The Killing Fields of Cambodia - Are they Worth Remembering?

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The Killing Fields of Cambodia - Are they Worth Remembering?

“I know of no parallel to the conditions which have been experienced in Cambodia over the past decade to any other experience I have had. In the case of post-war Europe, there is the vast tragedy of the concentration camps . . . but thank God, the world had an immediate reaction and to this moment, there has been a sensitivity to events which happened forty years ago. But, in the case of Cambodia, for some

extraordinary reason, I am left with the strong impression that the world wants to forget the tragedy in Cambodia – they want to forget it!”

SIR ROBERT JACKSON, deputy Secretary-General, United Nations

January 1983 (qtd. in Schanberg 1984)

“The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.”

(Rousseau, qtd. in Hirsh xiii)

“Pran says he was always most afraid of those Khmer Rouge soldiers who were between 12 and 15 years old, they seemed the most completely and savagely indoctrinated. ‘They took them very young and taught them nothing but discipline. They do not believe any religion or tradition except Khmer Rouge orders. That’s why they killed their own people, even babies, like we might kill a mosquito. I believe they did not have any feelings about human life because they were taught only discipline.’”

(Schanberg 1980, 44)

“If collective memory (usually a code phrase for what is remembered by the dominant civic culture) popular memory (usually referring to ordinary folks) are both abstractions that have to be handled with care, what (if anything) can we assert with assurance? --That we have highly selective memories of what we have been taught about the past. --That history is an essential ingredient in defining national, grou...

... middle of paper ...

...denfeld & Nicolson Limited, 1984.

Schickel, Richard. Rev. of The Killing Fields, dir. Roland Joffe. Time 5 Nov. 1984: 81.

Simon, John. “Film: Automata.” Rev. of The Killing Fields, dir. Roland Joffe. National

Review 28 Dec. 1984: 47-48.

Sterritt, David. Rev. of The Killing Fields, dir. Roland Joffe. Christian Science Monitor 8 Nov. 1984: 27.

Vietnam: A Television History. Dir. Elizabeth Deane. Videocassette. Sony and WGBH Educational Foundation, 1987.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall Page

http://thewall-usa.com/index.html

Vietnam Yesterday and Today

http://servercc.oakton.edu/~wittman/

The Wars of Viet Nam: 1945-1975

http://students.vassar.edu/~vietnam/index.html

Wood, Dennis. “Seeing and Being: The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, The Killing Fields, Politics in Movies.” Film Quarterly 39 (1986): 62-65.

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