“What is Life?” During the War on Terror

American disenchantment with the government after the end of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s through 1970s has since grown to be also disenchanted with the American dream. The September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001 is the primary marker for the radical change in American sentiment and the defining moment of the so-called “millennial generation,” the generation of people who were in primary school through college during the attacks. As Americans struggle to make sense of the War on Terror, their sentiment toward the government was often conflicted, confused, and frequently changed. Though the war began with a patriotic fervor inspired by the Bush administration, a sentiment of indifference emerged a few years into the war with the exception of a few major bloody events. Dissention characterized the later years until President Obama declared in 2013 that the United States to no longer be pursuing the War on Terror. Between the indifference and dissention stages, the American dream changed and even became irrelevant.

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more superhero films were being produced than in any other period in American history. Historians can use the numerous superhero films just as Americans used them when they were release since these films provide explanations of the War on Terror for Americans to make sense of it and reflect how Americans perceived the war at the time.[1] The “good guys” in popular culture realms tended to be either superheroes acting outside of the federal government, as is the case in the numerous Marvel films produced since 2001, or common Americans who sometimes take extralegal actions, disregarding the government though they work for it. In the latter case, examples from Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) and the current television show Homeland depict American soldiers and intelligence agents disregarding official orders to stop pursuing a case so they can essentially be the heroes and save the world without government help. In Homeland’s first season, CIA agent Carrie Mathison carries out an investigation against executive orders, which ultimately turned out to be the right thing for her to do to protect important government officials.

In Homeland season 1, Carrie has a wall of classified documents (stolen from Langley) in her house for her unsanctioned investigation

Similarly in The Hurt Locker, Sergeant James refuses to follow orders, but his disobedience ultimately saves the lives of hundreds of people. In these films, the federal government is often portrayed as a hindrance, something likely to cause more harm than good, particularly in Homeland. Eventually, vigilante soldiers and superheroes became the ideal American hero for much of American society during the War on Terror.

While Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker provides intense scenes of battle and the everyday lives of soldiers in Iraq during the War on Terror to actively show the affects of war on soldiers, no war or intense action is seen in Ben Fountain’s novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Instead of filling the novel with the heroic actions of the story’s soldier hero, Fountain focuses on how Billy interprets his life and American life through a stream of consciousness narrative. Billy’s thoughts throughout the book, like The Hurt Locker, show how being on the battlefield affects young people, but his interactions with non-military characters in the book show how the War on Terror has affected Americans at home. The War on Terror simultaneously made sense and made no sense at all for many Americans in the early twenty-first century. The fact that films attacking the idea of the War on Terror were hardly successful early in the war suggests that Americans initially wanted to support the war effort. It seems that nearly every American knew someone, friend or family, who served in the war and believed he or she had to support the war effort to support their friend or family member, regardless of their moral leaning toward the war. Being conflicted over supporting the troops or opposing a war they most often did not understand created indifference and dispiritedness among Americans.

The fact that the Fountain’s story does not have an end goal to lead up to really pushes the point of the novel through Billy’s eyes, that there is no clear purpose to life. The morality of the war is not in question in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk or in The Hurt Locker, but rather their individual purpose in life and the purpose of the United States. Billy points out the United States’ complicity in the war and that Americans are instead “stuck on teenage drama, on extravagant theatrics of ravaged innocence and soothing mud wallows of self-justifying pity.” His experience during his two week “victory tour” in the United States shows him the American life for which he is fighting. Billy is not impressed by the “draft-dodging, platitude-mouthing millionaires and their trophy wives…[or] a scantily clad Beyoncé entertaining football fans with a ridiculous military-themed halftime show.” For Billy Lynn in Fountain’s novel and Sergeant James in Bigelow’s film, being separated from the trivial aspects of American life, they realize that the war has made them foreigners in their home country and decide their life’s purpose is war. War had become a way of life in the early twenty-first century.

War being a way of life is not the point of the novel or the film. Both use the “war as a way of life” mentality to capitalize on the excessiveness of American culture. When James has returned to the States from Iraq at the end of the film, he is very clearly overwhelmed by the excessive number of food choices when his wife asks him to buy cereal. Similarly, Lynn finds the expensive leather and crystal Cowboys’ merchandise at the Texas Stadium absurd and jokes with Mango about it.[2] The American dream of being economically comfortable, married to a beautiful woman, and having a house filled with happy children is lost on both these soldiers and American society in general. Billy sees distorted images of the old American dream among the wealthiest crowd at the Cowboys’ game. James actually has achieved the old American dream, but returning to it from war makes his life seem empty and purposeless.

Billy’s interpretation of civilian life during the War on Terror thoroughly describes Americans conflicted emotions toward the war. His encounters show people who seem to have forgotten or simply do not care enough about the war until in the soldiers’ presence as well as people openly opposed to the solders’ line of duty.[3] Sergeant James’ story embodies the heroic vigilante soldier Americans favored at the time, a reflection of American sentiment toward their government. Both Billy and James reflect indifference to the traditional American dream and the adoption of a war way of life without regard to their moral judgment concerning the war.

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[1] Drew McKevitt, “Watching War Made Us Immune: The Popular Culture of the Wars,” in Understand the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, eds. Beth Bailey and Richard H. Immerman (New York: NYU Press, 2015), 4.

[2] Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2012), 29.

[3] Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, 301-307.

Postmodern Eighties: Blurred Lines of Good and Evil

Crime is the common denominator between the 1987 film Wall Street and the 1986 comic book The Dark Knight Returns, both of which could be considered postmodern morality plays. Traditional and modern morality plays, such a Shakespeare’s Macbeth and C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia respectively, are very simplistic in portraying the battle between good and evil. The postmodern morality play is clouded by the “dissolution of distinctions” that characterizes postmodernism. Postmodernism begins flourishing in the 1980s leading to distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong being blurred during the decade. Questions of right and wrong or, more simply, morality led to an increase in crime and debates on ways to handle these changes in society. To combat the blurring lines between good and evil that challenged morality, a new type of common-man hero emerged also suffering from the hazy distinctions between good and evil. Superhero comics were also remade in the 1980s to address the good and evil blurred lines with the hero often modeled after President Reagan, whose conservative approach to these social issues often made him appear to be a sort of renegade or vigilante.

a new type of common-man hero emerged also suffering from the hazy distinctions between good and evil

Wall Street director Oliver Stone’s directly stated his belief that the “the lines between right and wrong [are] indistinct and tenuous,” which was becoming a common realization among media writers and producers in the 1980s.[1] The blurred lines between right and wrong, good and evil are clearly seen in Bud Fox’s character development as well as in the nature of the many other Wall Street men. In the original script, Stone had Hal Holbrook, a supposed good guy character, “trading on an inside tip he received from Bud” to depict the haziness of morality in the 1980s.[2] Even though Bud is the film’s protagonist, his choices to follow in Gekko’s financial deviance exemplify the blurred line between good and bad. Bud does not initially see Gekko’s illegal financial practices as evil in part due to Gekko’s defense of his practices. Bud is blinded by Gekko’s logic from seeing the fine line between good and evil making him unaware of his morals decaying as he becomes successful in the stock market. Bud becomes aware of his moral degradation when his job and Gekko threaten to destroy his father’s company. Bud becomes a type of hero only when he is made aware that he has become more evil than good. His choice to abandon his successful life to save his father is a choice to become a vigilante of sorts fighting the immoral financial practices of Gordon Gekko.

In Wall Street, Gekko does not initially appear to be villainous, primarily because we experience the film through Bud, who idolizes of the Wall Street tycoon. Stone suggests powerful and manipulative people like Gekko have an ability to redefine the lines between right and wrong into extinction.[3] Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech truly depicts just how easily blurred the lines between good and evil were in the 1980s. Gekko even says, “Greed is right” and persuades his audience that this is true by claiming, “Greed works… Greed for life, money, love, knowledge…will save the USA.” Yet this distorted view of greed and greed itself are the very things that ultimately destroy Gekko with much thanks to Bud’s heroic sacrifice of his career and love for his family. 

While confused morality and the resulting crime is a main feature in these 1980s texts, fear is a major characteristic of the overall societal spirit in the 1980s. The threats of nuclear war and devastation due to the Cold War and the threats of rising crime rates and muddled morality corrupting the American dream resurrected superheroes and the comic industry. The comic book industry, dwindling due to an aging customer base, decided to use these new realities of the 1980s as the new backdrop for their existing superheroes to make comics more appealing to an adult audience. By “adding more nihilism, violence, and moral ambiguity to their house styles,” the aging customer base of comics were able to remain “attach[ed] to children’s fiction characters from the ’60s” with its new relevance to life in the 1980s. For example, modern and reinvented superheroes were born in response to the Cold War as a way to address and combat the fears of nuclear war and catastrophe characterizing the 1980s. Fear of a nuclear attack is seen clearly in The Dark Knight Returns before and after the nuclear event the sends Gotham into mayhem. Batman’s success in quelling the crime and chaos demonstrates the ability of a non-police vigilante to fix and take care of his city or country, a nod toward the major political figure of the 1980s being Ronald Reagan.

Comic writer and artist Frank Miller reinvented the Batman in the mid-late 1980s to be loosely modeled after then-president Ronald Reagan, making Reaganism into vigilantism. President Reagan was perceived by liberals and conservatives alike to be a type of renegade or vigilante against fear and crime. While most liberals would have defined Reagan as an “uncivilized vigilante,” conservatives, like Miller, viewed Reagan as the hero America needed. Miller and other pop culture producers essentially revealed “how Reaganism emphasized a system of law and order based on politics as opposed to a system of justice based on morality” by employing these methods in their writing.[4] Throughout The Dark Knight Returns the media, government, and society fight to determine whether Batman’s vigilante acts are criminal, because his actions are technically criminal despite his targets also being criminals, or just, because he is basically a rogue police officer getting rid of Gotham’s criminals.

Reaganism and the conservatism of the 1980s are just as inescapable in Stone’s Wall Street as they are in Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. The conservative approach to the crime and moral ambiguity of the 1980s also has an emphasis on family values. The emphasis on family values is seen in Wall Street when Bud realizes that a family “represented by a strong father figure [is] the rock that one can always rely on” in the morally blurred postmodern society.[5]

Being mislead by Gekko’s own sense of morality, or lack thereof, Bud Fox’s character is the perfect propaganda for conservatives who wish to spread the belief that ambiguous morality leads to criminal activity. Bud becomes the common-man hero who commits a simple act of vigilantism to save his father’s job and, in turn, his own morality. Everyday vigilantism rescuing the morals of a single man as in Bud’s case and police vigilantism rescuing a city from rampant crime caused by lacking distinction between right and wrong as in Batman’s case, vigilantism and morality are important factors in understanding the relationship between heroism and postmodernism in the 1980s. Batman, like Reagan being a sort of moral police, was the hero America needed to manage postmodernist growth more than the hero Gotham deserved.

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[1] John Stone, “Evil in the Early Cinema of Oliver Stone: Platoon and Wall Street as Modern Morality Plays,” Journal of Popular Film & Television 28 no. 2 (2000): 83.

[2] Ibid., 82

[3] Ibid., 84.

[4] Mike Dubose, “Holding Out for a Hero: Reaganism, Comic Book Vigilantes, and Captain America,” Journal of Popular Culture 40 no. 6 (2007), 918.

[5] Elena Oliete, “Images of Love and Money in Hollywood Cinema: Changing Patterns in the Last Decade,” International Journal of the Image 2 no. 2 (2012), 114.

On Rape, Consent, and Women’s Sexual Liberation

Last week I attended a panel on sexual assault sponsored by Louisiana Tech’s chapter of AAUW. In light of recent discussions on feminism and women’s liberation in my History 467 class, I found myself wondering what rape statistics might look like before and after the sexual revolution or each wave of feminism.

I expected to find an increase in sexual assault during/after women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. I am struggling to find these statistics. I should have expected this. So few rapes are reported now we can only get a vague idea of estimates. I found no records from the early 20th century. The charts and statistics I found only dated as far back as the mid-1960s, which was not very helpful since I needed information before and after the 60s in particular. (If you happen to find any such information, please let me know!)

So I considered another problem. Consent was an issue discussed. The people speaking on the panel were imperative about being extremely clear in agreeing or refusing to have sex with someone.  “Yes means yes” should not be an unfamiliar phrase on college campuses. The “Yes Means Yes” campaign has been promoting awareness of sexual assault and consent issues and advocating for legislature to be written to define sexual consent. The campaign has been growing and last year California was the first state to enact a “yes means yes” law.

But what are we really being taught about consent? Media of all types seem to be counteracting the message of “Yes Means Yes.” The one most obvious cases to me is in the first trailer to the film Pitch Perfect 2. In this trailer our favorite comic character, Fat Amy, verbally refuses to have sex with Bumper but winks at him after saying “no.” Her wink confuses Bumper and he is not sure if she really means no since her wink would seem to imply “yes.” This scene is at the 2:10 mark.

Generation Gap, Apathy, and Life in the 1970s

The biggest problem in understanding American experience in the 1970s is that there is no real overarching theme, according to some scholars. Anticlimactic is the best way to describe the decade. Irving Howe explains that memories of the Seventies “crumble in one’s hand, nothing keeps its shape,” which he claims ultimately proves, “the decade itself lacks a distinctive historical flavor.”[1] When analyzing film and literature from and about the 1970s, it appears small themes of the decade ultimately create an overarching theme, particularly the relationship between identity crises or lacking sense of purpose in average Americans and the widening generation gap feeding such crises.

The strenuous relationship between parents and grown children in John Updike’s novel Rabbit is Rich and Mike Nichols’ film The Graduate makes it appear the generation gap between parents and young adult or teenaged children is more prominent in the late 1960s-late 1970s than in previous decades. When The Graduate was released, film critics praised it for actively pointing out the generation gap in the late 1960s. Mike Nichols, director of the film, did not believe that the film is about the generation gap, however the unintentional theme points to the inescapability of the political and social upheaval of the 1970s.[2] It seems the gap was made more prominent by the political and social unrest, the same environment in which Nichols and Updike were writing.

The expansion of the generation gap came from middle-aged men of the Seventies struggling to grasp and understand the new ways of life of their children and America’s youth and vice versa. Teens and young adults in the 1970s struggled to understand their parents, whose values were formed in a more conservative America during the 1930s-50s. Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate and Nelson Angstrom in Rabbit is Rich are the teen and young adult representatives for the strenuous relationship and misunderstanding between parents and children in the 70s. The Graduate focuses more on the grown child’s situation and perspective with Benjamin struggling to quickly decide, at his parents’ wishes, what to do with his life. Rabbit is Rich focuses primarily on the average, middle class white man whose financial situation did not deteriorate in the oil and economic crises of the 1970s. Middle-aged angst was the common man’s problem, like Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, with issues such as dealing with a college dropout son, containing envy of a friend’s young wife, a dwindling sex drive, and realizing death is imminent.[3] Rabbit’s expression of his frustrations varies from angry to apathetic about these issues in his life. The particular issues causing their angst were caused by the extreme societal, political, and economic changes in American society occurring primarily in the 1960s. The Civil Rights, women’s, and gay movements in the 1960s seem to have produced both terror and impotence among average, middle class white men like Rabbit and perhaps even Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate that ultimately causes identity crisis and their apathy. The social movements that began in the 1960s challenged the social and political power of the middle class white man, which was the source of their collective identity.

“Beginning with the shot of Benjamin viewed through his boyhood aquarium, we have the feeling of someone cut off, suffocating.” -Sam Kashner, “Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of the Graduate”

The identity crisis resulting from the challenge to the average man’s power is really men suddenly lacking sense of purpose, which appears to be one thing both generations have in common despite the gap. Both Braddock and Rabbit are caught in an interrupted transition stage in their respective stories that leaves them lacking purpose. Braddock is transitioning, or failing to transition, from college to the working world where he has no real goals or intentions to make goals, something his parents do not understand. Perhaps Braddock can’t figure out his role in society and chooses to drown his uncertainty with sex and swimming. Rabbit is transitioning into a middle-aged empty nester when Nelson, his son, moves back into the Angstrom home. Being interrupted in this transition creates an atmosphere of frustration as he tries to figure out his new purpose in his household and his life. It seems it because Rabbit is secure financially during the economic and oil crises of the 1970s that he finds life to be bland. Because he does not have to worry about his financial future like most people in his community, Rabbit is bored and becomes frustrated with his purposeless position and middle age angst. His lack of purpose makes life bland for Rabbit, which then produces existential crisis. Rabbit’s ramblings about how the individual blades of grass will have served no purpose when they die is his reflection of his own life.

The changes in women’s roles in the household and in society also particularly challenge Braddock and Rabbit. The sexual relationship between Braddock and Mrs. Robinson is essentially one of predator and prey with Mrs. Robinson being the new sexual predator, a result from the women’s and sexual movements in the 1960s caused by and expanding the generation gap. With women changing roles in the household and society, men’s power was even more threatened. Braddock’s difficulty in deciding his future could be caused by the sexual power of Mrs. Robinson threatening his masculine power. Melanie, Nelson’s platonic friend in Rabbit is Rich, mystifies Rabbit because she is a new type of American girl, with which Rabbit is unfamiliar. Women are a source of impotence and obsession for Rabbit. It seems his wife’s newfound power is a turn-off for Rabbit and thus causes his impotence. Rabbit still obsesses over women but is more concerned with mystery. Melanie’s general mystique and the girl he believes to be his illegitimate daughter become Rabbit’s obsessions likely as a result of his impotence and otherwise bland life.

Both The Graduate and Rabbit is Rich initially seem dry and purposeless, however their apparent lack of purpose reflects and represents the sentiments of Braddock, Rabbit, and all average, middle-class men and women in the 1970s. The authors of these literature pieces have not only written their characters to have the lackadaisical spirit of the 1970s but also have styled their writing with that same seemingly pointless spirit as if to force readers and viewers to experience the typical aimlessness of the decade. The Graduate, being released at the beginning of the complex decade, shows viewers the common middle-class sentiment in 1967-1979 as it was happening. Because it was written after the time period discussed, Rabbit is Rich more accurately describes an average man’s typical memory of the 1970s. Rabbit could be viewed as Updike’s incarnation of himself as a fictional character considering the framework of Rabbit’s life is centered around the same geographical location as Updike’s own home and that Updike’s fame flourished from his emphasis on the passions and concerns of average Americans. Most importantly, Updike continued to view those years as bleak and senseless when writing the novel though it was two years distanced from the difficulties of the decade.

Modern viewers can still recognize the significance of the generation gap and lacking sense of purpose in the 1970s. Rabbit’s character in particular, with his frustrations about his son and his own purpose in life, is reminiscent of Red Foreman from That 70’s Show. Though it is a sitcom television series and should not be readily perceived as truth, That 70’s Show does provide the 1998-2006 general society’s perception of life in the 1970s. Remarkably, That 70’s Show, The Graduate, and Rabbit is Rich do not differ greatly in their interpretations of life in the 1970s despite their extremely varied publication dates. Their continuity suggests that the decade was indeed characterized by an apathetic view toward life caused by the changing roles of women and the changing parent-child relationship deepening the generation gap.

[1] George Packer, “The Decade Nobody Knows,” The New York Times, (10 June 2001): https://www.nytimes.com/books/01/06/10/reviews/010610.10packert.html.

[2] Sam Kashner, “Here’s to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate,” Vanity Fair News, (March 2008): http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/03/graduate200803.

[3] Sally Robinson, “Unyoung, Unpoor, Unblack: John Updike and the Construction of Middle America Masculinity,” Modern Fiction Studies vol. 44 no. 2 (1998): 351.

A Century Long “Sexual Revolution”

Beth Bailey’s article “Sexual Revolution(s)” featured in A History of Our Time makes an intriguing argument that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was not a revolution at all but rather an evolution of sexual understanding and practice over many decades. Bailey mentions that the sexualization of American culture “pick[ed] up speed in the 1920s, the 1940s, and the 1960s” as if sexualizing American culture had been a slow process beginning much earlier than the 1960s, particularly with using sex in the marketplace. “Sex sells” is still a phrase and practice used by marketing professionals today. It worked throughout the 20^th century just as it continues to work in the 21^st. According to Bailey, selling sex through marketing gradually wore down the traditional understanding of sex (so slowly that red flags were not raised among most Americans until the 1960s).

Proof of sexual evolution: It is 2015…and society is still concerned about the sexual practices of the youth, particularly the “virtue” of young women

Bailey even claims it was the grandparents and parents of the sixties generation that “chipped away the system of sexual controls” or the socially acceptable sexual practices of unmarried youth. The so-called “sexual revolution” in the sixties could not be a revolution then if the previous generations were participating in the same sexual activities. The public rejection of fundamental or traditional sexual morality is the true controversial issue of the sexual evolution occurring in the 1960s.

Proof of sexual evolution over revolution: It is 2015, nearly a century from the first period of rapid sexualization of America according to Bailey, and society is still concerned about the sexual practices of the youth, particularly the “virtue” of young women. “Easy” or “loose” women are still judged as sluts, whores, and any other of the many terms for such women. In 2015 it isn’t that you should remain a virgin until marriage, unless you are in certain religious circles, but more that you shouldn’t have sex with every single person you are attracted to. There’s a lot of emphasis on your “number” lately. The 2011 film What’s Your Number? is not about getting someone’s phone number but about the number of sexual partners you have had. BuzzFeed also did a recent study of sorts (I mean it’s not like BuzzFeed is a reputable source of academic research) about this too. They asked several couples to share their “numbers” with their now-monogamous respective partners. A double standard can be seen with both of these films. Both films address and challenge the popular idea that it is more acceptable for men to have had 20+ sexual partners while a woman whose number is even close to 20 is considered to have loose morals (see What’s Your Number?).

It seems the current sexual movement has a goal of destroying of the whorish stigma of women with high “numbers.” Both videos imply this is the goal of the ongoing sexual movement and proves the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s is truly sexual evolution in society. BuzzFeed’s couples remark that they “don’t care about the number.” The insignificance of number is essentially the lesson learned in BuzzFeed’s study and in What’s Your Number? Watch BuzzFeed’s video for yourself.

The trailer for What’s Your Number?: 

Soldier Without a Cause? Troubles in Understanding the Vietnam War

When comparing any Vietnam War stories, differing perspectives about the Vietnam War are easily found due to Hollywood’s involvement in the production of the tale and the problem of relative truth. Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket and Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried both address, how ever so slightly, Hollywood’s perspective of the war versus soldiers’ perspective of the war. However, it cannot be denied that, being a Hollywood production, Full Metal Jacket still maintains some false elements of war. By using O’Brien’s arguments about relative truth in wartime experience found throughout The Things They Carried, it could be suggested that Full Metal Jacket is more accurate than many other film portrayals of the Vietnam War. O’Brien particularly challenges the Hollywood perspective of the war in his novel.

O’Brien implies that Hollywood films glamorize war in his story about Kiowa witnessing Lavender’s death, which depicts the misconceptions the young soldiers had about war and death. Kiowa’s description of Lavender’s death as “like watching a rock fall…just boom, then down – not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins” is one way that O’Brien shows death in the Vietnam War being far from glamorous.[1] The lack of emotional response to death also shows a lack of glamor. By specifically referencing Kiowa’s inability to feel sad or angry and his desire to continue talking about the plainness of Lavender’s death, O’Brien is effectively describing genuine traumatic experience. When considering Hollywood’s idea of war as seen in film, rarely is there accurate portrayals of traumatic experience and trauma’s lasting effects.

However, Full Metal Jacket may be an exception in Hollywood by showing the harsh realities of being drafted and enduring basic military training even before addressing the experience in Vietnam. In the film, Kubrick implies that being drafted and going through basic training can be a traumatic experience for some young men. While most of the recruits in the film do not begin to present effects of trauma experience until later in the film when they are on the front lines of the war, Private Pyle undergoes a clearly traumatic experience in basic training. The extra harsh treatment from Sargent Hartman and being beaten repeatedly by his fellow recruits is a traumatic experience for Pyle and effectively changed him, much the same as the traumas other soldiers experienced while in Vietnam.

The postmodern notion of relative truth is important to consider when trying to comprehend the Vietnam War. It may be impossible to find absolute truths in the war. Individual experiences provide truths relative to a particular person’s experience. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien, a Vietnam veteran, writes individuals’ tales to explain the experience of American soldiers in Vietnam. For anyone having previously read or heard tales from Vietnam veterans, these stories may not seem foreign. O’Brien’s personal approach to the stories and frequent first-person narrative make it easy for readers to experience Vietnam alongside the novel’s characters. The individualistic nature of each tale raises a question about the existence of a collective experience among American soldiers. O’Brien’s makes an important point in the novel that addresses and explains a lack of collective experience or narrative stating that “in any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.”[2] Another student studying the Vietnam War, Michael Clarke explains this passage claiming that “O’Brien emphasizes the way individual consciousness…shapes events and the memories of events and helps us define what we come to regard as truth.”[3] Because the way each soldier perceived and mentally processed the experience so often differ, it is near impossible to determine a single collective narrative that would be unequivocal truth about the Vietnam War even though many Vietnam veterans have similar experiences. The multiple, contradictory truths could make understanding the American experience in Vietnam difficult, but more likely these multiple truths exemplify the conflicted and convoluted nature of the war.

The first half of Full Metal Jacket initially appears to be a collective experience for the Marine recruits in basic military training. Director Kubrick seems to strengthen the idea of collectivity with scenes focused on all recruits marching in formation and pairs of recruits running the obstacle courses in unison.[4] However, even in an environment forcing conformity each individual has a different experience. With Private Pyle’s psychotic break resulting in his own death and the death of his commanding officer, Sargent Hartman, we can clearly see that every man handled the brutality of basic training differently.

Both texts discuss the problems of sending boys into war instead of men. War certainly turns a boy into a man, but that does not mean it is the best method. In being drafted, boys are not only subject to traditional basic military training but also training meant to rapidly prepare recruits for war. Kubrick addresses the problem of taking boys with no notion or desire for war and quickly turning them into killers. Private Pyle’s assimilation into the wartime mindset of the Marine Corps is too rapid for him to reconcile war with his own individuality, which effectively makes him an unstable and flawed Marine. Perhaps given enough time and resources or proper motivation Pyle might have found a way to serve that complimented his individuality, such as choosing food service specialist as his preferred job rather than infantry. Kubrick later tells us it is “the sorry consequences of extreme military obsession and blindness” that transformed Pyle from innocent and naive boy into murderer.[5] The way Kubrick frames Pyle’s transformation seems to question both the ideology of the Marine Corps and the adequacy of basic military training for those drafted during the Vietnam War. Kubrick’s depiction of their training shows better success in turning boys into killers rather than traditional soldiers. O’Brien also gives us the impression that many soldiers in Vietnam were just boys given guns without understanding the purpose of the war or the ready responsibility of a well-trained traditional soldier.

Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket and O’Brien’s self-named character in The Things They Carried also struggled with ideas of war. The difference these characters have from Private Pyle is only that they possessed the ability to make sense of the Marine Corps teachings. Both Private Joker and O’Brien initially present themselves as pacifists, with Joker choosing journalism over direct combat and O’Brien refusing to look at dead bodies or participate in the hand-shaking ritual. But, just as trauma changed Private Pyle into a murderer in training, the traumatic experiences in the Vietnam War altered Joker and O’Brien. Through Private Falsetto Kubrick provides an explanation for this, “given enough time, training and ideological conditioning, everyone contains the potential for extreme violence, no matter how unsuited or inept.”[6]

Both Kubrick and O’Brien use a single person narrative to explain how young, drafted soldiers experienced the Vietnam War. While an individual’s experience is more likely to be relatable for readers and viewers, they likely took this individualized approach because of the lack of an existing collective experience among all Vietnam veterans. From the lack of collective experience, the most we can determine is that the Vietnam War was complex and misunderstood by the soldiers fighting it. With individual experiences told by veterans and sympathizing filmmakers, like Tim O’Brien and Stanley Kubrick respectively, we can understand why the war was misunderstood and often scorned by soldiers and citizens.

[1] Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 6.
[2] Ibid, 78.
[3] Michael Tavel Clarke. “’I Feel Close to Myself’: Solipsism and US Imperialism in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.” College Literature 40, no. 2 (2013), 133.
[4] Perel, Zivah. “Pyle and Joker’s Dual Narratives: Individuality and Group Identity in Stanley Kubrick’s Marine Corps.” Literature Film Quarterly 36, no. 3 (2008), 224.
[5] Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket, film, performed by Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, (Distributed by Warner Home Video, 1987).
[6] Ibid.

Two Classes, One Subject / Early Thoughts

We are nearing the end of the first full week of the quarter. I’m currently reading David Von Drehle’s Triangle: The Fire that Changed America for History 465 (Early 20th century America). Apart from the prologue, there’s been no real mention of the infamous fire at the Triangle Waist Company in 1911 New York City until I had finished chapter four. It seems much more focused on the labor movement, but the first thing I really noticed in the book was the significant amount of feminist activities in the NYC at the time. So far, it appears to me that first-wave feminism fanned the flames of the labor movement in the early 20th century. I suppose it’s not necessarily a surprising fact, but I did find it interesting in comparison to the material read in History 467 (Vietnam, Watergate, and after…or just 1960s-80s). For Hist 467 I read two reviews/articles on Daniel Rodgers’ Age of Fracture and found feminism addressed in conjunction with another social movement, this time second-wave feminism and the Civil Rights movement. The book is not all about feminism. From my interpretation, Age of Fracture focuses on the current splintered nature of society and the blurriness of power, individuality, etc. that followed as a result of significant changes in politics and economics affecting society and vice versa from the 1960s or 70s to present day. But I considered the real focus of the book and attempted to apply some of the ideas.

The macroeconomics found earlier in the 20th century, being focused more on the welfare of the population, seem to have been a catalyst for the initial ideas spurning first-wave feminism (of which my basic interpretation is that women were not legally represented well enough to meet their needs as a significant portion of the population). The focal shift from macro to micro, or all of society to the individual (in both economics and politics) makes the difference between first-wave and second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism addressed more personal issues concerning social equality, such as sexuality, reproductive rights, and treatment at the workplace. Like first-wave feminism encouraging the labor movement, second-wave feminism also appears to have encouraged or emboldened the Civil Rights movement as the two movements often had similar equality goals whether it be gender or racially based.

It may just be a coincidence that my assigned readings in both classes involved the feminism and I suspect it is unlikely to be a true theme in either class. However, with the correlation between the feminist movements and other major social movements, feminism easily appears to be a defining feature of the 20th century. But my question from these early readings: What makes feminism so powerful?