December 02, 2009.

A Costly lesson to be learned....!.

Rating: 5
I am buying this series not because I condone war but to remind my family and myself that war is sometimes fought out of misjudgement, miscalculation, short-sighted vision, desperation and at other times it is dictated by the circumstances of time when the regional war, such as Vietnam conflict, occurred. We ought to remember the U.S. military and political mentalities of the 1960 when the Vietnam War was at its height and many, many young Americans sacrificed their lives for a country they had not known until they were conscripted to fight. This was a very expensive war in terms of wasted manpower and material resources. At that time, the U.S. thought that if the Communists were not stopped in their tracks, they would advance further into Southeast Asia and eventually the whole region would turned "RED" - the often touted domino theory in which if one state falls the others would soon follow in predictable manner or so it seems....!
However, on hindsight, we all know that the Vietnam Conflict was painful, perhaps overreacted on the part of the U.S. presidents and their advisors as well as the military. This current TV series ought to teach young people that war, be it any form, any fashion, any shade, should be OUTLAWED if this planet of ours which we dwell in peace and understand each other in the spirit of brotherhood. I would recommend this TV series to all students of recent history.
I would terminate this write-up with a quote from Sun Tzu, the brilliant Chinese military strategist, who once said in his famous THE ART OF WAR (or Sun Tzu Ping Fa):
"Know your enemy and yourself and you will be victorious in every military encounter, however, if you neither know yourself nor your enemy, you're are bound to lose in every encounter...!"
Cheers & Happy New Year 2009 to everyone here.

December 18, 2008.

Military Industrial Complex Surrealism.

Rating: 4
Mill Creek's VIETNAM: AMERICA'S CONFLICT is one of the strangest things I have ever seen. I say that because of what it simply is: A collection of Department of Defense & US Military made propaganda films intended to sell the war in Vietnam to America's population like MacDonald's sells hamburgers. Many viewers may be downright revolted by the content of these short films, most of which are no more than 30 minutes long. Revolted not by scenes of carnage or suffering -- though rest assured there is plenty of that -- but revolted by the approach used by the narrators to describe the activities depicted. Words like "heroism", "combat effectiveness", "decisive victory" and "honor & duty" are not what most of us associate with the Vietnam War.

And yet that was sort of the deal at the time most of these were made, between 1965 and 1969 or so, before the tide of public opinion had turned against the effort. If you have ever wondered how on earth people could have been surprised that we "lost", here you go. If you were to believe the jingoistic, upbeat, optimistic tone of these short documentary films you'd have expected us to win. Or put it this way: If what is on these DVDs is the only information you have to consider about the Vietnam War, you'd be hard pressed to believe that we actually managed to LOSE.

That's what makes them propaganda. They are meant to convince viewers that not only was the military effort going well, but that by golly some of it might actually be kind of fun, especially scenes of flyboys celebrating with champagne back at the Bien Hoa air base after their squadron's 25th successful bombing raid. Later, they relax at an on-base officer's club while enjoying a song & dance routine by a famous celebrity couple organized by the USO program. We see films of happy Viet Cong defectors undergoing friendly looking interrogations overseen by US advisors, gallant US medics treating the sick & infirmed in native jungle villages, plenty of hearts & minds & skirmishes being won, and lots of heroic shots of American firepower giving their best to one Mr. Victor Charlie. Just with none of the introspection or second guessing popularized by such mainstream entertainments as APOCALYPSE NOW, PLATOON, FULL METAL JACKET, HAMBURGER HILL. THE BOYS IN COMPANY C, 84 CHARLIE MOPIC or GO TELL THE SPARTANS. It looks noble, it looks clean, and gosh darn if some of it doesn't look downright fun.

Is this for real? You have to ask yourself that, and the answer in plain doublespeak is yes. This is really the way that the war was promoted for the first few years before images of the Tet Offensive, Walter Cronkite asking "What the hell is going on here?", and Army colonels describing how they had to destroy villages in order to save them, it's the way the government told things before the war's more infamous events got in the way of all the nation building. Developments like the My Lai Massacre, the release of the Pentagon Papers, accidental B-52 bombings of Cambodian villages, and the backlash against Lyndon Johnson's presidency were yet to happen. And when you get down to brass tacks, the US Military more or less "won" every battle they fought in Vietnam, our soldiers really did serve with honor & distinction, and the South Vietnamese people really were grateful for the assistance we provided. For a while, at any rate.

History has painted a somewhat different picture, however, and these shamelessly agendaized propaganda films are one of the few surviving records of how things went until somebody wrecked all the fun. War is a nasty, vicious, horrible thing, and as Captain Kirk said the only good that can come of it is it's ending. The purpose of it is to break things and kill people and for that matter these films are quite refreshing in depicting our military industrial complex's zeal for doing so ... just without all of the humanist content of the later Hollywood drive to tap into our collective national guilt over the results. It is downright surreal to witness some of these events, especially with the bizarre narration praising things like napalm, defoliants, ruthless intelligence networks, and the gung-ho "can-do" spirit of our men in uniform. There is no apology for the tonnage of bombs, millions of bullets, determination to prevail and lack of remorse for the consequences, both good and bad. And don't think for a minute that the camera shies away from the casualties, they are shown to make a point about the inevitability of loss and teach viewers to be pragmatic about it. To make an omelette you gotta break a few eggs, see.

About the DVD presentations all of the transfers appear to have been struck from the original film stocks, most of which were 16mm and probably screened between attractions at your corner cinema to white middle class male audiences who nodded with approval while lighting up fresh cigarettes from the snack stand. Some come from more degraded sources and for my money they are even more disturbingly surreal for being tattered & worn; evidence that people actually did sit through these at one time. The only real complaint I have is that each individual "chapter" or program can only be played at a time -- there is no continuous play function in the DVD menu, and sadly as can be expected for budget line public domain trash DVD production there is no accompanying text to explain exactly what you are seeing. The sheer magnitude of material far from compensates: 1042 minutes, or roughly 23 hours of footage that contemporary thinking would have you believe never even existed. And to answer in advance a question from those who like me may own a few other collections, there are indeed identical programs as seen on stuff by Brentwood/BCI, St. Clair Vision, Platinum Disc & others. There's just a heck of a lot more of it, and without some of the clumsy editing done by those other companies to make it appear like this was their own work. Mill Creek at least has the balsam to show you exactly what these movies were really about, warts & all.

Is it ethical to think about this as entertainment, though? I have been wondering about that since first discovering these collections and seeing the overwhelmingly negative comments left by people who didn't understand what they'd be getting. I think that's what might bug the majority of those who have left and will continue to leave negative comments, having bought these collections expecting something else. Therefore some criticism aimed at Mill Creek and the other public domain companies who publish DVD compilations of this stuff is in order -- When people read "Vietnam War Documentaries" they think about grim, hard-hitting exposes that examine the human cost of the conflict, preferably on both sides. By comparison this stuff is one-sided, upbeat, lacks any regret, and nearly comes close to celebrating the Hell that is War without even batting an eyelash. It is a profoundly weird thing to witness.

So be forewarned: Unless you have a twisted sense of humor or an appreciation for (or need to learn about) US government produced wartime propaganda, you might want to stick to something by PBS, or even just rent APOCALYPSE NOW, because you won't get any of that liberal mamby-pamby apologist humanizing here. But for anyone with maybe a need to learn about how war is sold to people who couldn't even pronounce the names of the towns (sound familiar?) this stuff is priceless, and evidence of a masterpiece of applied surrealism on a horrifyingly grand scale.

4/5

December 09, 2008.

Dont waste your money..

Rating: 1
Just a bunch of 10 min. clips of 60's propaganda. Some of the chapters didnt play on my DVD for some reason.

December 21, 2008.

No matter how you dress it; crap is still crap.

Rating: 1
One of the principal problems any student faces when conducting research in any field is determining the usefulness of sources. Material seems to pour forth from the United States inundating the historical landscape. Some of it is excellent. Some of it less so. This video is very much in the second camp. As I watched it I imagined a team of spin doctors rearranging documents and shuffling files so that they might present the most positive face on an ugly child. Cut out the patronising commentary and you have useable images- nothing new, just useable. Turn the volume back up and the thing begins to sound like Kissinger's promises.