The TRUE "Hearts and Minds"

Take that, Susan Sontag. How’s that for your interaction with the Vietnamese? We are watching a documentary that doesn’t just display “the expansion of medical services, the reorganization of education, the creation of a modest industrial base…” through reading (Sontag, 208). Although we are not experiencing Vietnam through our own firsthand basis, it’s through the Vietnamese and the Vietnam War veterans that we are acquiring this information from.

I acknowledge that “Trip to Hanoi” is similar to Hearts and Minds in that you did go to Vietnam and you did report what was seen there, but as you said, “while a painting or prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency” (“On Photography”, 6). If a picture can say a thousand words, then the moving pictures must say ten thousand.

Hearts and Minds is at all not subtle in introducing the topic of the Vietnam War. The opening scene alone is powerful and overwhelming. Opening to thousands of soldiers in neat uniform, marching rigidly, standing in front of a huge monument, it’s a tremendous “in-your-face” effect that shows how the Vietnam War was a huge deal for the soldiers, and in no way can its effects be ignored.

The beginning was patriotic. There were men who went to war, because it was their duty, killed without a second thought, and smiled at the thought of killing another “savage” because in their minds, they thought they were in the right.

They can’t be blamed. Americans in the 1950s were brought up in the mentality that communism was going to take over the world if America didn’t step in to help the “lesser” countries. They were taught, “without America, the burden of war would be too great.” America was the “warrior country.” These soldiers didn’t have their own opinion about what they were doing, just serving their country and listening to their superiors.

Hearts and Minds showed the war from not only the American point of view, but also the Vietnamese. We hear and see from their point of view. We understand how the war had affected their lives, destroyed their homes, and killed their loved ones. At the same time, we see how strong they are. A Vietnamese man who makes coffins for a living, faces death everyday, says that, “no matter how many decades America fights, it will never conquer Vietnam… over here, as long as there is rice to eat, we'll keep fighting. And if the rice runs out, we'll plow the fields and do it again.” The Vietnamese have fought for their independence for a long time. They have a history of over five thousands years, and they will not allow it to be destroyed by a foreigner.

The turning point of the documentary for me was when reality settles in. We see the brutality of war. The Vietnamese are abused. The camera shows the same Vietnam War veterans in full view, and we see the amputated legs and arms. Americans at home don’t know the reason for the war, thinking that we’re “fighting for the North Vietnamese, right?”

This is the truth of the Vietnam War. It isn’t the simple minded Vietnamese portrayed in “Trip to Hanoi.” It isn’t all about showing your expertise and watching explosions. It’s the death of lives, destruction of lives, and a lasting scar in all lives involved.

//edit: I'm sorry for the incorrect spacing. For some reason it keeps printing out the html code for my paper, and I don't understand it to fix the spacing.