb. This as well plays into my narrative, trying to think about the lives that were essentially ruined. The movie in my opinion also did a good job of showing the “opposition,” as very human and in some case not even fighting back. The movie essentially showed unnecessary slaughter.
The movie in my opinion was great, as it really made me examine my own personal narrative of the war and other events like it. Our conversation as well was wonderful, I just wish we had more time to talk about it and develop some bigger ideas, Thanks for your time.
