Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Film Music ◽  
War Films ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
American Soldier ◽  
War Memorials ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Combat Films

The introduction lays out the structure of Hymns for the Fallen in broad strokes, noting the chronological scope of the study (35 war films made after the close of the Vietnam War), the subgenre (prestige combat films) and the book’s larger approach to film sound and film music. The three elements of the soundtrack—dialogue, sound effects, and music—and their relationship analytically within the book are also introduced. The book’s larger analogy between serious war films and war memorials, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is drawn by comparison of scenes from Hamburger Hill (1987) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). The formative impact of the Vietnam War on Hollywood combat film production is also noted. The figures of the American soldier and veteran are presented as central both to combat film narratives and to the target audiences for these films.

America's Offspring: Infanticide and the Iconography of Race and Gender in Commemorative Statuary of the Vietnam War

Prospects ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 537-574
Author(s):  
Patrick Hagopian
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
American Soldier ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Design Competition ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
And Gender

In March 1981, a Michigan woman wrote to the organizer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's design competition describing her concept for the memorial: she proposed a life-sized sculpture of an American soldier and a Vietnamese child, with “one hand reaching out, tentatively, no touching, toward the soldier's drooping fingers. In this little child's sweet, innocent face I see all we tried to do in Vietnam, stark contrast to what really happened, what we expended through those long hard years, these two human beings a bridge between our hopes and dreams, and cold reality. This tender little child, hoping for help, for protection, in total trust.”

Hymns for the Fallen

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd Decker
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Thin Red Line ◽  
Commercial Space ◽  
Sound Effects ◽  
Combat Films ◽  
Red Line ◽  
War Film ◽  
Vietnam War Films ◽  
Film Sound

Hymns for the Fallen listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to stimulate reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser known films, Todd Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich, culturally resonant aspect of the cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience’s engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices on the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

scholarly journals Coping with Trauma through Spiritual Remembrance

Axis Mundi ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Benham Rennick
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Coping With Trauma

In this article, I examine “spiritual remembrance” as it is enacted by three members of the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial Association (CVVMA) in Windsor, Ontario as a means of coming to terms with traumatic experiences from the Vietnam War. Spiritual remembrance is a term I use to describe a fusion of one’s religious heritage and one’s private understanding and expression of spirituality as it occurs in the context of memorialisation. It can occur when a group with a shared memory of trauma or horror memorialises their experiences according to what they hold as the deepest meanings of life. In this article, I present the methodology I used to collect the data, provide definitions for the terminology being used, offer a context for the theory, give some examples of spiritual remembrance as it is enacted by the veterans and finally, offer some conclusions regarding the utility of the theory.  

scholarly journals Defining a War: INDOCHINA, THE VIETNAM WAR, AND THE MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-90
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Khmer Rouge ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Ford Administration ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
Merchant Ship ◽  
Historical Argument ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Indochina War

Only two weeks after the fall of Saigon in May 1975, Khmer Rouge forces seized the American merchant ship SS Mayaguez (1944) off the Cambodian coast, setting up a Marine rescue and recovery battle on the island of Koh Tang. This battle on 12–15 May 1975 was the final U.S. military episode amid the wider Second Indochina War. The term Vietnam War has impeded a proper understanding of the wider war in the American consciousness, leading many to disassociate the Mayaguez incident from the Vietnam War, though they belong within the same historical frame. This article seeks to provide a heretofore unseen historical argument connecting the Mayaguez incident to the wider war and to demonstrate that Mayaguez and Koh Tang veterans are Vietnam veterans, relying on primary sources from the Ford administration, the papers of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and interviews with veterans.

scholarly journals Coping with Trauma through Social Remembrance

Axis Mundi ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Joanne Benham Rennick
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Coping With Trauma

In this article, I examine “spiritual remembrance” as it is enacted by three members of the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial Association (CVVMA) in Windsor, Ontario as a means of coming to terms with traumatic experiences from the Vietnam War. Spiritual remembrance is a term I use to describe a fusion of one’s religious heritage and one’s private understanding and expression of spirituality as it occurs in the context of memorialisation. It can occur when a group with a shared memory of trauma or horror memorialises their experiences according to what they hold as the deepest meanings of life. In this article, I present the methodology I used to collect the data, provide definitions for the terminology being used, offer a context for the theory, give some examples of spiritual remembrance as it is enacted by the veterans and finally, offer some conclusions regarding the utility of the theory.

scholarly journals ‘Objectifying’ the War. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a Secular Message Board.

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 221-230
Author(s):  
Adi Wimmer
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
National Strategy ◽  
Message Board ◽  
Sacred Site ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
Alternative Discourse ◽  
Smithsonian Institute ◽  
Prior Analysis

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. has become one of the most important cultural signifiers of the nation. Only what it signifies is far from clear. ‘A place of healing’ is a frequently applied epithet; in conjunction with partial memory loss; but ‘healing’ does not work without prior analysis of the wound. In postmodern fashion; anyone can read into it what they want. Evidence for its enduring popularity are the roughly 90 000 objects that have since its inception in 1982 been deposited at ‘the Wall’. These depositions represent an uncensored and hard to control alternative discourse on Vietnam; they are collected daily and stored at a huge warehouse. The ‘Wall’ is not only a sacred site; a locus of grief and contemplation; and a locus of re-uniting the nation; it has also become a prominent place where cultural battles are waged. Since 1995 there has been a permanent exhibition of a selected “Offerings at the Wall” at the Smithsonian Institute. They collectively represent a discourse refusing to be co-opted into a national strategy to re-interpret the Vietnam War as “in truth a noble cause” and an event in which American soldiers acted honourably.

The Vietnam War in American Memory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Hagopian
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Government ◽  
American Memory ◽  
American Society

The meaning of the Vietnam War has enduringly divided Americans in the postwar period. In part because the political splits opened up by the war made it an awkward topic for conversation, Vietnam veterans felt a barrier of silence separating them from their fellow citizens. The situation of returning veterans in the war’s waning years serves as a baseline against which to measure subsequent attempts at their social reintegration. Veterans, as embodiments of the experience of the war, became vehicles through which American society could assimilate its troubled and troubling memories. By the 1980s, greater public understanding of the difficulties of veterans’ homecoming experiences—particularly after the recognition in 1980 of the psychiatric condition, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—helped accelerate the efforts to recognize the service and sacrifices of Americans who fought in Vietnam through the creation of memorials. Because the homecoming experience was seen as crucial to the difficulties which a substantial minority suffered, the concept emerged that the nation needed to embrace its veterans in order to help restore their well-being. Characteristic ways of talking about the veterans’ experiences coalesced into truisms and parables: the nation and its veterans needed to “reconcile” and “heal”; America must “never again” send young men to fight a war unless the government goes all-out for victory; protesters spat on the veterans and called them “baby killers” when they returned from Vietnam. Strategists debated what the proper “lessons” of the Vietnam War were and how they should be applied to other military interventions. After the prevalent “overwhelming force” doctrine was discarded in 2003 in the invasion of Iraq, new “lessons” emerged from the Vietnam War: first came the concept of “rapid decisive operations,” and then counterinsurgency came back into vogue. In these interrelated dimensions, American society and politics shaped the memory of the Vietnam War.

Some Psychological Effects of Changing Public Attitudes on U.S. Vietnam Veterans

2018 ◽  
pp. 257-270
Author(s):  
Bruce P. Dohrenwend ◽  
Eleanor Murphy ◽  
Thomas J. Yager ◽  
Stephani L. Hatch
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Substantial Effect ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Memory Distortions ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter discusses the substantial effect that changing public attitudes toward the Vietnam war had both on veterans’ own attitudes toward the war and on demoralization in the U.S. armed forces toward the end of the war. In addition, as hypothesized, veterans’ negative attitudes at the time of their own entrances and exits from Vietnam, and negative changes in veterans’ initially favorable attitudes, were related to the period of the war in which they served and positively associated with demoralization. Because measurement of veterans’ attitudes toward the war at their entrance and exit occurred long after their service in Vietnam, it is possible that memory distortions played a role in these findings. However, the data indicate that retrospective bias cannot account for the differences in declining favorable and increasing negative attitudes toward the war related to veterans’ time of war entry.

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