Hollywood Vietnam War

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Tragedy is often immortalized in film. War is one of the greatest tragedies a generation can face, and thus is a popular genre in the theaters. However, more often than not, Hollywood tries to glorify the struggles and the sacrifices these soldiers made for their country. It is rare where an individual sees a war film that demonizes American soldiers. Even looking back, history remembers fondly all of the U.S. conflicts, except for one, the Vietnam War. This war held its shares of horror, yet society, and in particular, Hollywood has never viewed it in a favorable light.
The era of Vietnam will always be mired down in controversy of what actually occurred, in the rainy jungles of Vietnam during the war. Hollywood and its portrayal of the war …show more content…

The first event that occurred that forever changed the perception of American soldiers was the massacre at My Lai in the larger city of My Son. On the 16th of March, 1968, Charlie Company, 11th Brigade entered the hamlet of My Lai, under the command of Lieutenant William Calley. Their mission? To search and destroy the Viet Cong rumored to be in the area of Pinkville, the codename for the dense population of Viet Cong. Tensions were high among Calley’s men. They had been on patrol for two months and had suffered severe casualties. Many of the men who participated even stated that they had wanted to take revenge. Before takeoff, the commanding officers told the troops that everyone in the village was VC, or a VC sympathizer. Civilians had left the area and there were no innocent people. The soldiers truly believed they were about to attack the enemy. As they approached the quiet village Calley gave the order to begin shooting at anything that moved. Civilians, accustomed to friendly Americans visiting exited their homes to see the commotion and were shot down. The people, elderly men and women, mothers with young children, were murdered trying to run, praying for help, or trying to hide. Some women were gang-raped and mutilated. Lt. Calley then ordered all of the villagers to be brought to a ditch on the side of town. He ordered one soldier to start firing, and when the soldier refused to kill …show more content…

This shocking film tells the story of a fictional character named Max Ericsson’s flashback to Vietnam. He remembers the event that changed his life forever. After a patrol, four of his squad members decide to kidnap a young Vietnamese woman and keep her as their sex slave. The four men repeatedly beat and rape her as Ericsson tries to protest. He himself is threatened and beaten when he tries to intervene. Eventually, during a fire fight the young woman is stabbed and shot by the soldiers who had willingly participated. Filled with guilt and horror that he couldn’t do more, Ericsson then sets out to find some sort of justice for the girl. He then has several assassination attempts against him yet he still perseveres. He does not stop until all four soldiers are court-martialed. Unfortunately this film was based on an actual situation in Vietnam named Incident of Hill 192. The young woman was named Phan Thi Mao and she was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by four individuals of a squadron. Ericsson in real life was a man named Private Robert M. Storeby. In history, he fought until he got the other members of unit charged for their crimes like the movie portrays. When this film came to theaters, the public was outraged and horrified. Many couldn’t understand how

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