Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Rachel's post

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.bu.edu/stable/1211973?seq=12&Search=yes&term=Hollywood&term=Vietnam&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DHollywood%2Band%2BVietnam%26gw%3Djtx%26prq%3DVietnam%2Bin%2BFilm%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&item=6&ttl=2431&returnArticleService=showArticle&resultsServiceName=doBasicResultsFromArticle


This is an article by Peter McInerney from the Film Quarterly magazine published in 1979. McInerney, in around ten pages, describes the emergence of the ?Vietnam War genre? in American film and focuses primarily on several major Vietnam War films released in the late 1970s including the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. He explores the challenges faced by filmmakers in attempting to portray this subject and all its controversies on screen and still make a movie with profitable success. McInerney also examines how filmmakers, in making war films, seek to influence the public?s attitude toward and view of the war itself. The evolution of the Vietnam War film is especially unique in the history of war film because Hollywood had to deal with an unprecedented amount of controversy which surrounded the war. Hollywood, during the war, did not dare make movies with antiwar sentiment but found it difficult to make films as completely pro-war when the situation in Vietnam was not reporting much success. After the war, McInerney says, Hollywood has portrayed the war as a ?nightmare for individuals and a collective hell for the nation?, and has taken real war veteran testimonies and stylized them so that ?Hollywood hasn?t been Vietnamized: these films have Hollywoodized Vietnam?. Most of these movies end with redemption and rehabilitation which was in reality absent from the average American soldier?s experience. McInerney, all in all, criticizes Hollywood?s addition of suspense, heroism, adventure etc. for entertainment value when motivations behind American involvement in Vietnam and the soldier?s experience are hard enough to understand. He concludes that the Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now fail at demonstrating what the war was to those who experienced it.

I think that the questions Peter McInerney brings up in this article are extremely important in analyzing the successes and failures of film in portraying the horrors of war. I do agree that Hollywood, in stylizing and adding to the real experiences of Vietnam veterans in order to create an entertaining and satisfying two hour film, sacrifices its ability to accurately depict the war. But, in reality, it is impossible anyway to condense all that occurred in a war that lasted for more than a decade into a film that lasts a few hours. And although most films attempt to overcome this problem of condensing by focusing on one event or the experience of one individual, unless you were there, you can never know what was really felt and seen or understand the suffering experienced by the American soldiers in Vietnam. However, I do believe that film can be a successful medium by which to raise awareness for war and atrocities as long as people, in viewing them, should remember that what they are watching is not actually history only a director?s representation of it.

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