0:14 The Good ARVN:
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0:16 Operation Dumbo Drop (1995)
1:02 We Were Soldiers (2002)
2:24 The Green Berets (1968)
2:58 The Evil ARVN
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3:00 Go Tell the Spartans (1978)
9:14 Heaven and Earth (1993)
10:35 Full Metal Jacket (1987)
11:17 Apocalypse Now (1979)
12:24 Indifferent ARVN:
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12:26 Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
13:52 The Deer Hunter (1978)
Other Hollywood film/TV series feat ARVN not shown:
A Bright Shining Lie (1998)
Tour of Duty (TV Series 1987-1990)
Rules of Engagement (2000)
The Iron Triangle (1989)
When I finished making Vietnam Films from the South Vietnamese Perspective, I thought about if Hollywood portrayed it. They are usually portrayed as selling out, corrupt, cowardly, or hateful (totally not something Americans were known for in the war).
Ironically unified Vietnamese movies portrayed the ARVN a little more humanely, even if they were the villains. Some were former directors during the Republic Era.
The portrayal of Vietnamese in popular American cinema continues to be an extension of Hollywood perversion and assumption of a conflict only hastily taught and summarized through an American experience instead of the Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong, Cambodian, Thai, Chinese, or Soviet perspective.
Ironically for a war named after Vietnam, I don't see a lot of Vietnamese be the focus of the story.
Probably the most honest/respectful portrayals of the ARVN I have seen were in The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, while the worst are Go Tell the Spartans, Full Metal Jacket and Heaven and Earth.
ARVN Ranger with long hair selling prostitute to US soldier rapists and raping Vietnamese women and doing the classic Asian male dunce Hollywood trope.
I put the John Greene comment in the intro because it perfectly encapsulates the assumption that the rest of the world is known for, that the War was the classic Star Wars style story of the entirety of Vietnamese race fighting against Americans, and not a Vietnam that believes in a Communist type system that was never practiced before vs a Vietnam backed by system seemingly rooted in "colonial" White history.
No one ever wants to portray the war as two Vietnams being a victim of an ideological war between two superpowers that make it an inescapable conflict that demands a side.
No one ever wants to portray a war that inherently rooted in French colonial mismanagement that allowed countries such as Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam to become a battleground of atrocity.
No one ever wants to admit that Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand are undeniably intertwined in the Vietnamese conflict and that this "limited war" was a lot more international and far reaching than people teach it.
• Re-establishing the Ho...
23 фев 2022
