Personal Revolution is the First Step Towards Understanding - Tamir Kalifa

Susan Sontag’s writing on the conflict in Vietnam holds an important anthropological perspective that is often overlooked during wartime. In order to gain support for a foreign conflict, nations will attempt to define the conflict, ascribing a sense of order that the public will understand. For example: containing the spread of communism or a “war on terror.” In doing so, the first elements forgotten are the citizens of the “enemy” state that are no different from you and I. War is about governments fighting one another, not the people. The year 1968 was defined by raging anti-war sentiment and yet Sontag, an intellectual powerhouse, strays from the popular analysis of the war by focusing on the people of Vietnam rather than the banality of the conflict.
Though her writing centers on her perception of the foreign state, A Trip to Hanoi opens with Sontag doubting her ethos. She concedes that as she has no credibility to write about the conflict, she “…doubted that [her] account of such a trip could add anything new to the already eloquent opposition of the war.” This rhetorical tactic lowers the expectations for Sontag’s conclusions but allows for a unique vision unseen by “journalists…political activists [or] Asian specialists.” In establishing her individuality, Sontag’s writing reflects that of a diary entry rather than a comprehensive analysis of the conflict. This style is suitable to writing about the people of Vietnam because it is personal and subjective and does not have the preconceived notions a more educated individual on the issue might hold.
Sontag devotes the first few pages to conveying the malleable state of her perception of Vietnam. Her initial writing reflects the common thought she and her fellow countrymen bore prior to her arrival at Vietnam. This represents the average, arbitrary image of the war any foreigner would have. She quickly begins to challenge her views as she describes, “…being piled with gifts and flowers and rhetoric and tea and seemingly exaggerated kindness.” From the moment she encounters the Vietnamese her thought process shifts to attempting to understand the people. This thought process represents the capacity America has to see the Vietnamese on equal ground however are unable to because of the nationalistic rhetoric used by the government in contrast to the images of slaughter and suffering the hands of the American government. This contradictory image inhibits anyone who has not set foot in a city such as Hanoi from understanding the conflict. By coming to the reluctant conclusion that the conflict in Vietnam is not what she expected, Sontag proves that thoughts and perceptions have the capacity to change.
However, it is not as simple as this. Sontag soon realizes, through conversing with citizens, how complex of a society Vietnam is. She talks about how disenfranchised they had been under French rule, how far they had come since then and how we as American’s cannot possibly understand how they feel because our cultures are so polarized. She describes this tension as a “…hopeless” barrier she cannot cross because there is no common cultural ground other than the simplistic human similarities in lifestyle.
Sontag summarizes the significance of open thoughts when she says at the end of the essay, “An event that makes new feelings conscious is always the most important experience a person can have.” This statement embodies the entire essay because it represents the human capacity to change the way they think. One of the greatest problems during the Vietnam was the American inability to experience new feelings that would allow them to perceive the conflict differently. Part of this is due to the physical and cultural difference between American and Vietnam; however, the greatest barrier was psychological. The inability to concede and think openly about the conflict in Vietnam marred a country in a polarized argument between the nationalistic campaign to rescue a vulnerable nation and an enraged anti-war public. Sontag’s conclusion implies the possibilities of change and lessons other cultures have to offer. While they must be sought, the knowledge gained is invaluable as, “what happened to [her] in North Vietnam did not end with [her] return to America, but is still going on.”

Trip to Hanoi

In my reading of Trip to Hanoi I didn't know what to expect from the read. I knew it was going to be a journal and I knew it was going to be about a woman's trip to Vietnam, and that was exactly what I got. I feel bad for almost saying that this journal was somewhat predictable in my eyes in the sense of Sontag's renewed perspective of the country. Her attitude going into the trip was not to write about it and she expected a totally different experience and surprise (sarcastic), it wasn't quite what she imagined.

In beginning this story I was very put off by Sontag's initial feelings and attitudes towards the Vietnam. I know that she was ignorant in the sense of she did not know what to expect or what the people of the country were like, but during the beginning of her journal she kept referring to the Vietnamese as "child-like," and to be quite honest I felt her initial attitudes to be quite arrogant. Just because there is a cultural difference and barrier does not mean that the people of the country are child-like and simple. Or to be exact, she described that after being in the country for such a period of time when she interacted with someone of her own nationality it was as if they were talking baby-talk.

However, I do notice that the longer she stayed in Hanoi the more appreciation she aquired for the country and its people. On May 5th she distinctly talked about the physical differences of the people of Hanoi from Americans. She makes note of the fact that she dwells in the attention she gets from onlookers who notice the incredible height difference of Americans. Also the fact that the men of the country always looks 10 years younger than what they are, but yet we fall back into that arrogant style aura that I felt when reading her journal. Nevertheless, I believe a true change began taking shape when she realized that the people of Vietnam weren't angry with Americans just with the present government and to her surprise as would many would be, they even described Americans as being their friends. But their kindness could not be regarded as simple kindness but in the eyes of Sontag it was beautiful, in a child sort of way. However, as stated earlier in this post the reader starts to see a change in attitude and Sontag starts to pick up on some of the "key words" or some of the "unreservedly moralistic" ways to talking that the Vietnamese were accustomed to. She now refers to the Vietnam militia as "the front" instead of Viet Cong, and African American are now seen as "black people" instead of negros. Even later in her journal she refers to them as being "too generous" and while an honest and thoughtful statement that only makes me wonder what is to be said about the American public if the Vietnamese moralistic ways are too generous?

Still at the end of her journal we see that change that I so easily predicted. She got a first hand look into the lives and customs of the Vietnamese and learned to accept generosity and pondered that same question about what is to be said about "ours." Nevertheless, she expected to see an angry country and got a quite amiable one that were fighters and were just supporting their country just as the US did. Yet, the whole change comes at the end of the journal when she learns to have a higher appreciation for the people of Vietnam and have learned lessons that will not only play out in her memory but in her day to day interactions back at home in the USA.

"Life Here is Both Uglier and more Promising."

Preconceived notions are a part of everyday thought. Someone would be lying if they said they never thought about how or what something was going to be like before it happened. Susan Sontag was a victim of her own preconceived notions about Vietnam as shown in her story, "Trip to Hanoi." She spends a majority of the story struggling with why this place is not how she envisioned it, therefore causing her frustration with her experience.

It is nearly impossible for anybody to envision a post-war Vietnam who has never stepped foot in the country before. While the U.S. was showered with news, pictures, and video of the war in Vietnam and its aftermath, nobody has any idea what the situation trully is. We may only have preconceived notions of the culture and how they are adapting to their situations. As Sontag states, "Indeed, the problem was that Vietnam had become so much a fact of my consciousness as an American that I was having enormous difficulty getting outside my head." (Sontag, p. 209) This explains her uneasiness with her over accommodating hosts. She does not realize the cultural differences between her own nation and the one she treads on in the story. She sees a nation of war-torn refugees living the best they can.

Sontag's story, in a rhetorical sense, is a lesson acceptance. Her frustration is a lesson taught to all who read this story. She is arguing (in an excellently dictated manner I might add) that when thrown into a situation that is not of the norm, look to see the cultural signifigance and learn from it. Susan Sontag states at the end of the text, "I came back from Hanoi considerably chastened. Life here looks both uglier and more promising." (Sontag, p. 271) While her bitterness with the state of the nation exists strongly, she sees that hope still lies in the generosity of Vietnam's citizens.

Culture Clash

When Susan Sontag first arrives in Hanoi, she does not have the most optimistic view of the place. It is difficult for her to relate to the Vietnamese living in the area because of both the cultural and language barrier. She feels she must talk in more simplified terms and is unaccustomed to the constant kindness and hospitality from the Vietnamese. Sontag finds herself feeling rather hopeless since her attempts to understand the people of Hanoi are not progressing. However, as she continues to observe the people and their way of living, she begins to understand the depth of the Vietnamese culture. They are not just a warring, Communist country as a majority of Americans perceive them to be. They are deeply involved in the history of their country, embracing the hardships they have gone through to unify them as a whole. Each individual, filled with strong patriotism, works to preserve the culture and identity of Vietnam. Their love for their country drives them, and even though they are not the richest of countries, they still find a joy in themselves and each other to live contently and modestly.

Vietnam is so unlike America in many ways. Sontag realizes how efficient the Vietnamese are, utilizing every resource possible to fix the war-stricken countryside and land. The people have a strong sense of respect for one another and are not sucked in to sexual desires so easily as Americans can be. They emphasize cleanliness and sanitation, and they are absolutely thrilled to explain how Vietnam has grown and progressed since gaining independence. They look towards the future and do not hold grudges against other countries. Despite the fact that the Vietnam War has torn apart their country and ruined hundreds of thousands of lives, Vietnam still views America with reverence, not hate. Through the hardships that Vietnam has had to endure, the people have grown stronger together and developed in a positive way, always supporting each other. Sontag reveals the uniqueness of this culture through detailed stories and encounters she came across on her visit to Hanoi, exposing the other side of Vietnam that many people do not see.

Trip To Hanoi

From the very beginning of Trip To Hanoi, Susan Sontag states her strong anti-war stance, and so, I went in with some preconceived notions about how I thought this novel would play out. I was fully expecting to hear graphic stories of the Vietnamese suffering at the merciless hands of the Americans. I prepared myself for gore, trauma, tragedy and hostility. Then I started reading. Needless to say, I was wrong. Trip to Hanoi is an unmistakably anti-war rhetorical piece, but instead of focusing on graphic tales of death and suffering, Sontag instead tries to persuade her audience by humanizing the Vietnamese people and passively challenging pro-war reasoning, yet I believe that it fails in the ultimate goal of motivating the audience to support her cause.

First and foremost, Sontag spends most of the article humanizing the Vietnamese to Americans who, as she describes, usually posses a mental representation of the Vietnamese that is somewhat unnatural and most definitely different from Americans. Instead of taking the approach that I expected; recounting stories of horrific suffering and trying to shock the audience, Sontag employs this more subtle rhetorical methodology to, I believe, considerable effectiveness. She beings by describing some of the misconceptions she herself had as she went in. In fact, much of the first portion of the novel is dedicated to her struggling to cope with the differences between her expectations and reality. She summarizes her feelings well by saying “What I’d been creating and enduring for the last four years was a Vietnam inside my head….[But] the Vietnam I’d been thinking about for years was scarcely filled out at all”. Sontag doesn’t try to portray the Vietnamese as exact duplicates of Americans; she dedicates a lot of the novel to describing some of the differences, but she recognizes that most of the differences stem from their vastly different culture. She never paints them as inherently un-human or lacking in some basic American components of humanity. Her primary goal is to portray that although the Vietnamese have different practices than most Americans, they are inherently the same and need to be considered as much. However, she also doesn’t portray them just as human beings but instead she goes farther to describe how they are, in fact, very likable people. She frequently discusses their helpfulness and generosity. She also clearly states that the Vietnamese actually like Americans. They obviously do not like that they are being attacked by Americans, but yet, she finds through her interviews that most Vietnamese still idolize America and gladly accept and even pursue some aspects of American culture. At the time of her writing, because of the war, many Americans were undoubtedly harboring ill-will towards the Vietnamese. So, Sontag decided to use this as a starting point for her anti-war argument by portraying the Vietnamese as extremely kind, compassionate and overall likable. I found this technique to be very disarming because I was expecting a very challenging and graphic recount of war stories, so this affable description of everyday life in Hanoi was rather appealing. As Heinrichs states in Thank You For Arguing, the first step in persuading an audience is changing its mood, and Sontag’s strategy of personifying the Vietnamese definitely changed my mood.

Another common element in Trip to Hanoi is Susan Sontag’s passive challenges to the contemporary logic supporting the war. Two of the main arguments for American occupation of Vietnam was to liberate the Vietnamese from Communism and to stop the spread of Communism. However, Sontag challenges the logic of the arguments in a very non-aggressive and therefore non alarming manner. Although she never directly states that every person in Vietnam does not want to be “liberated” from communism, through her interviews she suggests the idea that maybe they actually welcome communism. She often describes how communism works well with their peasant lifestyle in that the principles of sharing and equality coincide with their culture and values. Also, she talks about their pride as a country and their wish to remain solitary, not under the control of another country such as the U.S. Also, she never shows a direct support for communism, but she also never really acknowledges any of it’s supposed evils that most Americans held as absolute truth. She never states that America should become communist and she never says that capitalism is bad, she basically just acknowledges that communism seems to work well for the Vietnamese. Sontag is able to contradict common conceptions without seeming aggressive. And for those who still believed the war was justifiable, she basically stated that the Vietnamese will not lose the war, but once again, she did this in a very non-aggressive manner. In essence, she merely reiterated the history of Vietnam that she learned through her stay, telling of how numerous other countries have tried to control Vietnam, and yet they all have been overthrown. She then tells how, in the eyes of the Vietnamese, the Americans are no different than the French, or the Chinese, or any other previous insurgent, and therefore, the U.S. too will fail. The passive-aggressive manner in which she makes all these arguments I found to be very effective. If she had directly came out and stated “Communism is good and here is a list of reasons why…” I probably would have disregarded nearly everything she said, but because she adopts this subtle approach, I never was taken aback and therefore, I was more likely to believe what she said. This accomplishes Heinrichs’ second step: change the audience’s opinion.

However, Heinrichs’ third and final step, filling the audience with a desire to act, is where I feel that Sontag does not succeed. Up until the end, I found everything that she said to be fairly logical and agreeable. However, once she reached the point where she left Hanoi, it seems to me that she adopted a very introspective outlook, which does not help persuade an audience. She dedicates the last portion of the novel to describing her struggles adapting to life outside of Hanoi again, and she wonders, through her writing, whether she will revert to her old ways. Finally, she ends by saying “I discover that what happened to me in North Vietnam did not end with my return to America, but is still going on.” So, obviously this experience changed her. However, she never really seems to make a point to lead the audience in any clear direction of action. Obviously, most people who read this will never have the opportunity that she had. So, I would have thought that she would have at least provided some general idea of how they should follow up this story with action, yet there is none. Susan Sontag’s novel was able to change my mood and change my mind, but it was not able to fill me with a desire to act, and therefore, I do not feel that Trip to Hanoi is rhetorically effective.

Aristotle would approve of Susan Sontag

Throughout reading this text, I could not help noticing the different ways in which Susan Sontag's writing choices in Trip to Hanoi adhere to the ones prescribed by Jay Heinrichs in Thank You For Arguing. Sontag was able to weave a beautiful narrative about the struggle that she experienced with matching her preconceived ideas about the situation in Vietnam and what she actually observed with her own eyes while visiting Hanoi. Sontag was able to convey her ideas in a logical manner that is easy for her audience to understand by using the techniques explained by Heinrichs.

Sontag clearly states the main point of her argument not only in the introductory paragraphs, but also scatters references to the thesis throughout the text. The last sentence of the introduction is the actual thesis statement, "My problem was that I was now actually in Vietnam for a brief time, yet somehow unable to make the full intellectual and emotional connections that my political and moral solidarity with Vietnam implied", which prepares the reader to jump right into making sense of the journal entries that follow (Sontag 212).

The author makes great use of vivid situational descriptions throughout the article, which closely follows one of Heinrichs' tenets, "The more vividly you give the audience the sensations of an experience, the greater the emotion you can arouse" (Heinrichs 80). Establishing the right mood and stirring the reader's emotion is one of the most infallible ways to stir the audience's reaction and opinion in favorable direction. By giving the reader lengthy, detailed, and emotionally charged descriptions of people, events, and setting, Sontag ensures that he will most positively "take her side", so to speak. 

Sontag also stresses importance of word choice in discussing the necessity of stylized language, which makes use of "simple declarative sentences" (Sontag 216). She also concedes that much of what has been said between her and the people of Vietnam was inevitably lost in translation because of the different meanings loaded in each word or phrase. She also states that it was important to learn to pay more attention to whatever was constantly reiterated, commonplace, in order to discover the standard words and phrases to be richer than she had thought. 

The author also speak at length about decorum both in the manner of dress as well as accepted behavior. Sontag discovered the importance of adhering to the preconceptions and standards of the group you belong to in order to be accepted and understood. She also realized that she had to change her frame of thought (that of an American) to that of the people that she was surrounded with.

Overall, I found this article to be incredibly emotionally charged and very moving. Sontag achieves her goal of making the reader understand the situation in Northern Vietnam and to sympathize with the people of that country by using many of the techniques that Jay Heinrichs lays out in Thank You For Arguing.

Through the text of  Trip to Hanoi an important application pertaining to humanity and interactions within was uncovered by Sontag through her interactions with a foreign culture. Sontag uncovers this insight through a systematic journaling of her experience coupled with later and compounded insight. Through her experience she relates the unexpected and enlightening experience that showed to her the reasons for the great complexities of the vietnam war. 

In the early stages of her experience in Hanoi, Sontag becomes frustrated with the seemingly choked relations with her Vietnamese hosts.  In an overly accommodating experience she feels childlike and finds her actions conforming to her feelings. This does not settle well and creates the frustration within her. For her nothing is as her preconceived ideas suggest, and she lost in a culture completely foreign to her. She does not learn until further insight that her frustration was a direct result of this clash of cultures. This clash of cultures, she goes on to find, created many of the complexities underlying the Vietnam War. In the part of the writing that relates her experience though her journaling of the experience, we get a taste of her experiance as it clashes with the culture she is partaking of unknowingly. It is not until later that Sontag realizes that the way she is being treated is natural in the Vietnamese culture. Her insight in the later part of the text outlines this in relation to the problems created by the U.S.'s presence in vietnam. 

What Sontag learned and related through her experience is directly applicable to our own interaction with others. Beyond, but contributing to, rhetoric is each individuals own life experiences and beliefs.  Sontag portrayed this on a much larger scale but to the same end. 

Clashing of Preconceived Thoughts and Reality: Looking Through the American “Lense”

When reading “Trip to Hanoi” I saw Susan Sontag’s deliberate intent to show the conflict with the American view of the Vietnam War and North Vietnam in respect to the true reality of these topics. She states, “Like anyone who cared about Vietnam in the last years, I already knew a great deal; and I could not hope to collect more or significantly better information in a mere two weeks than was already available” (pg. 208). Upon entering North Vietnam, this thought of knowing much already and believing to learn little through the experience in Hanoi, I feel, hindered her from fully grasping new truths from a different perspective. As a student I am able to sit in a classroom to learn and discuss the effects and “truths” about the Vietnam War, I may gain much knowledge on the topic, but my perception is distorted. My sources of information are generally given from an American’s perspective; therefore, I develop partial picture of the realities of the war.

When reading this excerpt, Susan repeatedly showed me the damaging effects of entering a different country with many preconceived notions. For instance, she states, “Judging for these first days, I think it’s hopeless. I can’t cross. I’m overcome by how exotic the Vietnamese are- impossible for us to understand them, clearly impossible for them to understand us.” (Pg. 223) This section shows a beautiful example of when preconceived thoughts and beliefs meet the reality of different perspective. Sontag is bombarded with a hopeless, discontented feeling as she struggles to connect with her experience. Looking into a society with an American “lense” causes us to disconnect from relating with the people, culture, social norms, etc. We may never be able to look into the world with completely clear, unbias “lenses”; yet, a deliberate intent to try to clear our lenses helps us better understand some different. In particular, American perceptions can be an extremely hinder acclimating to a different society because the American society is so unique. Our culture is unlike many others because of many factors including: the ethnic diversity, politics, and history. Therefore, wearing an American “lense” can easily make you and the new society feel unrelatable.

I enjoyed Sontag’s rhetorically showing the conflict that occurs when we contrast our American ideals and thoughts on the Vietnam War with the North Vietnamese perception. It was enlightening to see the dramatic disconnect with Americans and the North Vietnamese. She moved me to further explore this conflict and attempt to look for some resolution to these societal disconnects. How are we to abandon our beliefs and thoughts to blindly enter North Vietnam? It could not be wise or even possible to eliminate all our preconceived notions. Sontag states in the last line of the excerpt, “So I discover that what happened to me in North Vietnam did not end with my return to America, but is still going on” (Pg.274). I see the resolution to be an attempt to momentarily clear our minds of oppositional thoughts and indulge ourselves in the new experience. We should make conscious efforts to acclimate and understand different ideas, norms, and perspectives. Then, afterwards, self-reflect and once again grab hold of our beliefs and thoughts. I believe if more individuals practice these methods, then, perhaps people across the world will be less disconnected and more understanding of each other.

Susie’s Hanoi Diary

One may choose to believe Sontag when she states that she did not intend to write about her trip to Hanoi; one may also choose to believe that a group of heroic Americans was responsible for causing Flight 93 to crash into an open field in Pennsylvania, rather than the White House. If one is to believe Sontag’s claims that she did not decide to write about her trip until after its conclusion, then he must accept that the journal she kept, for purely personal purposes in the midst of a visit in which each day’s schedule was highly structured and free time was purportedly spent wandering the city streets, contained off-the-cuff, extemporaneous prose of the following sort: “Thus, the gluttonous habits of my consciousness prevent me from being at home with what I most admire, and—for all my raging against America—firmly unite me to what I condemn. ‘American friend’ indeed!”

Alternatively, one may view the journal excerpts included in “Trip to Hanoi” as having been written with an audience in mind, and having been presented as excerpts from a ‘journal’ for rhetorical purposes. Taken in this light, the journal section plays a key role in Sontag’s argument: the concession. In her journal entries, Sontag’s initial reception of Hanoi is colored by a moral ambivalence deeply rooted in her own western way of thinking. She is frustrated by her inability to understand the North Vietnamese people she encounters; despite her best intentions to remain receptive and open-minded, she cannot help but feel suspicious that their overly simplistic moral outlook and the redundant, terse manner in which they express themselves are concealing something- or even worse, that the Vietnamese, with whom she has sympathized so fervently from afar, are an intrinsically simple, childlike people. In her journal entries, Sontag concedes that she had her own doubts about these Hanoi folks at first; that even she is not so enlightened as to have been able to transcend the entirety of that crude American mindset which her generation has been unfortunate enough to inherit.

The reader is intrigued by the brutal self-honesty found in the journal section, as seen in such statements as, “it seems to me that while my consciousness does include theirs, or could, theirs could never include mine…I have more on my mind than they do.” A white, liberal, academia-dwelling activist admitting to herself that a part of her feels inherently superior, on a broad intellectual level, to the people of a foreign culture she is freshly encountering? Sacrebleu! The reader, continuing through the journal section and making it well into the main body, in which Sontag reflects upon her trip, finds that Sontag’s initial ambivalence gives way to a…well, rather than compose my own cutting, critical manner of characterization here, I think I’ll let a few highlights from the latter portion of Susan’s narrative speak for themselves: “the North Vietnamese is an extraordinary human being…Vietnamese are ‘whole’ human beings, not ‘split’ as we are…while the Vietnamese are stripped down, they are hardly simple in any sense that grants us the right to patronize them…they don’t experience as we do the isolation of a ‘private self’…one can’t exaggerate the fervor of their patriotic passion and their intense attachment to particular places.”

Ultimately, I find Sontag’s characterization of Hanoi and the North Vietnamese people (see above) to be preposterous on a general psychological level, and every bit as propagandist as the “rhetoric of patriotism in the United States [which] has been in the hands of reactionaries and yahoos,” which she so sharply decries. However, I must admit that I find her rhetoric to be effective, on the whole. By devoting considerable detail to portraying herself, in her journal entries, as being beset by a traveler’s crises of identity and a disorienting ambivalence during her first days in Hanoi, she concedes just enough to make the reader wonder if he is reading a work which might actually contain an interesting perspective- and not just a politicized caricature. If only Susie could have mustered the restraint to make her on-the-ground diary’s prose a bit more believable, and to lay it on just a smidgen thinner in her final estimation of the North Vietnamese people, ‘Trip to Hanoi’ might have really left me thinking.

Shocking

Throughout the beginning of the essay, the author uses a contrasting view of the North Vietnamese then many Americans had at that time. They were not crazy radicals who wanted world domination, they were just people fighting to unify their country which had been torn apart for a long time.
She writes about the journey over there and how she did not know anyone, but also about how she was expecting so many things about her trip that would turn out not true, just like the fact that she said she would not write about it. She uses rhetoric to appeal to the audiences sense of humanity by showing that the North Vietnamese are people that die just as we can. It instills the notion that there are regular people in the North that are just like people that are in the US, which would begin to make people who had not been interested in anti-war protests to begin to question the war and its tactics.
She gives the reader insight into the lives of the people and what they are dealing with everyday so that the reader can know of the atrocities that are being experienced. All the while she is also giving the reader an idea of what it means to be an outsider in the war.

Cultural Anthropology

After reading the essay, the concepts and issues of American culture that were addressed reminded me of my first semester at UT. One of the first courses that I took was cultural anthropology. It is a specific field of anthropology that focuses on the study of cultural variation among humans through participant observation, and the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Culture shock was one of the first topics discussed in class. It was an appropriate introduction to the course, because I would imagine most of the incoming freshmen who just set foot on campus for the first time were experiencing culture shock to some degree. I define culture shock to be that sense of unfamiliarity when forced to adapt to a new environment, society, or lifestyle. I was presented with the task of living an independent life: living in a dormitory 200 miles away from home, cooking my own meals, managing work and classwork simultaneously, etc. What made the transition from one lifestyle to another smooth was allowing myself to become immersed in my new environment to the point where I forgot how I lived my previous lifestyle. It was a gradual process in which my daily routines at UT became second nature. This was my personal rite of passage.

The author of Trip to Hanoi also experienced cultural shock as an American guest in North Vietnam. She describes herself to be a "stubbornly un-specialized writer" with a predetermined notion that her account of the unexpected trip to Hanoi will offer her no new material for her work and opposition to the Vietnam War. Through her experiences with local North Vietnamese and her hosts, she tries to understand the nature of her environment that is so different from home. For one, she expected North Vietnam to be similar to revolutionary societies such as Cuba of the Western world. She expected the North Vietnamese to be "informal, impulsive, easily intimate, and manic", only to find them to be the complete opposite. She found it difficult to understand the stylizing of the Vietnamese language. She found that they spoke in declarative sentences using tag words such as "freedom" and "unity", that overall had a flattening effect on their language. She felt as though she was being treated like a child by her hosts. The hosts created daily schedules for her, provided transportation to walkable distances, and provided her hearty meals that the average Vietnamese citizen would have once a month. As her expectations of North Vietnam proved wrong, the more she felt the society to be "exotic" and "small" in stature compared to that of the United States.

The author of the essay presented her findings of Vietnamese culture as a cultural anthropologist. All of her findings are forms of participant observation, where Hanoi was the location of her fieldwork. The only problem is that her findings through pages 57 and 71 are biased towards American superiority. The author fails to come to terms with Vietnamese culture during these pages, because she is constantly finding some way to compare it to her biased expectations. She finds that the Vietnamese are constantly hiding their "real" selves due to her understanding of the concept of politeness in American culture. Ultimately, she finds the Vietnamese to be "opaque, simple-minded, and naive".

She already has a biased opinion of her account in Hanoi and of its culture, yet she somehow believes that she can understand their culture from a Vietnamese point of view with her current attitude. If she doesn't want to come off as some type of "typical American", arrogance and all, she has to allow herself to become immersed in the culture to a point where she's no longer thinking about the American way of life as dominant. Analysis of a different culture has to be made on neutral grounds. Only until she drops the concepts American culture does she realize that the Vietnamese are as "real" as they can be. They do not portray that sort of "split" personality that Americans tend to do, especially in regards to entertaining a host. They manifest sexual self-discipline, and their sincerity is based on their willingness to be shameless. They are self-sufficient, especially during times of war. This essay highlights the reality that the North Vietnamese, while not an ideal society, are social creatures just like anyone other human. The differences between Vietnamese culture and American culture do not make the Vietnamese inferior, regardless of whatever biases we may have. By analysing the rhetoric represented in Hanoi, the author was able to provide a detailed account of her participant observations.

What I got from Trip to Hanoi

From this writing, I was able to see a whole nother side of the Vietnam War. With my little knowledge about what relations were actually like between the North Vietnamese and the United States, this was very eye opening. All my knowledge comes from biased opinions and views taught to me by American people such as authors, teachers, family members, and ex-war veterans. Although this wasn't a North Vietnamese author, she was able to present me with ideas from a whole nother side of the spectrum having actually had the chance to spend time over in North Vietnam while the war was going on. This meaning, her ideas and conclusions have more knowledge and basis behind them than do most other people's teachings.

The author of "Trip to Hanoi", to me, seems to have a perception of the North Vietnamese people being just as human as we Americans are with hearts, feelings, and emotions. This may seem like common sense to most people, (which it should be, they are just human beings with different ideas and culture), but mostly only hearing racial slurs and negative thoughts directed at these people in topic of conversations can lead a person into having a bad image of who these people actually are and what they are like. My grandpa being a ex-war veteran, might be a source of these thoughts, but who am I to blame or judge him for his naive beliefs when he has seen, heard, felt, and tasted the horrors of what it is like to be in battle. Between hearing negative thoughts about these people and the fact that they were considered to be the "enemy" to the country I live and breathe in, I must admit I don't think to highly of these people. By definition, a enemy is described as one that is antagonistic to another, seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent. Knowing this, who am I to be blamed for thinking negatively of these people when they indiectly threatened my state of well-being. I guess that statement can be argued being that their is still debate going on in the world today of rather we were justified to go over there and fight or not, but that is not the point of this discussion. My point is that my thoughts before reading this article were strictly negative of the North Vietnamese people, but after being enlightened with a different point of view of the war, I am now vulnerable to change in my views. "We know the American people are our friends. Only the present American government is our enemy." Does the North Vietnamese being an enemy to our government mean they are enemies to our people as well? Debatable.

In the movie "Platoon", we saw scenes of violence done by the American people that went beyond what was ordered including unnecessary murders and rapes. These acts severely punishable by law and completely moraly wrong, but because it was done to people percieved as being heartless, ruthless animals, it was deemed as acceptable by portions of the U.S. forces. The perception of the people being this way can be aruged to be because of the way they were trained to fight in battle. The commanding officers didn't train their troops to kill sweet, innocent, loving people, they trained their troops to kill heartless monsters out for their blood. This mindset is key for survival when going into battle. The question I bring up from this, is would these soliders have done what they did to these innocent people of villages and other areas had they of had the chance to actually spend time and get to know some of the North Vietnamese people? According to the author of this writing, probably not. This assuming that the people over in North Vietnam really were the way the author described them, but of course she could have just been around the right people at the right time. Put her in a different city or town in a different situation, her perception on the people of North Vietnam might have been completely different. All this aside, should the fact that their is North Vietnamese people with good intentions and good hearts stray the soliders away from the killing and rapeing of innocent people and children? What if those innocent people that were killed for no mandated reason were one of the good ones? Just questions to think of, but once again, as with everything else in life, the answer is debateable.

Trip to Hanoi

In “Trip to Hanoi,” the author portrayed the North Vietnamese is a VERY amiable light. Throughout reading this excerpt, I vividly saw the North Vietnamese’s courtesy towards these Americans, who they are currently having a war against, and their sincere interest in America. To be honest, it surprised me. As an American, it is hard to accept the fact that we didn’t show the North Vietnamese the same treatment as they had given us. This was already something that I had been exposed to in Platoon, when the American soldiers invaded the North Vietnamese village, attempted to rap a little girl, burned down buildings, abused the villagers, and treated them as animals. At first, I was confused as to why they were treating the villagers that way, but then the friend I was watching it with explained that the villagers were producing food and weapons for the enemy. However, knowing that they were helping the “other side” still didn’t justify the way the villagers were treated.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we are presented with the forgiving North Vietnamese. Sontag describes their generosity towards their “American friends” and how the best was always provided for the visitors. In going through a process of having to shed her (was anyone else surprised to find that the author is a woman?!?) American views and learn to adapt to the North Vietnamese ways, she also leads the reader to shed off their own personal views. This is the classic example of stepping outside the box and looking at things objectively. It was a process that was subtle, but effective. As she slowly accepted and saw the beauty of the North Vietnamese people, I slowly saw the beauty as well.

She portrays the North Vietnamese is such a different light. The word “communist” brings a negative connotation into my brain, and probably into a lot of other Americans’ brains. However, the North Vietnamese that I read about in “Trip to Hanoi” didn’t fit my stereotypical “Communist” picture.

I applaud her rhetoric skills in leading me to view something in a different perspective, and not letting me realize it until it had already happen.

One criticism I have though, is that sometimes I felt as if she was talking about perfect human beings and over idealizing the North Vietnamese. Personally, I have been to Vietnam, and I didn’t see the dressed-up people and sexually pure Vietnamese. Granted, I had gone to South Vietnam and went many years after the war, so ideas, morals, and standards may have changed. For that, I am hesitant to make my decision.

Shoot Me

I chose to analyze the scene immediately after they shoot the sniper and she is lying on the ground, barely alive, while the soldiers discuss what to do. This scene is particularly interesting because it serves as the climax to the whole narrative, and as such is highly intense and emotional. In order to achieve this extremely disturbing feeling, Kubrick obviously put a lot of attention into every detail, especially the misè-en-scene, sound cues, and camera shots.

Misè-en-scene is a term that covers basically all visual aspects of a film, and is generally broken down into setting, staging, costuming and lighting, and Kubrick’s particular decisions in all four of these areas are worthy of note. The choice of setting is one of his most obvious methods of establishing strong, somber emotions in the viewers. First, it is very dark and poorly lit as the physical location itself is an enflamed, crumbling building; an obvious tactic used by Kubrick to insight uneasiness and heightened emotions in the audience. The only visible light sources are the flames strewn about the room, creating flickering and highly contrasted lighting. Kubrick also crafted the set to emphasize geometric shapes in a particular manner. The wide shots of the whole scene, like in this picture, reveal very few circular or rounded objects. Everything is squared-off and pointed. This gives this room a very harsh feeling. Kubrick even went so far as to replace what most likely should have been rounded arches between the pillars with block-like, jagged stepping-stones. Also, the railings are made up of a complex series of horizontal and vertical lines, nothing rounded or organic. Also, he furthers this emphasis on lines with his staging. The girl is lying horizontally on the ground while the soldiers and pillars create vertical lines, also shown in the picture. Kubrick even continues this theme in his costuming. Joker’s glasses and pace sign represent the only noticeably round objects in the whole scene, while Animal Mother’s bullet chains further the harsh, jagged style visuals of the rest of the setting. In doing this, Kubrick emphasizes Jokers compassion in comparison to the rest of the scene. Although Joker may not be the poster boy for kindness, he has more warmth about him than anyone or anything else in that room.

Kubrick also creates a heightened emotional state through his careful use of music and sound. In many war movies, climactic scenes are punctuated by dropping out or diminishing the dialogue and placing strong emphasis on music. However, Kubrick takes a different approach. Every sound emanating from the room and every spoken word is just as prominent as it has been throughout the rest of the movie. Also, he does use music, but it only consists of slight tones, no percussion to drive the scene along. Instead of a percussion track, he uses carefully timed and delivered dialogue. The characters’ words themselves act as the percussion, keeping time and beat. No character ever raises their voice. All lines are delivered equally slow and paced, and characters alternate their lines in a very rhythmic and cadenced manner. This technique is most clear when the girl starts repeatedly reciting “shoot me” amidst deep, gasping breaths. A common trait of various movies is an extremely audible heartbeat during moments of great emotional intensity, but in this scene, Kubrick substitutes the girls line for the heartbeat. She repeats it over and over, steadily and in time, only slightly speeding up and increasing her intensity as the moment draws nearer to where Joker finally indulges her wish. By executing the scene in this manner, Kubrick achieves the same state of emotional intensity as other similar movies, but he does so in a much more natural and realistic way. Instead of relying mainly on music, Kubrick steadily increases the scene’s power through what is actually being said and done.

Finally, Kubrick also makes some very deliberate choices about how shots are set up and framed to increase the viewer’s emotions throughout the scene. At the beginning, he uses a lot of wide shots, showing the whole room and letting viewers get a feel for how dark, depressing, and dangerous this time and place really is for the soldiers. By showing so much in each shot, he invites viewers to explore the whole room, giving them a chance to relate to the current conditions of the soldiers. Then, after he has done this, he transitions to more close-ups. By the end, every shot is an alternating close-up of the different soldiers, eventually ending on Joker. This then makes viewers switch their attention from the setting to the soldiers. In the last shots, the soldiers are the only objects in focus, and therefore the only objects the audience can focus on. Kubrick is creating an emotional connection between viewers and these soldiers. Another way he creates this connection is by using only static shots. Throughout the scene, none of the shots zoom, pan or track. Also, a lot of the shots are relatively long, and every line of dialogue in shown on screen. Kubrick is absorbing viewers into the scene. It’s almost as if he’s shooting the scene how an observer would look at it if he or she was there. Never moving around, always following and being fully absorbed in what is going on and what is being said. One other technique that he uses to create this connection is a particular attention to space in his shots. In the wide shots at the beginning, he uses a lot of relatively deep space. There are multiple planes of action or interest, some far away, some near. This creates a feeling of freedom. The soldiers were in danger but now they no longer are. The only shots at the beginning that have shallow space are of the girl. All shots of her are looking straight down, creating a very flat, claustrophobic feeling as if she’s trapped. However, as the scene advances and the shots progress closer and closer to the soldiers, their freedom turns into anxiety as they struggle to deal with their new situation. Kubrick reflects this change of emotions through progressively confining the space in his shots. By the end, each shot has a single plane of interest: the one with the soldier.

Platton

Throughout the last fight scene of Platoon the images that are shown are so graphic that the movie watcher is impacted greatly. The main character shoots his commanding officer point blank. He has lost his views on right and wrong because of the tragedy that he has had to witness. He shows that they were fighting each other rather then the Vietnamese. He no longer can see that what he is doing is wrong, he only sees that he must avenge his former commander that was killed. The rhetorical argument shows that he is fighting the others by showing his eyes and the madness in them.

*sorry this is late, my computer wouldn't load the site or upload my post.

Bottoms of Barrels

It is strange that the scene that I consider as being one of the most powerful and compelling is probably one of the least significant and memorable scenes in Platoon. There are a number of terrifying and insightful moments throughout the movie that clearly stand out in my mind; however, I was most deeply impressed by Oliver Stone’s mastery at giving his audience a deeper look at the characters. He accomplishes this task in one fell swoop, almost undetectable, during the scene in which Chris Taylor and his platoon go out on patrol that later gets ambushed. In this scene, Chris Taylor is narrating the letter that he had written to his grandmother. He begins by explaining the reasons that drove him to drop out of college and to volunteer to join the American forces in Vietnam; one of the reasons being that he wanted to lead a different life than the one led by his parents, “respectable, hard-working, a little house, family”. This is everything that Chris and his generation despised, and Stone very clearly captures this most fundamental idea in just a couple of sentences. Chris simply wants to be “anonymous, like everybody else, in my share for my country”, but he does not begin to realize what it really means to be “anonymous” until he shares the night out in the jungle with his platoon. Stone gives us the entire background of Chris’s character in this one scene by telling the viewer where Chris came from, what kind of family he was raised in, what his moral convictions are, and the reasons behind him taking on this “crusade”. Stone also gives a very brief, yet poignant, overview of each of the characters by classifying each of them as being truly “anonymous”. They are all “guys that nobody really cares about”. Chris is deeply bothered by the fact that these men are the poor, the unwanted, “the bottom of the barrel”, and yet they are the ones fighting for this country, “for our freedom”. Stone makes this scene more personal by closely zooming in on each one of the character’s faces as Chris describes them, and by doing this he is making it clear that each one of these men has his own life, his own goals, his own identity, and that it is a grave mistake to forget the men who gave their life for this undeserving cause.

 

 

The Thousand Yard Stare

“The Thousand Yard Stare – a Marine gets it after he’s been in the shit for too long… It’s like you’re really seeing beyond.”

“The Thousand Yard Stare” was something mentioned during the middle of the film, but didn’t occur until the end of the movie. For the audience, it was the sign that Joker has been in the war for too long.

The climax of the film was taking down the SINGLE sniper using the force of an entire squad of trained American soldiers. True, the sniper had the advantage of being hidden and the ability to keep all the soldiers at a distance, but the sniper was singled handedly able to take down three American soldiers. Before the sniper was shown, I expected that ‘he’ would be an extremely well built Vietnamese soldier. It was much to my surprise to see that the sniper was a helpless looking girl. It seems like Kubrick deliberately made that choice to have the sniper be a girl to poke fun at how easily the American army fell down.

There was fire surrounding the entire place. The building is in shambles. Kubrick brings the audience to a place resembling Hell. The world is deteriorating as the soldiers stand in a circle watching the helpless Vietnamese girl suffer through her last moments on Earth. The helplessness of the Vietnamese girl is further portrayed through the pained whispering of her prayers and her dying wish for the soldiers to “shoot me [her].” In any normal situation, the audience will feel sympathy for the little girl; however, the fact that she was a sniper that took out three soldiers is a fact that can’t be neglected either. Kubrick toys with the audience’s emotion as they struggle to figure out whom to “root” for. This is the exactly same feeling that runs through Joker’s head. From that scene of the Vietnamese girl looking at the soldiers with vigilant eyes and commanding them to end her life, an uneasy feeling is created. Right and wrong are not as white and black as they should be. The gray area emerges and leaves the audience wondering if shooting the girl would be morally right. Of course, with war, nothing follows strict rules and have distinct moral values built into them.

The actual death of the sniper is never shown. The camera focuses on Joker’s face the entire time. Joker’s face flashes through different emotions. First you see hesitation, then vengeance, and then finally determination. A gunshot is heard, an echo of the gunshot, and a sickly silence that follows it.

It is during that sickly silence that Joker got it in his eyes: “The Thousand Yard Stare.” It appeared that he was looking directly at the sniper that he had just mercilessly killed, but you could tell that he was looking beyond her. That stare was the way of Kubrick telling just how much a war or a moment in time can change a man.

The moment is broken by laughter, echoing off the walls. The soldiers joke about Joker getting the “congressional medal of ugly” and Joker being a “hard core man”, but the camera never leaves Joker’s face and his eyes. In this, Kubrick is inserting his “comic relief” of the situation, but still maintains the serious and solemn tone of the scene. This reflects the overall movie, where everything else is taken so lightly, almost as a joke.

Psychological Turmoil in "Platoon"

While walking through the low currents of the river, the soldiers come across Manny’s limp body pinned to a tree trunk. His eyes are wide opened and blood has soaked through his t-shirt. After seeing Manny’s body, the director shows a slow panoramic view of the soldiers’ faces enabling us to see the expression of each soldier. I see injustice in Junior’s face, the rage in Chris’ eyes, and the pity in Big Harold’s expression. In this scene, I believe the director is showing the different emotions within each soldier, but also showing that they are shared among the platoon. I see the emotions of injustice, pity, anger being unified among the troops. Not only Chris was angry, but it was brewing within each soldier. Just a few hours earlier, they lost two fellow soldiers from a booby trap, now; they faced another murdered soldier, disgracefully plastered to a tree trunk. The unification of these emotions was beautifully shown by ending the panoramic view on Sergeant Barnes. As the leader of this platoon, his solemn face showed his understanding of their pain, conflict, and rage. Somehow he was going to redeem them and platoon knew it. It was important for the director to project each emotion and unify them among the troops because the next scene, in which they attack the village, shows the response of their pent up emotions. I saw these two scenes to be extremely vital in showing the psychological effects of war on these men. I couldn’t fathom seeing a fellow warrior dishonored in such a way and not being able to truly deal with my emotions. Surely these men were overwhelmed with emotional trauma from the day’s events and time spent in war. Without an opportunity to release it, they funnel it through the only emotion allowed to be expressed in this setting, anger. I found it hard to fully hold these men accountable for wrongfully attacking innocent villagers. Yet, surely that was not justice. Justice could not be killing an innocent, disabled man. I believe these two scenes show the complexities that occur in war. I feel conflicted and believe there was not a true resolution for the soldiers. I believe, they still carried the baggage of their emotions when they left the village.

The Act of Killing

In viewing Platoon and Full Metal Jacket I found virtually the same movie to have two very different accounts of what it was like to be in battle and in war. Personally I liked the Full Metal Jacket film better simply because I tend to like movies that take the audiences on a journey and FMJ was truly a journey. All the way from the opening scene when the soldiers got their taste of military life to the first night they spent in boot camp, the audience feels as though we are witnessing the transformation from the beginning. Hence, when the transformation takes place we can fully understand and see how it happened, and who they were before it took place. Nevertheless, the point of this blog is not for me to tell you how much I liked one over the other but to compare and contrast what I thought were some of the most powerful scenes in both movies.

When watching Full Metal Jacket my heart went out to the private Pyle and his struggle in the boot camp process. I know that many people could identify with private Pyle because he was the one that was picked on by the others and because of his struggle and obvious mental capacity he was scrutinized because of his short-comings. Therefore, because he was lacking, we witnessed a true change in character as he over-worked himself to become just as good, if not better than the other privates in drilling and every way possible. He became obcessed and it is then that we witness his true full transformation and he has become a new person, a soldier. However, on the last day of camp after graduation, we witness private Pyle's final meltdown. In the middle of the night as Joker was patrolling the baracks he comes across private Pyle's in the bathroom drilling at a clearly inappropriate time and place and it is then that the audience knows that he has truly lost it. Sitting on the edge of our seats The Sergant walks in with his usual loud and boistrous antics and in retaliation perhaps for his scrutiny or just being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, saying the wrong thing, Pyle's kills him. Then after lowering his gun from Joker he sits down and shoots himself. This scene is so powerful because it represents a common problem that we face in today's society and the consequences that those people face because of the lack of self esteem. Suicide is actually more common than we think however with the agenda setting of the media we see more homicide than anything when actually suicide is often times more common in many cities than murder itself. Nevertheless, this represented the notion of killing and even more specific the murdering of those who are innocent in the terms of those serving in the army. This was evident in another scene in Platoon when the soldiers invaded a village and killed 2 innocent members of the village for no reason. Or more of the reason being the life of combat and what it does to you. In many cases combat dehumanizes those who partake in it, and they take on those same animalistic characteristics that come along with the act of survival, even if it means killing the innocent. This is something that both of these scenes have in common. The fact that they are now partaking in an act of "survival" and taking the lives of those who do not deserve it. This reminds me of a phenomenon that happens to many veterans as they return to the U.S. Many times they have seen so much that often times they go crazy and can't cope with the nightmares and reliving the horror and often times kill themselves because of it, or many times struggle with it all their life. So it could be argued that these soldiers of victims of combat themselves and simply acted out of the learned behaviors that they have acquired over the years. The very idea that these men have been taught to be killing machines and have acted accordingly could be the explanation for the changes that they endure and the lives that they take with them. Nevertheless, the comparison between these two scenes represented two animalistic transformations of men who were trained to kill and the consequences that the men faced because of these changes attributed to their journey as a soldier.

Opening Scene & GySgt Hartman’s “Motivational Speech”

The opening scene of Full Metal Jacket starts off with the new inductees of the United States Marine Corps getting their military haircut. This gets rid of the idea of them being an “individual”. They are given the same uniform, same haircut, and the same rifle. They live in the same room with the same linen. There is no place for them to be an individual. While getting their haircut Joker and Pyle have a smirk on their face which made me think that they were going to be key characters in the film because everyone else had a somewhat mad look. The movie progresses to Gunnery Sergeant Hartman giving his “motivational speech”. At the beginning the camera shows all of the recruits. If you take a closer look you will notice that the position of Pyle, Cowboy, and Joker changes. It’s not something you could actually notice the first time because the recruits all look the same. GySgt Hartman starts his speech by telling the recruits how they will address him and what they’ll be if and only if they survive his training. Immediately afterwards Hartman starts to dehumanize them by calling them things such as “the lowest form of life on Earth” and “pieces of amphibian shit”. Hartman goes on to tell them that they won’t like him because he is hard but tells them that “the more you hate me, the more you will learn.” He then starts to yell, belittle, and abuse Snowball, Joker, Cowboy, and Pyle. Once he gets to Pyle he loses his cool because Pyle can’t get the smirk off of his face. He then begins to choke him. This is where I see that Pyle is going to be little different than the rest of the recruits. The director does a very good job doing subtle gestures that may hint that something is to come.

Pile and His Rifle

Hartman tells the recruits to give their rifle a girl's name and that they're "married to their weapon." Later we see Pile cleaning his rifle and talking to it. This is where I knew that Pile had been driven over the edge by Hartman. In this scene, all of the recruits are shown next to their bunks doing regular maintenance on their weapons. Pile is just one of them. Doing the same things they are doing. At least, externally. But when we see him up close, a three-quarter shot showing him and his rifle, we see that things have taken a much more serious toll on him.

Several times, sexual references are made about the rifles. Hartman saying "you will sleep with your rifle." The troops chanting "I don't want no teenage queen. I just want my M-14." We see this lover-like connection between the recruits and their weapon that is taken somewhat lightly and as a joke. But when we see Pile talking to his rifle, we see how he has processed things differently. Training camp has changed him psychologically. There is a real connection, a lover-like connection between him and his rifle.

Beside him, sort of in the background, is Joker eavesdropping on Pile's conversation with his rifle. Watching Pile being watched by Joker makes the audience feel almost embarrassed for Pile, but especially uneasy about the mental state Pile has been driven to. The audience, along with Joker, know things aren't right with him and are worried for him but not sure what to think of it, not sure if things are going to get worse.

Seeing Pile alongside all of the other recruits doing the same thing that they're doing (and having been doing the same thing they've been doing everyday) make the audience wonder Why has training camp taken a different toll on Pile? Is it because Hartman has been harder on him? Is it because "everyone hates" him? It appears as though he has taken up a relationship with his weapon because it is the only thing that doesn't work against him. It actually works with him and for him. Because of all of the negative things that have been done to Pile, the audience feels a sense of compassion for him. They feel sorry for him and especially sympathize with him when they see that he feels the only friend he has is his weapon. But at the same time, there is an uneasy uncertainty felt by the viewer toward Pile. You know he's been driven too far but you don't know where that's going to drive him.

Doin' The Whole Village

In Platoon, Oliver Stone presents a strong illustration of both the exasperation of the American soldiers and the misery of the Vietnamese villagers in the scene where the army men are sent to take the suspected Viet Cong and burn the village. As the soldiers advance upon the village, their anger and content for the innocent villagers is immediately apparent as they shoot the livestock and violently gather the women and children together, telling each other to just "put them in the pig pen," a dehumanizing statement. The men are all automatic VC suspects, and as much as the villagers are afraid, many of the Americans are scared as well. Chris Taylor, particularly, collapses under the pressure while rounding up two of the Vietnamese, yelling angrily and shooting at the foot of the one-legged man. Taylor begins to cry with frustration and anger, unhappy with the job he is ordered to do. One of the other men, Bunny, finds amusement in the distress of the Vietnamese though. Desensitized by all the death and killing of the Vietnam War, he takes pleasure in beating the one-legged man, smirking at the amount of blood shed when he kills the man. Throughout this scene, there are close ups on the faces of Taylor, Bunny, and the two villagers so that the viewer is able to see and experience the emotions that each character is feeling. Taylor's eyes are filled with tears, giving off a strong sense of distress, while Bunny's eyes are sharp and seemingly emotionless, showing his indifference to the anguish that the Vietnamese are feeling.

In the following scene, the suspected VC is dragged to the center and fiercely questioned about the weapons and excessive amount of rice in the village. Even though the man insists that there are no VC, Barnes is unconvinced. The man's wife comes into the scene, yelling at the soldiers about how they have destroyed everything in the village, ruining their lives. Barnes, immensely annoyed at her shouting, shoots and kills her. When he does that, the camera is looking into Barnes' eyes from the barrel of the gun; the fierceness and anger is apparent in his eyes as he kills this innocent woman. Unconcerned with the death of the woman, he proceeds to take the man's young daughter, holding the gun up to her head, yelling at the man to consent to his orders. In this scene, the camera shifts to Taylor's face every once in a while, and the grief so clearly displayed in his eyes seems to penetrate the screen; the cries of the children can be heard in the background. Soon, Elias comes and is furious at what is happening in the village. The two sergeants fight each other, bringing an immediate division in the army. After the fight is broken up, the soldiers proceed to burn down the village as the captain had initially instructed them to do so. During the burning, music plays in the background and the dead are shown, lying in the flaming huts.

At the end of this whole scene, Taylor angrily stops the other army men from raping the young, probably about 10 year old girl. He yells, "She's a f***ing human being." The others tell Taylor he doesn't belong in this world, but he retaliates by stating, "You just don't get it." The other soldiers fail to take in the fact that the just because the Vietnamese are the ones America is fighting and may not be highly esteemed as America is, they aren't any less human than Americans. The soldiers treat the Vietnamese either as animals or simply objects of pleasure. The American soldiers don't feel the pain and suffering of the Vietnamese as Taylor does. This whole scene effectively portrays all the conflicting emotions felt by the individuals, whether it be desolation or complete indifference to the War.

A confused and forced attempt at a Blog:(

Complex feelings and actions become even more complex by immersion in complicated surroundings. We see an example of this in the movie Platoon in the aftermath of a severe battle scene towards the end. By this point in the movie we as viewers are already experiencing extreme tension created by intense battle sequences and bitter conflict within the divided platoon. To set the stage however, there is a serene emphasis on nature a the camera focuses on plants in congruence with the presence of a feeding deer. The emphasis on nature takes us away from the complexities of what we had just seen. As the camera focuses in on Taylor and the revival of his conscience we are introduced to the feeling of waking up from a bad dream, allowing for a sense of relief. At this point a helicopter can be heard in the distance which seems to snap things back into perspective as Taylor begins to take in the destruction of life which lies spoiled about the landscape. This particular image then coincides with struggle depicted by Sgt.. Barnes. The Struggle for life and nature then come together in Taylor's decision to kill Sgt. Barnes. Based upon the scene created, Taylor's actions seem natural.   

Collateral Damage?

After I watched Full Metal Jacket and Platoon, I can recollect two scenes that will remain engraved in my mind. These scenes involved the death of the innocent. I’m not talking about death as the result of friendly fire, but death caused by the cruel intentions of those men that depict the brutal reality of the Vietnam War.

In Full Metal Jacket, one scene in particular begins through the perspective of a passenger in a UH-34 Choctaw. The viewer can only hear the resonant wisps of the chopper’s rotating blades, while taking in a vista of thriving Vietnamese greenery. The viewer enters a third person perspective of the chopper as it transits the sun seen near the distant horizon. The viewer is then treated with a first person perspective through the eyes of the pilots. We are immersed in a fertile environment, with the foggy jungles of Vietnam racing underneath us. The atmosphere of these shots is one of tranquility and serenity. Deep in the jungles of Vietnam, the viewer is aware of the chaos and turmoil that takes place. However, from above, the jungle doesn’t carry the same negative connotation. This atmosphere dissipates as soon as we see Rafterman on the verge of vomiting while hearing a machine gun firing in short bursts in the background. In between bursts, we hear the phrase, “Get some” exclaimed by the door-gunner. We witness the door-gunner experiencing his chronic adrenaline rush, as each pull of his trigger downs an unsuspecting foe. As Rafterman gags once again, we see Joker with a grin on his face. At this point, it’s hard to tell what exactly is going on between the three. First of all, who is the door-gunner engaging? Is Rafterman airsick, or is there something else that is fueling his disgust? Finally, why does Joker’s smile seem forced? The viewer is finally presented with some evidence that may answer these questions as we see the world through the door-gunner’s point of view. As we see muzzle flashes emitting from the tip of the gun, a quick burst of fire takes the life of a fleeing farmer as others run for their lives.

The reality of war is a subject that is often brought up in the context of Vietnam, such as in the rhetoric of this scene in Full Metal Jacket. I define the reality of war to be the cold-blooded conglomeration of attitudes and sentiments that fuel the men in arms and the commanders in charge to commit to what most would consider corrupt acts. This of course includes the murder of the innocent. In this scene, much in the same way that Staff Sergeant Barnes was personified as the reality of war, I find this door-gunner to exhibit similar characteristics. Despite his relatively short screen time, the door-gunner came off as a testosterone-enhanced, instinctive slayer with absolutely no remorse for the innocent he intentionally kills. Including the farmer he gunned down in the scene, he also claimed to have had "157 dead Gooks killed, and 50 water buffaloes too." In response to Joker’s question regarding how the door-gunner could kill women and children, he sarcastically remarks, “Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much! Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ain't war hell?!" The key difference between the door-gunner and Staff Sergeant Barnes has to do with the way the viewer reacts to how the reality of war is presented among the two characters. I found humor in the way the door-gunner spoke, perhaps due to his limited vocabulary or the bluntness and simplicity of his statements. As a conglomeration of everything negatively associated with the Vietnam War, the character of the door-gunner was essentially an exaggeration. Perhaps it was the intention of Stanley Kubrick to present this character in this manner as a means to get the viewer to realize the absurdity of this savage mentality.

The reality of war also understood through the development of the viewers understanding of what’s exactly occurring in the scene. The beautiful Vietnam landscape argues deception. Much in the same way that most of us require first-hand experience in order to have a better understanding of a particular subject, the same is true for the viewer as we are presented with an external point of view that masks what’s truly occurring within the helicopter and the lush greenery below. Only when the viewer enters the chopper alongside Joker, Rafterman, and the door-gunner, do we begin to get a more realistic picture. However, we are still presented with more questions as we cannot provide a good explanation to Rafterman’s disgust. Only until we enter the perspective of the door-gunner, the so-called “reality of war”, do we witness the death of the innocent first hand. Only until we immerse ourselves in war can we truly understand its hardships and consequences.

A Tale of Two Tyrants

Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone present two distinct pictures of the American military tyrant who, they would seem to argue, is to be blamed for some of the messier aspects of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In Full Metal Jacket, Gunner Sergeant Hartman is a cold, calculating human cog in a well-oiled war machine- perhaps even a philosopher, in his personal life. In Platoon, we encounter Staff Sergeant Barnes, who is a primal, bloodthirsty animal.

In the opening scene of Full Metal Jacket (following the credits), the audience is given an inside view of GySgt Hartman, as he cordially welcomes a platoon of new recruits into the United States Marine Corps. This scene takes place in a barracks bay at the Parris Island recruit training depot. The camera follows GySgt Hartman from a slight distance as he strolls around the perimeter of the bay in an erect posture, one arm folded rigidly behind his back. None of the fluorescent ceiling lights are turned on at this time; daylight pours in through windows behind the bunks to expose the clean, perfectly ordered interior of the bay, in which even the ceilings appear to have been freshly shined. Hartman chirps his (hilarious,) obscenity-laden poetry with unwavering clarity, like a machine; his fastidiously arranged exterior loses none of its composition even when he punches one recruit and strangles another (seriously injuring neither). In this sterile world of ninety degree angles and perfectly-recited peroration in which Kubrick depicts his tyrant, ideas dominate. Everything in the room represents the manifestation of a clear, purposeful idea. Hartman forces his ideas of what a Marine should be upon a room full of young men whose lives may have been, until recently, as diverse as their pre-training hairstyles. We are never even the slightest hint as to what Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s “real self” might be like- he is merely a walking projection of such ideas as blind force, surrender of personality and critical thought in service of the greater good, and a black and white/win or lose approach to conflict. And though Hartman is killed stateside, the graduates of his last platoon carry his ideas with them to Vietnam.

In Platoon, we get our closest look at Oliver Stone's tyrant, an infantry platoon sergeant on the line named Staff Sergeant Barnes, in the scene in which he confronts a group of his soldiers as they are smoking pot and weaving idle plots to kill him, shortly after Barnes has murdered one of his squad leaders, Sergeant Elias. In this scene, SSG Barnes presents a very different picture from that of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman on Parris Island. After hearing Barnes smugly ask his soldiers if they are “talking ‘bout killing,” we see Barnes, slumped casually against sand bags, in the partially lit entrance of the dank, cluttered bunker in which the plotting soldiers are assembled. A load-bearing equipment vest adorns his otherwise naked chest; he exhales cigarette smoke with a hiss before taking a sip from the fifth of J.D. he is packing- half of which never makes it into his mouth. Barnes does not demand to know the identity of the “slimy little communist shit twinkle-toed cocksucker down here, who just signed his own death warrant.” He makes no attempt to quickly and decisively restore order to the situation; for that matter, his own appearance is every bit as disordered as that of his stoner soldiers. Rather, he seems almost entertained to hear his subordinates talking about murdering him. Ultimately, the brute force of Barnes’ will wins out over the frustrated angst of the junior enlisted soldiers. However, it is not the idea of force, as a necessary element within the inherently violent construct of military engagements (etc), which he asserts upon the group, but the messy, gray-area-permeated “reality” (…Pynchon shout-out there) of his own force.

Hartman robs poor, innocent young men of their individual identities; and in the place previously occupied by their personalities, he implants his own ideas of heartlessness, thoughtless obedience, and team spirit on steroids. His very existence seems to echo the mantra of such Vietnam-era generals as Westmoreland and Lemay: with enough bombs in the air and boots on the ground, the American military can resolve any violent situation. Barnes does not bother much with ideas. Like a seething tiger, he stalks the jungles and villages of Vietnam, devouring anyone who gets in his way- civilian or combatant, friend or foe. Stone would like to inform us that it is Staff Sergeant Barnes whom we should thank for the massacre at My Lai and for the less-than-rare incidents of "fragging" later in the war.

Full Metal Jacket: Private Pyles Suicide

The scene starts off with the character Joker doing a walk around on a night shift. Everybody is sleeping including the drill instructor, all lights are off, and his only way of vision is his flash light that he is carrying around. As he is walking toward the camera in the direction of the bathroom, music begins to play that one would expect to find in a scary movie. With the low humming bass and the tingling bell ringing every so often, an eerie feeling begins to creep up the viewers spinal cord. Any regular movie watcher knows that these are the perfect elements for a scene that is going to make the viewer jump out of his seat or scream. Joker shines his light on to the Bathroom door and decides to head in for a check up with the camera following right behind him. At this point, we now get a sneaking suspicion of where this event is going to take place. The camera switches angles, now from a perspective in the middle of the bathroom aimed at the corner of the wall waiting for Joker to come around. As Joker comes around the corner, his walk begins to become slower, the bottom of his mouth begins to drop, and his eyes start to become just a little bit wider. The viewer is now just waiting for the camera to switch angles towards the content of the bathroom to see just what has got the Joker looking so shocked. Sure enough, as the camera switches angles, we find the light shined right on Private Pyles who happens to have the gun he has grown to love in one hand, and live rounds in the other hand. The look on Pyles face is exactly the look the viewer wouldn't want to see on somebody's face in the dark holding a gun. At this point, the viewer is certain that a memorable scene is about to take place during the movie.

The foreshadowing leading up to this event couldn't be missed by anyone who watched this movie. Something out of the ordinary was going to happen to Private Pyles at some point or another. Between his constant mess ups, his seemingly lack of intelligence, and his growing outcast from the brotherhood of the unit, it wasn't looking good for him. Not to mention the fact that every private in the unit thought it would be a good idea to hit him with a bar soap and he began to talk to his gun with a crazy look on his face. None the less, even if the viewer did know something was coming, it would have been hard to guess it would be something so dramatic as a murder and a suicide. I will say though, if I had to guess who it was he was going to murder, I would have picked the Drill Instructor.

Shit Sandwhich

As far as American involvement in Vietnam goes, I don't believe it could be put simpler than Private Joker's editor at "Stars & Stripes" newspaper. "This is a big shit sandwhich, and we are all about to take a bite." In fact, Americans are working on that painfully stale crust at the end of the sandwhich over 40 years later. The rhetoric in the three visual selections (Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and George C. Scott's Portrayal of George S. Patton's memorable speech) assigned is so obvious in it's nature that it was hard to analyze each selection for content as opposed to just watching an excellent film. That fact aside, There were specific moments in Full Metal Jacket and Platoon that simply defined the general discontent expressed by Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone in their respective films. Towards the end of Platoon when Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berringer) is seconds away from hitting Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) over the head and the reflection of napalm shines in his eyes, this scene represents America's involvement in Vietnam. The fact that "we were not fighting the enemy, we were fighting ourselves" shines as bright as Barnes' eyes at the analogy of the soldiers being napalmed by their own troops at the end of a horrendous battle. It represents what the American government did to almost 60,000 of its young men over the course of what is considered by many as the most unnecessary war in American history.

As cliché as it might sound, the opening scene to Full Metal Jacket in which the enlisted men are getting their head's shaved one after another in unison to the tune "Hello Vietnam" by Johnny Wright. There are so many devestating scenes in this piece of visual rhetoric to pick from but I believe, even after viewing this movie at least ten times, that this scene shows the misery that was the Vietnam War. The contrast of a happy, major-chord constructed, folk song and the twenty or so faces that look like someone just shit in their cereal makes a stunning piece of cinema. As Kubrick is known for his taboo style of film, he goes with a simple approach and proves that simple can be the best option. This scene portrays a sense of brevity amongst these soon to be "brothers of the corp" as well as the complete and utter isolation that is boot camp and war. While one spends 8 weeks with 25 other men who are just as miserable, this movie shows that under such circumstances, it is possible to be alone. This realization is shown in the faces of the men as they see their hair falling to the floor. At this moment, they know they are fucked.

Patton Portrayal

Even without possessing much background information, anyone who reads Patton’s speech can clearly determine that Patton is a man of great authority. Franklin J. Schaffner’s movie does a spectacular job at representing this presence through his speech, but it also extends beyond just his words. Patton’s words convey his power and authority, but Schaffner’s depiction also introduces new elements that transform Patton’s speech into a symbol of authority not just for Patton but also for America as an entire nation.

The main idea that remains consistent between both the written and visual interpretations of Patton’s speech is his overall level of power. Patton’s words, uttered from any other mouth, would probably sound ignorant or inane. Yet, coming from such a powerful man, they bear a certain significance that few other men or women could achieve. Schaffner’s movie furthers Patton’s manifestation of power past just what he says. One major aspect of the film that furthers Patton’s appearance of absolute authority is his clever use of audio. As the scene begins, a large amount of chatter can be heard from the audience, but as soon as they are called to attention, it immediately stops. Next, amongst the eerie silence in the assumedly large auditorium, Patton’s footsteps echo reverberantly, emphasizing his approach. Also, the only other sounds that can be heard throughout the scene are the trumpet that introduces Patton and the noise of the audience sitting when Patton commands them to do so. Otherwise, Patton’s dialogue and footsteps are the only audio throughout the whole scene. Schaffner also never shows anything besides Patton in any of the shots. Although viewers are to assume that he is speaking to an audience, they are never shown, and are therefore deemed insignificant in comparison to Patton. Also, while the trumpet is playing, Schaffner included an excellent sequence of inserts showcasing Patton’s brilliant array of medals, pins, and other symbols of his astounding military achievements. Another subtle technique that Schaffner uses is his careful framing. Every shot is facing the stage directly, meaning that the large and very noticeable lines on the flag are always nearly perfectly horizontal, never diagonal. One of the basic rules of composition is that horizontal lines create feelings of peace and stability while diagonal lines symbolize tension or strife. This deliberate choice of framing reflects the sense of peace and stability that Patton is trying to give his soldiers. Patton is trying to ease their fears with his speech, hoping that because of his renowned abilities, the soldiers will trust him, and Schaffner’s use of horizontal lines helps accomplish the same purpose with the viewers.

Schaffner also goes beyond a showcasing of Patton’s power and instead makes other deliberate choices to place a stronger emphasis on American pride as a nation than is apparent in a direct transcription of Patton’s speech. First, Schaffner draws an enormous amount of attention to the flag behind Patton. Most noticeably, he does this by emphasizing its scale. In the first shot, the audience may have a hard time determining the size of the flag, but as soon as Patton takes the stage and the audience is given a point of reference, the enormity of the flag becomes apparent. At about three times Patton’s height even when he is standing relatively far in front of it, the flag is obviously massive, and therefore, commands attention. However, Schaffner also draws even more attention to the flag through careful use of color. Because the flag is so large and made up of bright colors, it already commands a viewer’s interest, but Schaffner furthers this by practically eliminating all other colors from the scene. The curtains are gray, and the only bright color on Patton’s uniform is his blue sash, which also serves to make sure that even the shots which don’t show the blue part of the flag still emphasize red, white, and blue. Combined, all of this focus that Schaffner places on the flag creates a strong sense of national importance to what is being said in the scene. Even Patton, whose importance was undeniable, is dwarfed by the flag. Schaffner is clearly stating that despite Patton’s great strength and power, the issue at stake here is bigger than any one man. The issues that this speech hopes to resolve extend beyond Patton. Patton’s goal is to protect his country, and, without diminishing Patton’s significance, Schaffner hopes to emphasize this point.

~ Sorry this post was so long. I just really liked that piece of the movie.

George S. Patton's Speech vs Sergeant Hartman's Speech

 The general style of Patton's speech with its "bullshit"s and "son of a bitch"s closely resembled the rhetoric of Hartman's speech. However, there are a number of vast differences between the two men's speeches. The agenda of Patton's speech is to persuade the American soldiers to suppress their natural fears of death and to persuade them to fight for their country as true patriots should. Sergeant Hartman's agenda was to make real soldiers out of mere civilians. Therefore, Hartman's speech is generally more lighthearted in nature than that of General Patton, because Hartman treated the soldiers more as an exceptionally strict father figure that wants to instill military values in his sons; whereas, on the other hand, Patton spoke to the GI's as a military commander with much experience in the bloody business of war. Patton took on more of a salesperson role in trying to convince his audience of his point of view by using a number of rhetorical devices. First of all, he addressed his audience as an equal by using simple words and sentence structures. He also employed the redundancy principle by repeating the word 'America" or "Americans" eight times in the span of one short paragraph. He also stated one main counter-argument that his audience might have and dispelled it. Overall, Patton was a very gifted speaker.

Full Metal Jacket vs. Platoon

In both Platoon and Full Metal Jacket, the soldiers were trained to kill. They were told that all they had in the field was their rifle. The men were dehumanized either before they went to the war or within the first couple of months while there.

The film Full Metal Jacket starts off with a group of approximately 30-40 newly recruited men training for the United States Marine Corps. It shows how the drill instructor starts to dehumanize the men. For example, the drill instructor yells, curses, and disrespects them both mentally and physically. For one of the men, Leonard (Pyle), it drove him crazy, literally. The film depicts him as being somewhat mentally distant from the rest of the men. The director does a good job showing Pyle in his state of dementia and the look he has in his eyes. He begins to be somewhat psychopathic which to me is how the Marine Corps wanted to train the men. They wanted them to lose all morals and just kill. Towards the middle of the movie it actually shows some of the men from the Marine Corps training camp while they are battling in the Vietnam War. This movie didn’t really show much of the fighting. It showed a lot of the events happening in the background such as the newspaper and documentaries.

In Platoon the movie starts out in already in the war. The main character, Chris, left college to volunteer in the war. In contrast with Full Metal Jacket, he is a rookie with no training. He just got thrown out there with no guidance and older guys refusing to help and teach him how to survive. He quickly learns that he has to kill or he will be killed. As the movie progresses, the director shows Chris changing and maturing. He goes from this timid kid to this brutal, patriot man. Throughout the movie the scenes are very up close and personal. They show many Americans and Vietnamese being killed and slaughtered. You get to know what really happened in Vietnam, the good and bad.

In contrast, Platoon made you feel like you were right there in the war with the soldiers. In Full Metal Jacket it made you feel like you were writing a report about the war after reading about it. Both movies were a great depiction of the Vietnam War.