Vietnam War Film: A Genre of Its Own

The Vietnam War seemed to take all aspects of the war film and make America rethink how war films were made. Before, war films tended to be about the heroics of war, glamorizing aspects for entertainment purposes, and giving the overall feel of the film a positive outlook on war. But during the Vietnam War, the style of war films was drastically changed from the happy heroics, to tragic realism. Some reasoning to this is directly related to the war itself. America’s involvement was a key factor in why Vietnam films were made the way they were. Because of this, both anti-war films and pro-war films were created about the war. Ever since the Vietnam War, films have begun to grow away from portraying wars as heroic, adventurous tales, to now more realistic and somewhat lacking the glam and romanticism in wars. Less gloss, fewer heroes, and more horror, death, and guts.

             Themes and motifs are present throughout every genre, and this idea is extremely evident in the war film. There are certain images and meanings that take place in multiple or all films in a specific genre. Of course guns, soldiers, ruined buildings, smoke, and flames make up instant imagery of a war film. These things all come to mind when one thinks of what is seen in a war film, specifically the warzone. But sub-genres of war films also house their own themes and motifs. The Vietnam War film has many themes that are present in films specific to that genre. A commonality between Vietnam films is the portrayal of the Vietnamese people. In Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, the Vietnamese in the film are hardly characters at all. In the film they are prostitutes, a thieves, and Guerilla fighters. The categorization of the Vietnamese as a group of thieves and prostitutes seems to be what Kubrick accomplishes in his film by his depth of character formation. With the lack of development of the Vietnamese, we can connect with the soldiers who never really asked questions before they shot.  Mike Felker of Jump Cut connects the two by telling us that, “…soldiers tragically blurred Vietnamese civilians and ‘the enemy.’” The scene in Full Metal Jacket that I have included in this post, expresses this point is when the main character, Joker, is in a helicopter and a soldier mounted on the turret shoots everything in sight. He says, “Anyone who runs is a V.C. [Viet Cong], anyone who stands still is a well disciplined V.C.” and in response to shooting women and children, he says, “you just don’t lead ‘em so much.” 

In multiple films of this genre, the idea of the American soldier growing in masculinity, both physically and emotionally, is present almost undoubtedly. A perfect example of this is evident in Oliver Stone’s Platoon, when Charlie Sheen’s character ‘Taylor’ changes throughout the film. “The narrative traces Taylor's metamorphosis from a naive, callow volunteer into a brutal, yet seemingly still "honorable," soldier with some shreds of his sanity and humanity intact,” (Felker). And just as this character construction and development occurs in Platoon, it occurs throughout Kubrick’s film. Following soldiers from boot camp to battle zone is the whole idea of Full Metal Jacket. Along with the viewing of a soldier’s transformation, we see the toughness and issues that the soldiers deal with and how it affects them. Commonly, characters in these films have and over-the-top, ‘macho-man,’ side to them, along with an emotional, childish side to them.  There also seems to be a lack of masculinity that brings the characters down. Full Metal Jacket shows this masculinity declining when the squad encounters an enemy sniper that takes out many members the squad. When the sniper is found, they see that it was a female sniper cutting down their squad mates. “…What makes the sniper’s sex so shocking to the men who find her; they never imagined the sniper, the person with the most power/masculinity in this situation, as being female,” (Boyle 154).

Through images of everyday soldiers becoming men, and the mystery of the Vietnamese people, Vietnam War films produce a genre of their own apart for the war film. The films get Americans to think about what happened and why it happened by connecting viewers to the war, and to the soldiers themselves. The guts and glory seen in many war films is somewhat lost in this genre, and filmmakers strive for a realistic portrayal of the events occurring in Southeast Asia.

Works Cited

Boyle, B.M (2011). “Rescuing Masculinity: Captivity, Rescue and Gender in American War Narratives.” Journal of American Culture Vol. 34 issue 2. Pp 149-160. Retrieved from EBSCO web Database 04 Oct. 2011

Felker, M. (1988). “Platoon. Full Metal Jacket. Back to Vietnam.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. From Jump Cut, no. 33, Feb. 1988 pp. 28-30. Retrieved from Web 03 Oct. 2011. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC33folder/platoon-FmetJacket.html