Remembering Vietnam in the 1980s : White Skin, White Masks: Vietnam War Films and the Racialized Gaze

2014 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
War Films ◽  
White Skin ◽  
Vietnam War Films

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 War in the Tropics

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Jericho
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Tropical Island ◽  
Historical View ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Tropical Areas ◽  
The Tropics

In the Home Box Office mini-series Band of Brothers (2001), one of the soldiers on a troop ship bound for England remarks: "Right now some lucky bastard's headed for the Pacific, get put on some tropical island, surrounded by six naked native girls, helping him cut up coconuts so he can hand feed them to flamingos". This paradisiacal view of the Pacific and tropical areas has existed for centuries, and despite European settlers' developing familiarity with the area, it is a misconception which has continued to be propagated in war films set in the tropics. These war films depict the tropics as antipodean utopias which become corrupted by the ravages of war. Thus, while many of these films attempt to display war realistically, they still hold to the historical view of the tropics as unspoiled and pure—until, of course, war intrudes onto the scene. These films rarely examine the effect of the war on the local inhabitants, but rather deal with soldiers coping with the disjunction between their preconceived notions of the area and the reality before them. Crucially as well, war is depicted as a greater crime against nature (both human and environmental) when fought in the tropics rather than in Europe. This view is promulgated in the representation of battles fought in these films. In films set in the Pacific theatre during World War Two, and more recent ones set during the Vietnam War, the battle for American and Australian soldiers is as much about coping with their surroundings as with fighting the enemy, who are often rarely seen, or only viewed in long shot. War films set in the tropics depict 'war as hell' because of the environment, which is by turns remote, mystifying, and generally rural, rather than urban, 'civilised' and familiar, as it is in the case of the majority of war films set in Europe.

scholarly journals The Western and the War Film: Clint Eastwood’s „American Sniper” as Genre Hybrid

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Martin Holtz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
War Film

The article explores the similarities of Westerns and war films and the ways in which the two genres have cross-fertilized each other since World War II. Central to their similarities are their efforts to render violence as a “regenerative” Slotkin means to establish or defend American civilization. Since the Vietnam War, however, the Western has taken a revisionist turn, and its subsequent evocations in war films expose the frontier ideology of justified violence in the name of the advancement of American civilization as a failed ideological project and highlight the imperialist aggression that connects America’s westward expansion with its military efforts. Using the example of Clint Eastwood’s film American Sniper 2014, the article argues that the use of Western elements in contemporary films about the Iraq War adds a sense of moral ambiguity to the portrayal of the hero, who exhibits a pathological obsession with a Western image of the righteous protector of civilization that is ultimately destructive to himself and the society he wants to protect.WESTERN A FILM WOJENNY — SNAJPER CLINTA EASTWOODA JAKO GATUNKOWA HYBRYDAArtykuł jest eksploracją podobieństw między westernem a filmem wojennym i sposobów, w jakie obydwa gatunki wzajemnie się przenikały od czasu II wojny światowej. Głównym ich podobieństwem jest próba prezentowania przemocy jako „odradzającego się” Slotkin środka służącego ustanowieniu bądź obronie amerykańskiej cywilizacji. Jednakże od wojny wietnamskiej western przeszedł rewizjo­nistyczny zwrot, a jego kolejne ewokacje w filmach wojennych eksponują ideologię Pogranicza bę­dącą usprawiedliwieniem przemocy w imię zaawansowania amerykańskiej cywilizacji jako projektu ideologicznego upadłego i ukazują imperialistyczną agresję, która łączy amerykańską ekspansję na zachód z jej militarnymi wysiłkami. Na przykładzie Snajpera Clinta Eastwooda 2014 niniejszy esej przekonuje, że zastosowanie westernowych elementów we współczesnych filmach o irackiej wojnie przydaje moralnej dwuznaczności portretowi bohatera, przejawiającego patologiczną obsesję wester­nowym image’em prawego obrońcy cywilizacji, skrajnie destrukcyjnego wobec siebie oraz społeczeń­stwa, które chce osłaniać.                                                                                              Przeł. Kordian Bobowski

A GENDER STEREOTYPES FROM AMERICAN AND VIETNAMESE WAR FILMS – A CASE STUDY OF VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (11) ◽  
pp. 14-23
Author(s):  
Nga Hoang Thi
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
War Films ◽  
Street Vendors ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
And Gender

In the media, the movies have a strong impact on the perception of gender and gender roles, including the image and role of women. The question is: Are there any hidden gender stereotypes contained in images, words, and plot in a movie? Therefore, this report refers to the image and portrait of Vietnamese women described in the Vietnam War films under a comparative perspective from both the US and Vietnam. From these different views, the filmmakers in Hollywood and Vietnam presented their different perceptions, even their opposing views to the Vietnamese women and their role in the war. Even more interesting, it is characterized by two opposing sides and due to always having the appearance of the familiar conventions of war films, in which one is the hero, one is the villain. Thus, the common portrayal in American films is nameless and faceless persons, such as street vendors, teachers, tailors, peasants, prostitutes and so on. These “mute characters” appear at a glance, the audiences recognize them by the traditional costumes and conical hats. In Vietnamese movies, the women seem to be multiple tasks: wives, mothers and soldiers at the same time. By comparison, the report would indicate the gender stereotypes and its negative impact on the formation, maintenance and strengthening the traditional notions of gender, particularly for Vietnamese women. The relationship between gender, gender equality and the media is also examined in the study.

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