Land of Oz

Fyne | Land of Oz Robert Fyne Kean College Land of Oz Eben J. Muse. The Land ofNam: The Vietnam War in American Film. Scarecrow Press, 1995. (287 pages.) During the Second World War, the Hollywood motion picture industry—encouraged by FDR's total victory edictworked incessandy to produce more than four hundred screenplays that, in one way or another, glorified the achievements of the American fighting man while vilifying all members of the Axis pact. These propaganda films fostered Home Front morale and stood as tangible reminders that Mom, apple pie, John Wayne, and the Brooklyn Dodgers would emerge victorious from this global conflict. In many ways, during this pretelevision era, these photoplayscombined with weekly newsreels and many documentariesbecame the most effective medium, right until V-J Day, for disseminating war information. But peace was short lived. By 1950 American troops were fighting on another faraway battlefield. Dubbed a "police action" by congressional legislators, the Korean War again mobilized the nation. Men were drafted into the Army, munitions factories worked overtime, and Hollywood —cited often for its patriotism—cranked up its lens, churning out dozens of titles showing the American side blasting its communist foes. For the most part, these pictures were copycat versions ofWorld War II B-potboilers. After hostilities ended in 1953, Hollywood still found audiences interested in watching their favorite heroes rout godless Reds: former clergyman Rock Hudson, led many orphans to safety, raisin-eating Gregory Peck, blasted Chinese volunteers off a strategic hill, William Holden bombed an important bridge, and Sidney Poitier donated blood to a white racist, while in the background, Old Glory, always steadfast, waved unrelentingly. Vietnam, however, turned into a differentmatter. Hollywood became noticeably mute. What happened? Why did the motion picture industry—no stranger to producing wartime combat films—eschew this confrontation? How did the American public come to terms widi awar diatpolarized so many segments ofsociety? Why did major directors,years later, tackle this thorny political subjecthead-on producing scripts that highlighted military incompetence, fragging, and opportunism ? These questions, and others, are analyzed by EbenJ. Muse in 7Ie Land ofNam: The Vietnam War in American Film, an in-depth look at this SoutheastAsian conflict. In 1948—the year of the Berlin Airlift—Hollywood produced its first motion picture about Vietnam's colonial war. While Rogue's Regiment and Saigon used Indochina as backdrop, highlighting its exotic locales, later titles—A Yank in Indo-China (1952), Jump into Hell (1955), and Five Gates to Hell (1959), for example—depicted the heroic French nationals fighting Chinese marauders (the communist menace) with the American forces surreptitiously serving as mercenaries . These films, as Muse explains, described the conflict as a war for hearts and minds emphasizing one point: as an ideology, communism must be eradicated. In a few years, however, these themes became dated. By 1968, Vietnam had become America's problem. Labeled the first television war, every evening stateside audiences watched the play-by-play news, with accompanying maps, hearing Walter Cronkite's famous "that's the way it was" coda while staring, in disbelief at the high school yearbook pictures of dead American soldiers. As fatalities increased , the White House clearly lost public support for this war. Routinely, college campuses erupted and many cities witnessed enraged undergraduates demonstrating against U.S. involvement, chanting their rallying slogan, "Hell no, we won't go!" With such a volatile mood, what could Hollywood possibly do? Almost as a desperate measure—and with the full support of the Department of Defense—Warner Bros, played its trump card hoping, that widi John Wayne in the starring role, the patriotic fervor found in dozens ofWorld War II propaganda photoplays would prevail. As Muse notes, The Green Berets barely survived its critics. So unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false; these were the words of one of the total of three New York Times writers assigned to attack the film. That was it. As long as the fighting raged, Hollywood would not produce another Vietnam combat film. Instead , either by implication or analogy, by subtlety or innuendo, America's motion pictures took potshots at its involvement in this divided nation. As it now stood, the combat film became anathema. In...